Lock Thread Creation for Development Discussion to Regular+

Forum Help Forum Features
#1

As a Roblox developer, it irks me that the category Development Discussion is no longer useful to the forum as it has for over a year now been commonly used to post off-topic, inappropriate or otherwise unnecessary threads that deface the platform. This has been an issue ever since thread creation for the category opened up to all Members, and it will continue to be a problem until proper restrictions are put in place for the said category.

I do believe in the utilitarian purpose of Development Discussion and even have utilized it in the past, however I still firmly believe that thread creation should be locked to Regular+, while still allowing Members to reply to correct the issues that persist.

If Roblox were to address this issue, I would hope to one day see healthy discussions on the forum again instead of taking the time to go through and flag 5 or 6 threads for being off-topic, or at worse malicious.

14 Likes
#2

I’m against this, the forum should not become locked down more than it currently is. Regular unfortunately creates this ‘elite class’ system that people look at as a hierarchy (even though regular was never intended to be that way). Restricting the category to regular makes anyone not currently a regular unable to start a discussion (which may I remind everyone that regular is unobtainable unless you’re hand-selected, which isn’t a common thing unless you have a big game).

Discussions are the central back-bone of most forums, you could argue that this is not the case for the DevForum as this community is mainly support focussed but I still find myself sifting through #development-discussion on a daily basis, removing such a central part of forum is unacceptable, even if it’s existance is creating moderation strain. There are so many other ways this can be solved without locking this category to regular.

17 Likes
#3

Curiously, this is coming someone who’s never created a topic in Development Discussion before.

You’re view that there’s this closed privileged upper-class is misguided. If people are being promoted for creating frontpage-worthy games then it would be logical to conclude that they can create healthy discussions about development as well, and it’s not like Members are getting a huge disadvantage without Development Discussion as with other categories such as Bug Reports and Feature Requests since it’s more of a luxury category than a utilitarian one.

Your argument that discussions are vital to the forum is also flimsy since you’ve equivalently admitted that its existence is negatively affecting the forum so much so as to warrant major strain on the moderation staff.

Such as?

1 Like
#4

I certainly believe that we do need to have #development-discussion around for all of the people in Developer Forums, as it is good to debate issues/share thoughts upon features that ROBLOX created for developers over the years…

There are little categories (alongside its subsections) that get attacked by trollers (as in breaking DevForum’s official global rules) such as #bulletin-board, and #help-and-feedback, where it gets to the point that it requires us to report at DevRel. From my perspective, I don’t see that much of Development Discussion being too much affected, yet not necessarily and strictly needs to be only for Regular+. An alternative that may help us and improve everyone’s view in regards to debating development topics underneath #development-discussion is having an analysis before being fully published (just like sort of Roblox Talent Hub)!

#5

I never stated that those who are getting promoted are unable to make healthy discussions, my point is that those who are not getting promoted can also make good discussion topics too.

Development discussion topics are actually a good way of off-putting your opinion on something. While it definently isn’t the most important category, it also doesn’t mean it should be necessarily locked.

I never said major strain? I said ‘some strain’, which admittingly does sound quite harsh, the point I was trying to get across is that in my opinion the presence of healthy discussions there outweight the effort it takes to moderate the off-topic posts.

There are hundreds of different ways this could be handled, such as taking further moderation action on people who maliciously abuse the category.

While I may not have used the category, it does not mean I am happy to see it be removed from the accessible category list.

7 Likes
#6

The purpose of #development-discussion is for all developers to be able to share their views on topics related to development on Roblox. It would be quite a useless feature if only the top 0.1% could use it. You’re a member yourself, why would you want to lose permission to create topics? It just doesn’t make sense. There hasn’t been a way to become a regular on the DevForum in years(unless you’re a top developer and Roblox favors you).

4 Likes
#7

I have mixed opinions on this suggestion.

On one hand, although development discussion should be around for proper debates about development topics, it’s clear that no one has been using the category that way. I have not seen the state of development discussion right now, since I removed it from my feedback a while back to remove the temptation to reply to them. But from what I’ve heard, it’s only gotten worse.

On the other hand, Regulars can be just as bad as the members. Not as much Regulars that are known to break the rules exist, but this makes sense because promotions have been paused for over 2 years now.

In short, nearly no one uses development discussion for it’s real purpose. The real question is if it’s still worth keeping around.

I agree. (though the forum has been slowly getting unlocked with an example being replies to Feature Requests being unlocked for members.)

Hooksmith mentioned on how DevRel is now focusing on improving the Forum, so we should be expecting more favorable improvements over time.

