New Help Article Increasing Moderation Transparency

Updates Announcements
#1

Hey developers,

We appreciate the community feedback in our latest survey in regards to how we can improve our transparency on the moderation side. Per popular demand, we have decided to focus our efforts in future help articles which will help provide further information about our moderation messages and policies. This is the first of many steps we are starting to take to continue improving our communication with our passionate developer community.

Due to the nature of moderation, in best assuring the safety of our community, some content will need to remain confidential. However, we are looking into ways that we can create a more harmonious relationship with developers and all users by providing additional and clearer information.

Without further delay, you can read more about our latest help article in regards to Understanding Moderation Messages here. We will continue making these help articles publicly available to all users on the Roblox platform.

Thanks,

ND

71 Likes
December Recap: What's Happening in the Developer Community
#2

Epic. Is the issue where moderated content doesnā€™t get displayed to the user when they are warned/punished still around? I remember it being a pretty big issue, because people donā€™t know what item they uploaded that was the offending one.

18 Likes
#4

ā€œ Weā€™re sorry, but audio featuring your voice or other personal information is not permitted on Roblox.ā€
How exactly does this work?

20 Likes
#5

image

Not at all?
Not in assets?
Sounds vague to me.

3 Likes
#6

I donā€™t think discussing moderation was ever allowed outside of #moderation-review-requests.

1 Like
#7

Like with what @ChiefDays said, what is up with this:
image

ā€¢ What happens to voice actors?
ā€¢ What about people who have ALREADY uploaded their voice?
ā€¢ Since when has this been a thing? I havenā€™t read ToS/ToU in a while.

Note: I am majorly confused because TONS of games have the ownerā€™s (or a voice actorā€™s) voice. And, what if we upload a song we made ourselves (like BSlick?) Just seems stupid. I just want to know whatā€™s up with this as I havenā€™t seen updates in a few months and need to read ToU.

45 Likes
#8

I think the bigger problem is that developers are seeing these messages too often unnecessarily.

Roblox moderation continues to have a high false positive rate (with both bans, but more commonly unwarranted asset deletion) which dramatically adversely affects workflow of serious developers. Iā€™d like to see a separate moderation queue for ā€œverified developersā€ which would help distinguish assets from little Jimmy who thinks itā€™s funny to upload a naughty picture and a game studio just trying to upload a UI element. If a moderator keeps going back and forth between seeing content from the average Roblox user and content made by a proper developer, they will probably be more likely to accidentally make mistakes. If there were separate queues, I think this would help reduce the false positive rate.

Additionally, I believe that these proposed ā€œverified developersā€ should have extra protections on their account before getting banned. Accidental bans only happen sometimes, but when they do, itā€™s a massive workflow setback. There should be a form of due process before a moderator can disable a developerā€™s account.

44 Likes
#9
  • "Weā€™re sorry, but audio featuring your voice or other personal information is not permitted on Roblox."
  • This is done for the safety of the user. Preventing personally identifiable information from being released is a top priority of Roblox.

Regarding the above message for moderation of sounds, does this mean that developers cannot have voice actors for things such as in-game tutorials etc.?

16 Likes
#10

Brilliant to see intent to make the moderation more transparent, but not sure this actually makes it more transparent, more of an explanatory article for reasons.

The only thing I feel which has been made transparent is that there are specifically more than 200 human moderators who apply moderation actions.

While I do appropriate this knowledge, really, for transparency, I would have expected more details on making the procedures those moderators follow to issue moderation actions public information.

4 Likes
#11

ggn
Hasnā€™t this always been the job of developers? How does Roblox catch things like this (especially in-game)?

image
This is posted under the behavior category but it mentions audio?

On a separate note, can some light be shed on why some users have been receiving warnings in Spanish whilst their settings are set to English?

4 Likes
#12

image

My character has a blue armband to signify it being an android. Does that resemble Nazi armbands?

5 Likes
#13

Under current rules youā€™re fine.

