It’s not only me that has realized that the DevForum nowadays is extremely hard to navigate without coming across spammed posts on #development-discussion . And, to my opinion, this needs to be changed.
It has been pointed out countless times that #development-discussion is not a place to talk about events or something outside of Roblox development, as the name itself suggests. But, I’m not gonna rumble around that since there’s already a topic on that.
Members of the DevForum have proved many times that they are not capable of handling a more “open” topic. Common are the cases where you see extremely off-topic threads or topics that have already been discussed.
Even though, I am just a member of the DevForum, I wouldn’t really bother if the #development-discussion topic got locked for Regulars+. If not, try out an alternative solution:
Improve the Tutorial method. Right now, the only guidance for DevForum members is @discobot which is a bot offered by the forum company, used ONLY to teach members how to use the DevForum features such as flagging, editing posts, etc. However, many of them don’t really read the rules before posting in each topic, making the DevForum an unbearable place to navigate on. I suggest making an interactive tutorial, where you can LEARN how to use each topic and think wisely before posting. That way, we can limit off-topic threads to the minimum and keep the DevForum a spam-free place!
Locking the discussion category won’t happen. Roblox already said that they want the forum to be accessible to everyone without any additional requirements. This might be controversial, but #development-discussion in my opinion (!) is one of the most crucial categories. It is (or was) supposed to be a place where the community can discuss things regarding development, perhaps get others’ opinions on things. Right now, people are just sugarcoating other stuff as discussion. ‘Why oh no my game description filtered’ or ‘omg help i got hacked help needed’. I’ve even seen some very questionably phrased discussion topics. ‘Thoughts on water lagging bug’ sort of thing. Yes, really.
I’d say that enforcing the rules would be a better solution for both sides. Members vary from new people who joined today and people who’ve been here for a long time and are just “waiting” for a new level-up system. Members already complain enough about not having enough access and integrity. Closing down a category they often visit would make this 100 times worse. I know they use it incorrectly, but there should be a place where they are directly told that this behavior is not tolerated.
Imagine the confusion if it just got randomly shut down. Not fun.
Instead I think if you make spam/wrong category topics in development discussion it should ban you for creating topics in Development Discussion for lets say a week. Then after a week if they do it again they will get banned forever from creating topics in Development Discussion. But still they would be able to reply in Development Discussion.
Or they can;
Make a new regular system and make it so that only regulars can create topics in Development Discussion. But still members should be able to reply.
And also they should make it so that members can create topics in feature requests, bug reports and platform feedback.
Roblox are already intending on phasing out the gaps between trust levels. Adding an additional barrier between TL1 and TL2 works against this goal so this is more than likely never going to happen.
Additionally, this change would cause unnecessary conflict and disappointment from people who create meaningful discussions in that category because, arguably, they should not be penalised for the mistakes of newer users.
As for an improved tutorial, Roblox are seemingly aware of the persistent issues on the forum, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this is already being considered internally. Better introductory methods sound at least somewhat effective in concept, but ultimately it’s up to Roblox to find us the best solution to these issues.
I semi-agree and disagree. Yes, people spam the same topics over and over again, and put things that belong in #help-and-feedback:game-design-support in #development-discussion because they see so many of them. But then, because it’s full of spam and literally the same topic themes all the time, there really isn’t a point of switching the category to Regular+. In addition, we do have a #lounge and having #development-discussion regular only would be like opening another #lounge, except more people are able to see it.
That’s harder said than done, you cant exactly “whitelist” and “blacklist” people from posting on the forums without making them rank up first, because there are just too many people. I understand it’s a bit unfair that the rankings aren’t online, and it’s got to a point where it’s been a year without and further updates.
I agree with some of the points here, however, simply if we look at #development-discussion there are several Members who are already old enough in the Developer Forum to know about the rules itself, and they still tend to post trash topics in #development-discussion, not just that, I’m actually quite humored by the fact that some of this same people who trash #development-discussion also complain in rant threads to close down #development-discussion.
In the other side though, if they keep implementing this for Regulars, even though for some Regulars it may appear good because of the fact that Regulars make “good topics” and abide by the rules, however, even if we lessen the trash topics in #development-discussion by making it only Regular, there’s a higher chance this is indirectly inflaming elitism for Regulars and Members would tend to see Regulars as “elites” and would probably cause controversy whether it’s fair for them or not to post in #development-discussion considering there are also few Members who are willing to post contributive posts there.
In general, I agree with the fact that they should not make it “Regular-only”, and I’ll be honest I’m becoming a bit disappointed that these rant topics to close #development-discussion or to lock it for Regulars is in no way helpful, and I really agree with your statement…
I wouldn’t go as far as reverting back to manual, but it needs to be fixed in one way or another. Even just a temporary solution would do. But to be completely honest, I don’t want a rushed system, I’d like a system that’d be an improvement over PA. It also depends if they’re even working on it. They might rework everything from the ground up, meaning they would change up the roles, categories, all of that. It’s about time they fix the cluttering problem and introduce an alternative to Post Approval.
Yea, I would like that. I also think that the punishment for posting off-topic things is harhser so when users get temp banned for stuff(or perm banned) it hurts more and they can’t go/make a alt account.
There are some cases where yes, I think users should just be given feedback(newer members, 1st time rulebreakers, people who only break the rules once in a while) but a lot of the people who I see post off-topic things/spam things are the same group of people in which I think that the punishment should be made harsher, instead of locking it to regular only.
Yes, I am very grateful that it was taken care of. Depressing though how long it lasted, but moderators have lives. Hopefully something will be done to mitigate this. I wouldn’t mind the introduction of a role for members who are less than 3-6 months old on the forum, perhaps something like “Rookie”? They shouldn’t be able to create posts, or should be blocked form “development discussion” due to the fact that it is vague enough to make people think low effort posts are allowed and are usually offtopic or repeats.
can dev discussion just go back to being regulars only and just have a regular system back in place lol. i dont know which staff members thought changing this was better but you can clearly see the decrease in interesting devforum posts, and most of them are just repeated topics or stuff thats literally a question for their own gain. e.g “should i do this or do that” ??? how is that even related to dev discussion and
i mean its being spammed because the forum admins have not done anything for a fairly long time. I would really like to see a staff member try to argue a valid reason for this change that brings good positives. it literally takes less than a day to get access to the devforum so if anyone wanted to they could easily just create an account and post in dev discussion which is expected to have original topics featuring interesting/important stuff. not stuff like this… (took less than 30 minutes to gather these)
last one can be argued to be a ok post but a little bit of a research can easily solve this answer
personally if i owned this forum i would bring back regular superiority however i would make becoming a regular less dependent on your activity and more dependent on your contributions as not everyone has the time of day to spend 2 hours scrolling through the devforum. contributions can be scaled as interaction/problem solving (solutions) and resources
anyway at the end of the day roblox has done nothing so this probably isn’t going to change no matter how much we cry
I feel like this might go back to Regular+ when the new regular system finally comes out. I do agree that it should be based on contributions and not just reading
I forgot where the post was, but when the closed PA (which basically closed the regular promotion system) they said they were working on a new system for promoting to regular
