As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard to find posts that have effort put into them and posts that belong to #development-discussion. There’s little to no posts that are meaningful and contribute to development in #development-discussion. Every single time I log into the devforum, the Development discussion is FILLED with spam posts like the following:
Yep
Game Design Help
Development discussions category is occupied mostly by these specific posts. Posts that belong in #help-and-feedback:game-design-support.
"Is this worth buying? How much should I spend on this?" Posts
I often see these posts in the category even when its strictly stated in devforum rules itself. People asking if they should spend money on Y. People asking the amount of money they should spend on X.
"URGENT HELP" Posts
These posts are also spam, since they are most likely asking you to help them script or build or help them in other stuff, which should go in #help-and-feedback
Website Update Discussion Posts
You often may seem to not agree with certain website updates that roblox makes. Even the most minor, non development related updates are being portrayed as evil updates and being discussed upon in the category strictly for DEVELOPMENT Discussion.
"I GOT SCAMMED!" Posts
People who post these topics generally panic about them losing something important, generally during commisions. And try getting “help” for something thats irreversible or should be dealt with by Roblox Support System.
“What is your … X?” Posts
These posts generally ask questions related to how you did something, when you started to do something, or what is your worst/favourite experience/part of X. These posts generally are unnecessary and are mostly just there to get likes and attention of people.
Other Troll and Spam Posts
Posts that are intentionally made to troll. Spam such as advertisements (direct or indirect), joke posts. etc.
These are the most prevalent topics created in #development-discussion. Literally, only these posts are being created these days in that category, and are constantly being bumped by either people trying to tell them to post the topic in the correct category or people replying to them in serious regards. These topics hide valuable topics in the category and is a serious problem. At this point the category feels like a joke to many. Theres lack of valuable topics and ACTUAL discussions in the category. The rules should be made clearer for the category as well as its description (about section: https://devforum.roblox.com/t/about-the-development-discussion-category/14)
Some solutions that will help fix this problem are:
No. I disagree with making Development Discussion a Regular Only Category.
Yes, i am serious. It may seem like I sound a bit too sympathetic. But its true, making the category regular only propose many problems. Since theres no current way of getting a promotion from Member → Regular. Theres no point in doing so, unless and until there is a way. This will spark toxicity, people leaving the forum and people who would like to host actual discussions that are members, being left in the shadows.
Better Moderation
These spam topics are really out there, even after getting flagged, and take several hours and even days to be hidden.
Separate Rules for The category
The rules of the category are not clear, they should be stated in the main Devforum rules topics to actually educate people on how to use the category properly
Specify Topic that belong to the category and topics that don’t a bit more in detail (In https://devforum.roblox.com/t/about-the-development-discussion-category/14)
Specify topics that fit the category and topics that don’t a bit more in detail, to actually give new members an idea on what to post in the category.
Add Trivias to @discobot’s interactive user tutorial.
Add a trivia based step in the bot’s tutorial that educates users on what to post and in which category. This is going to prevent a LOT of clutter on the forum.
These are just a few solutions that I can think of the top of my head. A lot of these topics are made to address these issues in #forum-feedback:forum-features but are rarely looked into. Theres a recent spike in the amount of posts in the dev discussion category (from around 40 → 70+). And approx. 60% of the topics are spam.
If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would improve my experience using the forum because we’ll have valuable and meaningful discussions in appropriate categories.
(sorry if I sounded a bit aggressive and frustrated.)