Make the DevForum a nicer place

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#21

IMO if someone is straight up calling something someone put effort into “awful” without giving any constructive criticism then that post is about as useless as the sand under my shoe. What is “awful” to them might not be “awful” to you.

I can see how a lot of those posts can come off condescending, in fact most of them look like they were typed up by a relatively edgy person just by how the responses read. So yes, people like this can make the forum somewhat irritable.

I guess that goes back to my first post in the thread stating how users often take things personally. If you are confident in your processes then by all means don’t change. You just need to ignore it and focus on the feedback that matters to you.

I think the language barrier can play a big role in a lot of condescending responses. I’ve come across people saying something like “This looks extra bad, i don’t like it. Look for something better.” When in reality they don’t know english well and thats just how they articulated the sentence.

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#22

FYI, none of the posts were directed to me. In fact, they were all directed to new members.

#23

Yeah, i had a feeling i was just trying to generalize it a bit since i wasn’t too sure but i understand the points you made for sure.

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#24

The community, from what I’ve seen so far - regardless of me being a New Member, it’s been a nice community.

Yes, and most users do help and give advice/criticism. There are always going to be users/members that will be rude and see themselves are “superior” because of their experience, but there isn’t much we can do about that. At the end of the day any advice given regardless of the context or tone of it - it will be useful. Critical and ‘harsh’ pointers are what makes a person a better developer.

This also, I think I can speak for everyone on this one - everyone wants to get their stats up in this community, who wouldn’t? That being said, I don’t see many people randomly post for the heck of it just to get their stats up… I see a lot of people give informative and critical feedback.
If anyone genuinely has said anything potentially offensive, have you read the OP to try and see if the OP’er asked for that type of feedback?

I’ve seen A LOT of new users post here with their work (a lot of the users being new to the building/modeling community) and I don’t think I’ve seen anyone say this directly to someone in the forums at all… They usually just tell them, “Hey, maybe this way will work better…” or “What if you try this or that…” while still complimenting their buildings, scripts, ui’s, etc,.

@Hexcede

This was probably flagged because it seems almost discrete? I think posts that don’t elaborate more tend to get taken down, because of it’s “lack of detail”. Which could be interpreted as spam if you really take a look at some threads throughout the site. Quoting from what Cinema said, some people just want to get their stats up, so they’ll likely just post a really bland message just to get the recognition of “Hey devforum! I reply frequently, on multiple posts! Rank me up now!?”
Some people just want the status.

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#25

Well there are users doing that solely because they want to be superior, your reply was a good read though.

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#26

I think this is the only real issue I see within the community.

People are so worried about their rank/status or what title they have so they can feel superior or better over others. As you said, it’s just vanity, you don’t get anything from it - and I wouldn’t even say it’s “experience” some people genuinely just spam to get the title… This is likely where the original topic stemmed from are these kinds of people.

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#27

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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#28

I agree, and as I replied to @Operatik,

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

#29

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.

#30

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

1 Like
#31

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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#32

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:

2 Likes
#33

@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.

#34

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.

#36

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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#37

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.

#38

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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#39

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

#40

@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?

1 Like
#41

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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