Further Changes to the Developer Forum

Updates Community & Events
#1

Hey developers,

We recently made a whole bunch of changes to the structure of the Developer Forum (read about them here). Well, there’s still room for improvement, so here’s a new set of changes for you. These are designed to make the DevForum more pleasant to use and less cluttered overall.

CLARITY :eyeglasses:

The subcategory of the Discussion category that was previously called “Engineering Feedback” has been renamed to “Roblox Surveys”, because the subcategory was never really used just for engineering feedback - other teams utilized it, too. The new name should make the purpose of the category a bit clearer.

EVEN MORE CLARITY :goggles:

The name of the “Public” category is redundant - everyone can see it. Instead, the category will now be called “Updates”, which reflects the purpose of the category and encompasses all of the subcategories pretty nicely. This means that the subcategory called “Public Updates and Announcements” will be changing too; it’s now called “Announcements”. That’s much easier to say!

SLEEP TIGHT, SWEET INTERNATIONAL CATEGORY :sleeping:

After our big changes to the “International” category earlier this year (read them here), we’ve realized that there really isn’t much purpose for this category at this time. All of the languages that we currently support have their own opt-in categories and the International category doesn’t have much incentive to be posted in anymore. As a result, we’re getting rid of it for now. There are some topics within it that were very useful for developers - those have been moved to #discussion or #resources:community-resources depending on the topic. Some other discussion topics have been moved to #lounge:off-topic.

FEEDBACK LOOP :repeat:

In the previous round of changes to the DevForum, we moved the Forum Feedback category into Platform Feedback as a subcategory. After some careful consideration, we’re undoing this change and Forum Feedback is going back to being its own category. It just wasn’t quite on the same page as the other subcategories of Platform Feedback and was cluttering the Latest view with forum-specific topics rather than bug reports and feature requests.

MONOLOGUE :speech_balloon:

New Members are now able to reply to their own Feature Requests and Discussion topics that go through the Post Approval process. Speaking of the Post Approval process, that’s a lot more straightforward for these categories now, too. Now, instead of having to create a Bulletin Board topic and send a group message to the Post Approval team, New Members are able to post directly in Feature Request subcategories or the Discussion category to have the topic automatically converted to a Bulletin Board topic that gets messaged to the group for review.

MAKEOVER :eyes:

We’ve installed several new themes for your viewing pleasure while browsing the DevForum. Check out which ones you can use here: Developer Forum | Roblox. Look how pretty the forum looks!

These changes are pretty minor but should make the DevForum easier to navigate and more pleasant to look at. Let us know what you think!

Thanks,
Developer Relations

101 Likes
Separate Forum Feedback from Platform Feedback
November 2019 Recap: Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
#2
#3

This topic was automatically opened after 11 minutes.

#4

I love the look of the Graceful theme. Could we get a dark version of it?

8 Likes
#5

So, the 3 new themes are listed here.
image

Summary

(ignore dark and default theme)

9 Likes
#6

I’m not happy at all about this change. I used the category as a place for feedback for my translations… Now I can’t put it anywhere than having to ask my employers if I can link an off-site website to collect this crucial data…

5 Likes
#7

Could you elaborate on that? We investigated all of the topics posted in the International category and didn’t see that use case come up. That also wasn’t the intended use of the category (which had long been defunct), but is an interesting case worth looking into supporting.

6 Likes
#8

Maybe what you want is a Translation Help and Feedback category? Wouldn’t really see the point though, since it wouldn’t be used that often and probably not properly either.

Translation feedback fits under Game Design Support, as the category encompasses feedback for UX. Translations fall under UX. You could post translation topics there.

5 Likes
#9

I don’t like this change of removing the international category.

Some developers like myself speak other languages and we don’t want to post in off-topic because the international category is usually filled with on-topic things, e.g. Developer Roll Calls.

It isn’t a good idea to remove the international category because it’s one of the best things ROBLOX has done, make the game multilingual. This category has certain things e.g. International Discords that aren’t community resources, they are international servers.

5 Likes
#10

@coefficients This post was used to inform players that aren’t in Ultraw’s official discord server about progress on the translations plus troubleshooting. Since not many Polish players is a member of the forums, they’d either try to get into the forum first to DM me the problems or were looking for a secondary way of contact which is Twitter in my case.

