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!)
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.
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.
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.”
I think the reasoning behind them flagging messages like that is that it doesn’t really add anything. The only thing that it adds is you praising the OP which can be done in the form of a heart. People often say stuff like this in creation threads to bloat their own stats. When you reply to someones post saying “Wow good job i like it!” chances are they give you a heart. I guess what I’m trying to say is that you (or anyone) telling someone in the replies of a post that they “did a good job” is irrelevant to everyone else that browses the thread.
as i said in the edit, im referring to the discussion and cool creations threads, not people asking for help or feedback.
Yes, I’m aware. In fact i got flagged for the very example you proposed in the cool creations thread. But the point still stands as replies like the one you said (or the one i posted that got flagged) don’t add anything to thread. I could have simply hearted their post and not bloated the forum with a reply like that.
I have seen New Members act authorized in the most indirect ways, like considering themselves an administrator by referring to staff as “we,” as an example. Others use a tone that implies they are professionals with years of specialization, etc. However, these are in the most indirect ways, making it difficult to target, and even identify. Optimistically, I haven’t seen an extensive amount of indignant users.
With the influx of New Members, quality has excessively decreased. In my eyes, people target the system too much. In reality, the moderation is not willing to penalize low-quality posters. Out of all the New Members, only few are rotten apples.
Listening to your feedback is my priority. Keep in mind I am actively considering opinions, so feel free to share them.
While I do agree that the forum used to be a more relaxed, and professional place (from what Visitors could see), and had higher requirements to actually get in than the current promotion system, I still feel that this new system is for the better.
Although you may get the odd batch of people who don’t know what they are doing, or how to act, the new system still lets in a good handful of people who actually know what they’re doing, and who are very friendly. Heck, I wouldn’t have gotten in if it weren’t for the automatic system, and I’m grateful to be able to be able to post and help out in the forums.
I do wish that there was a bit more professionalism on the forums however, as some replies can come across as extremely vague, or extremely hard to read (for example, code that is not properly formatted) and you can tell the person has no idea what they’re doing. I’m still on the fence about your point, but at the moment I do believe that the forum is still a friendly environment for the majority.
I have to say, I think there is a bit of a problem with the new members system that leads to some tension between forum users,
Because of the promotion system on the forum, many new members (myself included previously) felt pressurised to be always correct and make the best replies. This leads to people “competing” over solutions and other recognition to become a member faster, This should be improved.
If new members are not feeling welcomed and feel stressed when being corrected in replies and having posts constantly flagged, there is little incentive for them to do what they came to do on the forum: contribute to the community and interact with other developers,
I can remember a specific issue I had a little while ago with a specific topic. I had made a misconception in a post and was being corrected in replies. I didn’t understand what was wrong and why what I was saying was incorrect. Instead of being politely corrected and told why I was wrong, I had the same phrase repeated at me in replies with passive aggressive comments about the quality of my posts - followed by a mass flagging incident where every post I made on the thread (one of which was marked as a solution) was flagged.
It sounds stupid to say now, but I was quite upset about this, as any reply I made on the thread afterwards (even that which was on topic) was instantly flagged by users.
Please, don’t do this. I recently gained membership status and I still remember that time. Be encouraging to new members and don’t flag posts unless absolutely necessary. Sure, enforce the rules, but at least have a moment to think before you press the flag button.
For the majority of people, the forum is a friendly, home-like place. Some developers have blossomed into famous faces. But for others, especially those just starting out, it can be intimidating and scary.
Joining and your first experience with the forum being three replies correcting spelling mistakes in your post is a really nasty feeling and it has to stop.
All of this is intentional. There’s no reason your success on the platform would translate to the behavior we expect in the forums. Forum ranks are given based off of forum behavior. This is why we, for example, we don’t let big developers skip the new member process.
Pretty sure that the Community Sages actually QA the ones that are about to be promoted for quality’s sake.
I do understand it. I’m just telling you that they will be posting low-quality stuff but it will be without any success to them since the Sages will more likely put a block on those accounts.
