Make the DevForum a nicer place

Are these examples exclusively coming from #collaboration? I don’t see things as extreme as what you’re describing anywhere else.

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I agree, and as I replied to @Operatik,

This is what causes issues in the community, mainly, if not solely these kinds of people.

Try checking out #help-and-feedback, there’s a good handful of it in there. Mainly in posts from new developers who just want to get better.

Yes, but it’s not just there which replies are a bit mean.

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If you have more examples of posts you think are excessively mean in various categories, feel free to DM a list to Community Sage so we can take a look.

Of course, make sure to flag replies you see that break the rules.

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Hello, Cinema_Sin how are you? About this post I must say that I agree with you 100% but not everyone will agree there is all way’s going to be that one person who just wants to mean who just wants to play the bad guy. Well, some people might know more then the another person not everyone can be right I don’t think people just go to another people’s post and tell them there wrong just to put them down I think people just want to help them but it does not come out right.

Oh before I forget.

Yay am happy for you and your Grandma.

Well, some think I don’t think they wanted to say it another way and not trying to rude about it they try to help people as much as they but, I did see this for one of my topic’s I made a long time ago.

I don’t think he was trying to be rude but was trying to help some people can’t really say what they really mean. What am trying to say is that some people are not trying to be mean just came out the wrong way, Not to say that some people just want to be rude there is all way’s going to be some people like that no matter where you go. But, if you try our best Dev forums can be a nicer.

Thanks for reading, Have a great day, :smile:

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@yh8
(I don’t mean for my tone to sound attacking if it comes across like that)
I don’t think recommending a tool is spam. Maybe it’s not helping in the sense that it doesn’t critique something specific but it’s still relevant to the topic and is important to have. If it’s excessively long or there are a lot of posts already, it’s definitely spam, but if I’m looking at a tool I’d like to know if people find it helpful and why so. A like doesn’t say that much about the work and worded feedback is much more encouraging to the developer. It’s not hurting anyone that 2cm of their screen is taken up and it’s annoying to me that I’m not allowed to give support for a tool that I think is done well.

Oh no, of course, I totally understand that, but I think they flag it due to the lack of detail or information in the reply, so it gets flagged as spam.

If they gave a little more insight on why the tool might be useful then they probably wouldn’t be flagging it.
I get what you mean though, that is really annoying that they’ll flag the helpful-like messages because of their vagueness but not the genuine spam, LOL.

Honestly the problem is just new members :man_shrugging:. Forums are not really a great place when unintelligent 13 year olds can post. Hence why most of the OG members have left. The public announcements have become the only true place for useful information and any replies to the post are complete garbage anyways with all new members replying with “great feature” etc which is complete spam compared to what the replies were years ago.

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I guess to add onto my previous post, what do you think could be done about this? Who should be in charge of deciding what is and isn’t suitable behavior? Especially since what is considered “not nice” varies depending on the person. Should you be able to flag someone for making you feel “unwelcomed”? I guess im just curious as to the steps you would take to make it more of a welcoming place.

You cannot blame all new members for this, I mean fair enough. I did list a bad reason off a new member but you cannot blame them for all of it.

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(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 1 hour unless flagged)

@wravager It is true a lot of the replies have been from new members but I think we should at least see it from their point of view: They are new to the forum, excited with their new status, ready to help people and learn from their superiors. At least, this is my opinion (being a new member and all). Every member makes mistakes (new and old) but we learn from them. That’s a part of life, agreed?

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100% Agreed,
The DevForums have turned into a place of privilege, partly by design as a staff member mentioned as a tactic at a talk about growing development engagement. Where those worthy with enough skill can talk and share their knowledge instead of a place where developers can talk openly with the development community about their ideas, theories, questions and/or concerns.

Without trying to DevForums have turned into a more toxic place, not in the classic sense either and while I’ve personally never been targeted, I don’t feel comfortable here. It’s turned into more of a place for judging others, trying to be the smartest guy (or woman) in the room and where nice or supportive comments are pushed aside or removed to encourage more constructive feedback or ideas.

Yes, this should be a place for learning, understanding and sharing ideas but this is currently no place where at least I feel comfortable asking and sometimes answering questions and contributing as this platform has a vile undercurrent of rank climbing, putting others down and being the smartest in the room.

I don’t believe at all that Roblox or The great community we have here have done this intentionally, my personal belief is the current ranking system and guidelines cause unexpected side effects leading to a more censored and “Judgy” community.

When I look at the perfect or well bread development community I look at such places such as https://dev.to. Which I always felt welcomed, my ideas were discussed and if wrong kindly explained.