One great addition so far has been the creation of the #help-and-feedback:platform-usage-support subcategory which has removed a significant amount of off-topic posts in other categories. Truly wonderful that the new subcategory was created.

I have honestly have not seen categories like #help-and-feedback and #bulletin-board get trolled. If anything, #help-and-feedback and #bulletin-board are targeted the least.

You’re looking at the wrong perspective. The point isn’t to focus on the fact that the members would lose access to post in another category. The point is about finding ways to fix development discussion by any means, because it’s literally the most problematic category in the DevForum right now.

TL;DR

I will not deny that development discussion can be used for good debates, but we should be asking why we should keep development discussion at all, since all it’s been doing is ruining the DevForum lately from my perspective.

2 Likes
#8

Just for reference: promotions have continued and are now invite-only. I’ve recently been promoted to Regular.

Level up to Regular is currently available by invitation only.
[source]

Regarding the topic, I don’t think we should limit discussions to an invite-only group. Although Regulars are more likely to know the rules, members will just find other categories to post their stuff in. We would likely get more noise in #help-and-feedback.

4 Likes
#9

Thanks for letting me know about that. I had no idea about that rule change.

#10

Roblox has confirmed that they plan to address the issue regarding feature request accessibility in the next few quarters, and believes that anyone who uses a product or feature should be able to give feedback on it. If the trust system does get improved, strictness could eventually be increased on the types of Development Discussion posts since there would be other places to post feedback.

1 Like
#11

I do agree with the sentiment that the forum needs more healthy discussions but I unforunately don’t believe that it’ll ever happen here. A lot more users here don’t take the DevForum as a professional platform here anymore. Heck, some go to the lengths of calling us “Linkedinners” for the fact that we’re “ruining their fun of :poop:posting”. Some of those people are also regulars too.

Besides, if #development-discussion got shut down for normal users, it’d spill into other categories.

4 Likes
#12

Roblox staff has pointed out many, many times that the DevForum will not become any more locked down than it is, including DD.

4 Likes
#13

As much as I want it to stay open, this would probably be for the better.
It would finally force kids to look for the proper place to make their (usually low quality and easily googled) question post instead of saying “I didn’t bother finding the right place for more than 5 seconds so I dumped it in the first spot I saw”

#14

I heavily disagree. I propose a different solution.

Make it so mods need to approve dev-discussion posts, comments don’t need to be reviewed, but just the posts, which aren’t made too often, so they can be screened for quality.

#15

There used to be a system like this. Turned very unscalable very quickly.

2 Likes
#16

Adding on to this, I’m wondering if Help and Feedback should be moved above Development Discussion since I’ve seen quite a few DD posts that would belong in Help and Feedback.

1 Like
#17

That could be rectified if people would read the rules wherever they’re posting in. It’s better that we encourage that anyways because it means the content of their posts will also be higher quality, making it easier to interact with and help them.

1 Like
#18

The problem here is if people read the rules this thread wouldn’t exist in the first place

2 Likes
#19

Just throwing my two cents into the equation here:
With all due respect, this idea wouldn’t lead to a good outcome.

Yeah, nobody likes a 14 year old troller who thinks they’re the best with nothing better to do, but locking out them also means locking out aspiring developers. This is a double edged sword, where the bad sees a fork and the good sees a chainsaw (it’s not really a sword then but I digress).

Simply, I think it would be better to not restrict access to it, as it’s one of the central hubs for developers to chat and discuss, and restricting that also means restricting people who genuinely want to use the place for a good cause.

TL;DR, Respect the effort to fix a bad issue, but this is not how it should be done.

3 Likes
#20

The real danger with restricting ANY part of a forum to a certain group of people is you tend to create an echo chamber effect. The things that matter to regulars may not be the things that others would want to discuss. It’s happened before on twitter, instagram, facebook, etc and it is never pretty.

Even at the moment we have a “haves” and “have nots” situation with the regulars being invitation only, even now a lot of developers who have good, solid questions, bug reports, etc will sit there and think “How do I post this question on the forum?” and a lot of the time they will give up because not being a regular means you are essentially locked out of whole areas of the forum. Locking them out of another part of it will not help the forum, it will simply alienate more developers.

Just as an example, I have raised issues with Roblox bug reporting regarding the new app breaking every single accessability area you can test but I can’t bring it up in the Bug reporting category because I’m not deamed important enough to do it, that is not how it should work for a billion dollar company. If I raise a support ticket I am told " We stuck you in the test group for the app, and you have to just not use roblox if you have a disability".

Imagine if that attitude was to spread to the forum areas that your average developers can post in…

2 Likes