How to Determine Where a Forum Bug Should be Reported

Our forum uses a software called Discourse, the very core of our developer community, however our forum’s software was tweaked a bit to fit the needs of Roblox users.

If you have reported a forum bug in #forum-feedback, you might have gotten a reply similar to this:

So, how exactly do you tell whether it’s a bug report for Discourse, or a bug for #forum-feedback?

When our forum creates a feature specifically for our forum, they implement it via plugins. These plugins are classified as “unofficial” plugins since they did not ship with Discourse’s software. Luckily, vanilla Discourse has a feature called “Safe Mode” that allows any user to browse the forum in a mostly clean state.

Accessing our forum’s safe-mode is as simple as going to devforum.roblox.com/safe-mode
(Do not click on this link, copy it and open it in a new tab, otherwise you will get a “this page is private” error)

On this page, you will be presented with 3 options at the time of writiing this post:
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Disable Current Theme

This will remove your current theme that you have set in your account’s preferences and will temporarily enable the default vanilla theme. This will allow you to check for CSS errors.

Disable Unofficial Plugins

This will disable plugins that do not ship with vanilla Discourse. This allows you to check for bugs with certain features on the forum. An example of unofficial plugins would be the link to Roblox profiles in avatar cards:

Safe Mode Disabled:

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Safe Mode Enabled:

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Disable All Plugins

This will simply disable all of currently active plugins on the forum. I’m not really sure what the official plugins are, so I can’t provide any examples for that.


Just a side note, the developer relations team and other teams concerned have the ability to modify vanilla features, so safe-mode won’t be completely accurate if they have or will modify vanilla features internally.

9 Likes

It can sometimes be confusing whether a bug or suggestion should be posted on discourse meta or in #forum-feedback. I just want to clarify that you won’t be punished for it as long as it isn’t spam and hasn’t been reported/suggested before.

If you aren’t sure where to post a bug/feature, post it here. If it belongs on discourse meta someone will inform you.

I’m pretty sure this includes all the plugins listed here: Plugin directory | Discourse - Civilized Discussion. The most obvious example is the solved plugin for topic solutions.

3 Likes

Repeating the “request this on the discourse meta” mantra doesn’t seem worth it. How about this. If the feature seems useful to other discourse-using platforms, request it on the meta. Otherwise, if only useful to this devforum, then go ahead request here