Now don’t get me wrong Roblox has done a terrific job at growing developers in-house (us, hello!) and then as we grow up and want to develop games, learning coding and/or design at school then college to go on to work on top games on the platform. This they’ve done with great skill but they could definitely improve and rework some of the DevForum specifically.

My honest suggestion if any of the truly amazing Roblox Staff are reading is to look at how https://dev.to encourages their community to grow, obviously a lot of the people over there are older and more mature than you’ll typically find here so the way to encourage productive conversation has to be tackled slightly differently but you’d be surprised when Teenagers and young adults alike are given access to a professional platform to suggest their ideas and skills, just how well they respond.

If you’d like me to expand on how I think you or they can help improve this platform please don’t hesitate to drop a comment, thank you for taking the time to read and I hope this doesn’t come across as a rant. That’d be the last thing I’d want.

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If the Developer Forum permits these kind of non-constructive or non-contributing replies there will be a lot more replies of this nature, not just yours. It would lower the overall quality of replies on the Developer Forum, not just take up 2cm.

Your reply’s flag wasn’t a one off or personal attack, it was just part of the goal to have a high quality of discussion on the Developer Forum where each reply contributes something new to the discussion.

Hence why I said excessive replies should be considered spam. With a concise first reply anything that people disagree with can be put in a direct reply of that reply which is unlikely. If they agree with everything in the reply a like makes sense because it’s specifically liking the feedback given which is more specific.

I’ve never had issues with people being rude on here, and haven’t seen it happen to anyone else much at all.

That being said, I do think that ever since the forum switched to automatic approval, the quality of posts has absolutely tanked. Back when I first discovered this place a long time ago, it was super professional and everyone knew what they were talking about. Now it’s different. I literally don’t even bother making scripting support posts or anything like that, because about a million useless and spammy replies just roll in, presumably just to bump up stats like a couple others have mentioned here.

(ironically, the system I’m criticising is the same system that promoted me to Member!)

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All they want to do is get their read time up and their stats. I’ve been thinking over this for the past few months and totally agree with what you are saying. I believe that there should be a better process of letting people into the devforum besides literally just staring at a topic and scrolling down the topic, then a new topic over and over again. Also a lot of what I see is just kids posting opinions that aren’t theirs on feedback posts, all they say is “Wow wonderful model looks great!” and then a bunch of thumbs up emojis. They are posting this to get likes and it can be frustrating when a new modeler gets these fake feedbacks and believe that their model is good, but when looked at with the eyes of a pro, is actually very basic and lacking detail. People need feedback but not everyone is willing to give their actual opinion because they either want likes or are scared of posting their opinion.I remember a post when I gave someone constructive criticism and people told me I was being “mean”. Kids are too sensitive and aren’t fit to converse with professionals and even intermediates seeking help on builds or scripts. I have only been a new member on the dev forum for only about maybe 4 months or so, but I can only imagine how much better it would be before Roblox added the bot to accept members. The problem is definitely new members. There needs to be a change of the process of getting accepted into the dev Forum.

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as a new member i can confirm that the devforum is in fact somewhat unwelcoming to basically anyone who uses slightly incorrect grammar or some other mistake that probably wouldnt garner any negative attention literally anywhere else. in my personal experience on the forum, ive been unable to post on several occasions, and although, admittedly, the posts werent following every single rule, in my opinion there is no reason that people should be prevented from saying things like, “this reminds me of blah blah blah it looks really great nice work.” it just seems unnecessary to censor everything that isnt 110% conducive to development. maybe its just because im naive and i dont care about rules that i personally think are a little extra, but seeing as others apparently share the same consent, i definitely think there should be some changes made.

[EDIT] thats not to say, however, that there isnt any positivity here, because there absolutely is

[ANOTHER EDIT] for clarification im referring to the discussion and cool creations threads

Also a lot of what I see is just kids posting opinions that aren’t theirs on feedback posts, all they say is “Wow wonderful model looks great!” and then a bunch of thumbs up emojis.

This is also quite prevalent in the support categories where people give low effort “help” to the OP. I just responded to a support post where the OP asked a simple question “How do i accomplish an effect like this?”. I explained what the OP had to do and then gave him an example. What were the posts before that? 2 low effort responses with believe it or not incorrect information that didn’t answer the OP’s question or even lead them in the right direction. It was obvious the two people that replied 1.) Didn’t know what they were talking about and guessed and 2.) Were “hoping to help” the OP to get some sort of upvote when in reality the response they gave was irrelevant to the post. I ended up flagging both posts as its just bloating the forum with false information.

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