As a developer, it is too hard to use the forum because the punishments defined in the broken rules matrix are not being enforced by moderation against problem users.
It’s very difficult to help keep the community clean when repeat offenders are able to continuously break rules which warrant suspension without being suspended and repeat this as a cycle. This isn’t healthy for the community and it makes a complete mockery of the rules and the moderation system.
For example, a user should not be able to create a topic of overt sexual nature in #development-discussion, tell a user to ‘get off the website’ because they’re not fluent in English, spam nonsense under multiple topics, and behave disrespectfully to several members before being suspended for just one day. The number of flags this user received and their complete disregard for feedback should be a clear enough indicator that they have zero interest in correcting their behavior.
This is only a single case but there are countless others in which rules have been blatantly and intentionally broken, and offenders have not been dealt with correctly.
Changes which could address the problem:
Properly enforce the rules and their punishments as they are defined
Amend the punishments for certain rules and enact less leniency
Update the forum rules (specifically the broken rules matrix) to reflect any internal changes to moderation for clarity and transparency
Consider moderation history when agreeing with flags; identify repeat offenders and punish them accordingly
If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would improve my experience using the forum because known bad actors wouldn’t be free to ruin the community with nonsense and I wouldn’t be wasting my time flagging these posts.
(To clarify, similar feature requests can be found here and here but they focus specifically on trolling; my issue lies with the lack of enforcement of the broken rules matrix and insufficient application of punishments.)
Oh my god YES. ABSOLUTELY THIS. I’m so happy to see that so many people feel the same way.
Don’t even get me started about all the rule breaking posts getting outright approved (as in “You can’t flag this post, it’s already been reviewed and deemed ok”) and requiring the “something else” flags just to try and get rid of it (which still isn’t 100% reliable)
My tinfoil hat theory on this for some easy laughs
My crazy conspiracy theory is: The rules aren’t being enforced to try and turn the wider (or at least more mature) userbase off using the devforum to curb the active users down to a smaller and easier to manage amount before bringing post approval/regular applications back.
Most of the complaints about devforum moderation I’ve had all started roughly around the time PA/regular was removed, and those things were removed simply because the devforum was getting very popular/very busy, so it’s an interesting coincidence.
With that out of the way, the one point I agree with most out of them is by far updating the forum rules. It’s clear that the way they’re currently worded isn’t being enforced, they’ll either need re-wording to accurately reflect what is being enforced, or the mods should actually start enforcing the already existing rules (which to be fair ends up falling under “properly enforce the rules”)
I’ve observed that DET tends to listen to you more if you the “Something Else” since you’re giving a reason behind it. So these days I only use the “Something Else” reason since it has a 90% of success each time.
Anyway, I’m glad that more and more people are coming to agreements on this.
Totally agree with these points. We should all realize that everyone started out as a learner and everyone starts somewhere, and there’s a large range of maturity between 13 and 25 (core audience of this forum).
It’s not okay to bully / ridicule / put other users down for poor language proficiency or poor development skills. We were all that user at some point some years ago – put yourself in the shoes of that person before engaging, whether that’s on the forum or on social media otherwise.
But I think they should change moderation actions in a different way. Before I start this I am TL3 on a different forum and they skip right to mod (No TL4) and me and the other TL3s deal with a lot more moderation and stuff like that.
When a topic is all good except the category just recategorize it and give the user feedback. And at the worst unlist and lock a topic and set a topic timers to relist and unlock the topic after x amount of time to ensure the user sees the feedback and doesn’t just ignore it.
DET should decide on each flag based on the post on NOT moderation history. But the punishment for that flag should be based on the flag AND moderation history. And change the moderation system to a different way than strikes. Mabey do a point system where each rule is worth a different number of points. And x, y, z, g and i number of points you receive a different punishment. Possibly (x the lowest and i being the largest number of points) x would be 1-day suspension y would be 2-day suspension, z would be 4-day suspension gwould be 7 day suspension and i would be a perm suspension.
Edit: Possible instead of suspending users for some number of points you would be silenced instead. Learn the difference hereThe Difficult User -> Silence the user/Suspend the user.
To be clear I’m not suggesting we kick non-native English speakers off the platform. That whole block of text in the OP is just listing everything I’ve seen (and flagged) from a known problem user before suspension (albeit for only 1 day) to demonstrate the issue.
I agree - this is what I was trying to say but perhaps I worded it poorly.
I don’t think the problem needs to be addressed with complex point systems - it’s ultimately DevRel’s decision on the best way to respond; my proposed solutions are only there as a guide of the sort of changes which might help. I don’t see any issues with the current strike system other than the fact that the correct punishments aren’t being enforced on repeat offenders.
I think we should use a point system because do you think advertising via DMs is just as bad as references to illicit content. I think the latter is worse but they are both 1 strike.
Regardless of which rules we all subjectively think are more important than others, the problem is the defined punishments are not being enforced in the first place.
For instance, typical griefers frequently break Global Rule 1 (Trolling, flaming, personal attacks), Global Rule 4 (Insulting or derogatory posts) and Global Rule 18 (Disrespectful/impolite arguments) - all three of which, in most cases, should immediately warrant a strike, but this isn’t being done. Personal opinions about which one of these rules is more important are irrelevant when punishments are rarely followed up on to begin with.
The issue is, I get flagged pretty often for no reason at all, which means, I could get suspended, while I have done nothing wrong, but people legit breaking the rules could be fine.
Trolls are funny most of the time.
But, when they create help posts and waste people’s time, then it’s a huge issue.
I fell for that recently, and tried helping somebody, and 20 posts later I ofund out that it was a pretty unfunny joke.
And also, the rules are often overlooked by staff, or just plain dumb.
I think that hardly anybody actually follows that rule, and nobody enforces it thank goodness.
The longest I have seen a troll post survive is 30 minutes