@colbert2677 I’d use the category if I was able to but seen quite a few non-English posts from outside of #international category be reported by people and since most Polish players speak little to no English, I can’t be really posting it in #game-design since I’ll be spammed 10 minutes later by people who don’t understand or will tell me that google translate is better than an actual human being.

3 Likes
#11

Ohh yeahh!! Love this a lot, vincent theme ftw.

Does this mean that the posts that weren’t as useful (and would be moved to other categories) would be deleted entirely? I think that most posts would be helpful in a way for native speakers who want to learn more and use the posts for reference. Is there a way for them to be archived but not necessarily…gone?

7 Likes
#12

I would be good looking but do you really need a theme that has grey and white?

EDIT: That grey and white was just a bug on grey amber.

2 Likes
#13

Was this only introduced today? Ive had this happen for about a week now, its incredibly useful!

4 Likes
#15

This is a mistake in the announcement – It’s actually been moved to the Discussion category (https://devforum.roblox.com/t/unofficial-discord-servers-for-international-developers/222799/)

I’ve corrected it. Thanks.

That forum category only had <40 topics over the course of the years it was there. It doesn’t seem like this was used enough to warrant its existence. If you are looking to talk in non-English languages that aren’t officially supported on the forum (Spanish/French/German/Portuguese), I recommend joining a Discord server with developers that speak your language for now!

Note: This only applies to the “International” category, not the 4 language categories. We’re talking about the top-level category that was orphaned after the 4 languages were moved out into their own categories.

2 Likes
#16

Ok so my feedback on it is:

Personally, i dont like this change, but it will be great for new members. The name of #updates was really off-topic.

I dont think, that this is good change, because some people still use it, and I even saw 1 or 2 german topic in #help-and-feedback:scripting-support and after this change, i think, that it will be worse.

This is great change, because the category is much diferent from others in #platform-feedback.

What to say here? THIS IS THE BEST CHANGE, that you can make, because it was really bad, that I cant reply on someones feedback on my category. Personaly, I will make, that new members can reply on every bug report and maybe also on feature requests.

I think, that this change is much time cost for its final effect, becuase when I give feedback on every single theme

  • Dark - that is great theme, which I and most of my friends use
  • Default - this is classic default theme
  • Graceful - this is worst theme, because it is almost impossible to read some code from forums with small monitor
  • Grey Amber - this is just lighter copy of dark, but it looks ok and easy to make so best from all new themes
  • Vincent - I think, that this is theme, that almost no one will use, because it is not from 1 color, so it can confuse when looking on some GUIs, …

But when I look on the change as on 1 big think, I think it is good change.

3 Likes
#17

We had to temporarily revert the name change for Public / Public Updates and Announcements because we were made aware that we broke any feeds that were watching Updates - Developer Forum | Roblox

Anyone who has services watching that link: Please use ID-based links instead of the slug-based link. You can find the ID in the JSON of the category/subcategory (i.e. /c/public.json).

For reference:
Public: Updates - Developer Forum | Roblox
Public Updates and Announcements: Announcements - Developer Forum | Roblox
Community: Community & Events - Developer Forum | Roblox
Developer Incident Reports: https://devforum.roblox.com/c/89

We will be putting this name change back next Wednesday (November 20th).

10 Likes
#18

Moving Forum Feedback into its own category again is a great change. The forums needed their own discussion area!

1 Like
#20

As for the Monologue part, the addition for the Bulletin Board topics you make to have a stream of your own comments, for new members… I’d really like that. I’m not sure if topics are flagged when they’re near the same subject in the Bulletin Board, but I’d prefer having just 1 topic that would act as a announcement board for my group. Customization in each topic for where posts can be ordered from newest to oldest, or oldest to newest, or have the original topic post at top or bottom, possibly with a pinned post somewhere too…

4 Likes
#22

FYI that is a thing. New Members can reply to all topics in the bug report categories without post approval, not just your own.

3 Likes
#24

I love the Vincent theme! But why is it called that? Who is this man we speak of?

2 Likes