I meant something like a small activity restriction to let the newer users get to know the forum before instantly asking questions and posting feature requests there.
Looking at my flags, I flag around 3 topics a day, how many topics would we all flag daily in total (only considering accepted flags)? I think it’s more than desirable.
In comparison with other categories, Development Discussions is the most ambiguous and vague category. My flag results are really random, one time they get accepted and nothing happens on the topic, and the other time the flag gets accepted and the topic is hidden.
Right now, it’s better to avoid topics outside Roblox development, it’s really on the edge and you might or might not get flagged.
I don’t think they should lock it, in my opinion the rules should be enforced more there. I have seen many posts that aren’t about development discussion at all (90% of the time), like for example “What do you think of voice chat” this clearly doesn’t belong on development discussion but at a different category.
I completely muted Development Discussion because its plain annoying to see or read some of the stuff there.
This is the kind of thing I dont like.
People that think the forum is 100% professional and cant be used for anything else.
This is a forum, You cant really expect anything better from the Roblox community. We already lost #collaboration in October, We dont need to lose another category.
Flag exists. If a post is REALLY off topic, flag it.
I have seen poeple complain about “What’s the worst thing that has happened to you while developing?” or “Roblox moderation is awful” or something, it “doesn’t belong in this category and not anywhere on the forum”, people commenting on those type of things on them and instantly flagging it. I got that and it’s really annoying from people really in th end mini modding because they think everybody needs to act like this is LinkedIn or something.
This is the Developer Forums, not the Roblox Forums 2.0. It is supposed to be a professional environment and it isn’t supposed to be used for anything else besides discussing development topics.
People don’t flag posts because “Everybody needs to act like they do in LinkedIn”, they flag them because they believe they genuinely break the rules. In the end, all posts are closed by mods, not users, so I don’t get why people flagging your posts pisses you off so much. If all your posts keep getting locked, then… stop breaking rules? The feedback messages exist for a reason, to let you know what you should change next time you post. Or, if you think a mod action is unjustified, you can discuss it with the moderators privately.
I’m sorry for bumping, but I feel like this really needs to be addressed.
Not only have discussion topics been mainly composed of vandalism and unrelated/misused category for around 20 months, but replies have been hurting the integrity of serious topics.
An example would be Roblox moderation needs to be addressed, where the OP talked about the need of transparency with moderation notes and actions. Almost to a fault, everyone divulged into unrelated bickering over random moderation notices to the point where the post, despite the good intentions of the OP, was locked and unlisted. The actions were reverted, but the situation hasn’t improved.
Restriction mobility or otherwise, the gravity of this issue is too huge to not take action. I’m a member and I’d rather forfeit my freedom of speech than to let such an embarrassing problem persist. This needs to end now.
Locking #development-discussion will not improve the quality of posts on the forum. That’s like saying, my car broke down in the middle of a road, so I will throw it away instead of fixing it. It should be a community effort to improve the quality of posts instead of complaining about it in public.
Here are some solutions I thought of when you see another bad post:
Message the OP directly with constructive feedback.
Explain why it’s wrong.
In my experience trying out my proposed solutions, there were a few people who did not listen or read, then they replied with weak one-sided remarks saying, “if you think that then flag it”, completely ignoring what could have been possibly a valuable feedback to them, and it felt like I was talking to a wall but that’s besides the point. If this happens to you, it shouldn’t stop you for wanting to improve the quality of the forum, which is the goal here, right?
Locking #development-discussion will not improve the quality of posts. It takes a community effort to improve the forum ourselves.
I dont agree with a single one of them. It has real uses.
Maybe when Roblox finds a way to bring back regular promos,they can introduct the “new member” system again. New members will not be able to post in #development-discussion, and members can.
For anybody who’s new and has no idea how Discourse works:
“visitor”: cannot post
“new member”: can post but restricted a bit
“member”: no restrictions
“regular”: access to lounge, feature requests, bug reports, and release notes
“leader”: can moderate and post anywhere
I agree with the person above me that it’s not going to fix it. Deleting the category will just lead people to support topics, which are arguably worse because you spend time trying to help people, and they just say “ajhahhahahah troled~!!!1!”
I feel like I’m going to get a lot of hate for requesting the new member to come back, but I feel like if that many people complain about this then it’s a good solution.
And also, how does this even count as a feature? It’s just a request, and I dont think Roblox will listen to just a few people trying to get a whole category deleted because they dont feel like wanting to see some troll posts…
EDIT: Turns out I already replied to this, I forgot I did, this reply has some better reasoning against why this shouldn’t happen
I do agree with locking #development-discussion or at least strongly changing how it’s managed.
The category has lost almost all use, Roblox needs to strongly reconsider it approach and developers who primarily interact with that category to strongly reconsider their approach to the forums. Practically all users should already have the category muted.
DevRel should be focused on redefining how users use this platform, not a social forum but forum of resource from other developers old and new. So there should be design decisions which enforce this mindset.
#development-discussion no longer fits that mindset in the way it’s done. I do think outside of the initial window of closure, the quality of posts will improve. #help-and-feedback in general provides a great mould for the kind of posts within the category which #development-discussion suffers from today.
A healthy hold on those posts which go outside of the rules should deal with the matter. Developers should be developing, not spending 8 hours a day flagging posts which violate the rules. If you’re spending that kind of time on the daily, you also need to strongly re-evaluate what you’re putting in vs putting out.
Your use of the forums should be pretty simple, read/make some new bug reports and feature requests based on your development needs, read the latest announcements and patch notes, search#help-and-feedback and #resources to resolve your developer problems, if you got some spare time, answer a few help posts, close tab.
You’ll find that many categories like #lounge, #development-discussion, #bulletin-board, all really don’t fit that view, and so I think should be severely muted if not already to meet that goal. It’s about your mindset to the forums.
I’m a staunch supporter of opening restricted categories to members (albeit with some limitations) and still I stand in support of locking development discussion. I derive such little value from that category that even as an average member, even if I lose access to yet another precious category, I don’t care and am willing to take that pill if it means an eyesore of the forum will be cleaned up for good.
It wouldn’t be a bitter pill to swallow; I’d consider it closer to some flavors of candy: somewhat sour but primarily sweet.
What about the (very likely) possibility of other categories being degraded? The solution has already been proposed above: intermediate trust levels! I actually proposed this on another thread:
Please, Roblox. If you read this, I plead with you to lock Development Discussion or at least start considering some serious changes. Little discussion happens there and most posts are useless, irrelevant to me, or just downright spam. I rest my case.
Locking that category literality solves nothing about the problem, the only thing that would change is that everyone would have one less category to talk in.
Off-Topic posts would just spread towards other categories and make the DevForum worse, so it might be better to just leave it be honestly.
The only way this problem can be solved is if trust levels were updated and maintained, but Roblox hasn’t done that in like 2 years and it’s unlikely we’ll ever see anything like that anytime soon.
That’s actually a really great idea, but knowing Roblox…they’re probably too lazy to add in something like that to the DevForum.
They’re basically Valve when to comes to DevForum updates nowadays, which is pretty sad honestly.
So… why hasn’t this happened yet? This issue is only getting worse. At the very least, creating discussion posts should be locked to regular, and replies can be made by everyone. This would make DET’s life so much easier.