Besides, you’re only taking one aspect of it all and there are some other ones like age and maturity (which I don’t like bringing up because there are some younger and more mature users like @\Dandystan). If you’re mature enough, you’ll be seeing this place as a useful tool and hub that allows us to express our opinions about the platform as well as help you grow as a developer and not as a “competition”. To be promoted you need to not only have enough posts slapped all over the place, but you also need them to be 200% contributing to the topic itself. This is where community sages and the PA team comes in.
Yes, I do agree that the Forum’s not that friendly at times, but let me ask you this one thing, are you doing anything to make a change here?
To begin with, many of them don’t know how things operate around here. We, as people who’ve been here longer, are supposed to be the Obi-Wan Kenobi to their Anakin Skywalker and show them the true way of the Developer Jedis that we are. Instead of bashing on people and writing tons of posts on how bad this place is, take a moment to press on their profile picture, press message (image attached below) and tell them what’s wrong or just report their post/response that breaks the rules. You need to slap them on the wrist so they can learn.
Another thing is that we don’t completely know how the promotion system works (to those lovely lads who worry about the big bad new members becoming full-fledged members). All we know is that we need to have a number of contributing posts and probably go through the PA system a certain amount of times with having them think about how squeaky clean your posts are. All of that requires patience that once more we need to teach our lovely friends because we’re all volunteers in this. We have our own lives to go about and no one’s there to go through your post the second you send it to PA.
I have never seen anyone being disrespectful towards others in the dev forums at all. I genuinely think that the community for now is highly appreciated (by me and many others) because people here actually give out constructive criticism and gives us solutions to our problems. Never once I stumbled across a post that said things like “YOU ARE WRONG BLAH BLAH BLAH GIMME COMMUNITY SAGE NOW” or something like that. Even if posts like that do exist, it’s very rare to find them because only a small portion of every community has toxicity. However, it does that make everything bad as a whole just because a small group of people here made some bad posts. For now, I think that we are alright.
Most don’t see what happens behind the closed doors of PMs
Agree fully, Krunnie, minus this one part.
As someone who was apart of the first batch of “New Members” (back then, Basic Users) I can confirm that it was about pulling yourself up by your boot straps to get through. Not everyone came through the New Member program, and if I had to guess, there’s still a majority of “Members” who weren’t even a “New Member.” So, it’s definitely tough to motivate some of the people at the top to help those at the bottom, when the bottom is more like a basement was built, rather than simply pushing everybody above up a little higher. Honestly, New Members have it big easy compared to back then. Over time the DevForum is more and more open to them. We had the tiniest slice of pie back in the day, and I’m grateful I was apart of some of the decisions made to change that. (I had PM’ed a staff member talking about the New Member program, about the pros & cons, and it helped them understand how I, a New Member, felt, as well as giving me some more insight about why the program is what it is.) And I can remember that some of the changes I proposed, did take shape over time.
However, I agree that DMs go a long way. Here’s a slice of my DMs. Not the most recent, but also not too far back. You can see, on occasion I use DMs for private function, but it’s really not by much. Most of my DMs are the (what feels automated by isn’t automated) staff replying back to something you reported for being low quality or rule breaking, but on occasion I do message folks that I see in that gray area. They seem so close to being on the right path, but yet still just slightly off it. So, I’ll message them, and walk them through, in my opinion, what the better way to pursue is.
Now, one of these cases, the user thanked me for the help and went on their way.
The other one, the user was distraught with me, and felt I was using my forum status to undermine them. (Kinda confusing tbh, but okay) After a few messages of talking them down however, they understood what I meant. Sometimes, you have to do that. You have to explain it simple & in a calm sort of way that can be seen as help, and not “I’m better than you, get on my level.”
As far as the OP though, I disagree completely. Admittedly it can be tough in the New Member-ey sections of the forum, because there’s not really much to limit who those people are. You just get a whole slice of Roblox in that, and there’s people in there who aren’t focused much on Development, they want Socializing. People do still see the DevForum as a competition, and a piece of status. (Heck, I know people who flaunt New Member like they just won the Super Bowl.) But, it really isn’t, and if you see those people, don’t really bother with them. They typically are pretty set in that mindset, and tell them they’re wrong, they’ll freak out.
Just keep doing you. Enjoy what you do, for yourself. Don’t worry yourself in the status in the eyes of others.
I guess you are right about that. Bad things can happen in PMs…