1 Like
#14

I absolutely agree with this. I have no better way to put it than evaera already did. The drawbacks caused by false actions are not reflective of the amount of trust weā€™ve earned. I believe this trust should also be present when a developer reports an item, as it can help Roblox get truly inappropriate content off of the platform without the need for reporting it several times so that it shows up in the queue.

7 Likes
#16

Iā€™d love more transparency on how small text actually works. Is Small text an issue of how many pixels the text is or is percentage of the photo? Iā€™ve been called out for small or unreadable text on things where the text is readable if you actually stop and look. Sure Iā€™m slowing down Moderation, but my things are not actually malicious.

12 Likes
#17

ā€œWe canā€™t do that because thatā€™s segregation and thatā€™s unfair to newer users.ā€

I agree with your proposal but Roblox wonā€™t do it for fear of being called discriminatory in their actions. That being said, they do actually see the username of the user who sent the decal. The head of Moderation tools told me at RDC that when you upload an asset, the moderator sees your name and can look at your previous Moderation history to decide whether youā€™re a first time offender or not. Which is cool an all because clearly repeat offenders should have action taken but it sucks for me cuz my history is filled with warnings for small text and I think many mods use that as an out when the ā€œsmall textā€ is within a questionable range.

Iā€™m currently not at home but if you guys would like I can make a video or a post or something detailing some of the things I know from what I was told because I think that might help you guys with what kind of questions to ask about.

1 Like
#18

Most of the content mods (no idea exactly what percent, but a majority for sure) are outsourced.

My best guess as to why the moderation for Roblox can be good one day and bad the next is because the outsourced employees are also juggling moderation for other companies, so they need to bounce between the rules of different communities.

Roblox could improve the quality of their moderation if they were to directly hire every single one of their content moderators, but thatā€™s a lot of time, money, and other resources (benefit costs, room for them to work, etc) that they could be using for other things. Outsourcing is 10x easier.

5 Likes
#19

Thatā€™s radical. Glad to have that located somewhere officially now!

A question though: What about bans or account terminations that prevent account creation? I know itā€™s possible to get something like that, but itā€™s not mentioned here at all.

Thereā€™s also a typo and misplaced bullet point, which as a courtesy Iā€™ve hidden below:

Annoying typo stuff here

">Do not create games that offer Robux as a prize. These kinds of games are considered scams, as there is not an official system to guarantee a prize. If you persist in creating these games, your account will be subject to additional moderation actions."
Should probably not have a > there.

Thereā€™s also a heading under the Behavior category that mentions audio.

Overall though this help article seems to be more explanatory than educational, as people have already said. Thereā€™s a lot of statements about what happens and what it means but thereā€™s no information on the specifics. Stuff like peopleā€™s voices not being allowed isnā€™t clear considering there are legitimate reasons for including your voice in a game (the developer is the cheapest voice actor around after all). Same with small text or low contrast images. Some more clarity on that front would be appreciated.

As for everyone talking about a verified developer system, one way or another that feels like it should get itā€™s own feature request because thatā€™s not really relevant to this thread.

#20

Rip Q-Clash

2 Likes
#21
  • "Please make sure all text is easy to read. If we cannot read the text in your image, it will not be permitted on Roblox."
    • Any text that is not clearly visible and easy to read in the upload falls under the category of tiny text. A general rule of thumb, if you canā€™t read it, no one else can either.

Whatā€™s the reasoning here? If text is too small to be legible, Iā€™m not sure what the issue is.

I get the feeling itā€™s an offshoot of the ā€œno tiny images (because they can be scaled up in-game)ā€ rule, and when that was killed because it made no sense nobody realized this rule makes no sense for the same reason.

10 Likes
#22

I donā€™t see how evaeraā€™s proposal would be any different than being selected for the developer forums, or when you see content in the toolbox that has the ā€˜trustedā€™ symbol.
We also still have the buy-in status of the different levels of builders club. So no, I donā€™t think ti would be ā€˜segregationā€™, but instead ā€˜organizationā€™

1 Like