Opinions on recent increase in flagging

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#1

@Kampfkarren Suggested I make a poll about this, because it’s really been bugging me.

I am concerned about the increased use of the flagging feature, but there seems to be a lot of disagreement about it. I wanted to create a thread to understand where the community is at on this issue, and maybe invite some more discussion about improving the forum rules and how they are enforced. So I have set up a few questions to guage what most Devforum users’ opinions are on this.

Keep in mind that the flagging feature requires either

  • 3 flags from the community to be hidden automatically
    or
  • 1 flag from the community and moderator action to be hidden
Some examples of recently flagged posts

I am not implying that all of these posts fall under the same bucket, but here are a few examples that have been brought up in similar threads about flagging. Feel to mention more below, so that I can link it here:

https://devforum.roblox.com/t/what-are-you-working-on-currently-2019/218270/309
https://devforum.roblox.com/t/what-are-you-working-on-currently-2019/218270/311
https://devforum.roblox.com/t/what-are-you-working-on-currently-2019/218270/312
https://devforum.roblox.com/t/what-are-you-working-on-currently-2019/218270/313
https://devforum.roblox.com/t/what-are-you-working-on-currently-2019/218270/332
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Agree or disagree: The increased use of flagging on the forum is appropriate

  • Strongly Agree
  • Agree
  • Neither agree nor disagree
  • Disagree
  • Strongly disagree

0 voters

Agree or disagree: The following rule is being enforced properly through the increase in flagged posts:

Ensure every reply is meaningful, contributive, and on-topic. Do not re-post what others have already said, do not post memes or single-word posts such as “First!” or “bump”, and put effort into your posts. Use the Like button instead of replying “Thanks!”. When replying to multiple posts, reply to all of them within one post instead of making an individual post for each response.

  • Strongly Agree
  • Agree
  • Neither agree nor disagree
  • Disagree
  • Strongly disagree

0 voters

Agree or disagree: This rule, as it is currently interpreted and enforced, promotes better discussion on the DevForum

  • Strongly Agree
  • Agree
  • Neither agree nor disagree
  • Disagree
  • Strongly disagree

0 voters

Agree or disagree: These type of “spam” posts should be moderated through some other means than flagging

  • Strongly Agree
  • Agree
  • Neither agree nor disagree
  • Disagree
  • Strongly disagree

0 voters

Discuss your thoughts on the increase in flagging below.

#2

The forum is a place for all developers, whether experienced or new, of various skill levels. From the early days of the forum the goal has always been to give developers a place to discuss, collaborate, and help each other. With those goals in mind, it is important that everyone aims to contribute in a way that elevates the forum, the platform, and our community just a tad higher than it was before that contribution was made.

Just like everyone is helping to build our community, growing the forum into a thriving place is a team effort we are all participating in. With the forum opening up to more developers, from all skill levels and regions of the world, ensuring that we continue to grow on that path becomes more important than it has ever been.

An increase in scale will undoubtedly result in an increased volume of posts. This is great as it allows more developers to take part in these thriving discussions and topic, and it greatly expands the combined level of knowledge to help each other out, collaborate, and discuss.

With this increased volume of posts, information becomes less dense and harder to find. This makes it harder for new members to filter out the information they are looking for, makes it more difficult for developers to accurately answer questions, and results in many more replies to ongoing discussions. In order to maintain the quality of the community and the available information, and to ensure that we are continuing towards our shared goals, it is no surprise that members, both new long-time visitors, are becoming more critical in what contributes positively and what does not.

It is extremely important to understand that this shared team effort is always aimed at improving the quality of the forum and its resources, and not at negatively impacting members of our developer community. When threads are opened with duplicate questions or discussions, it is beneficial to everyone to merge these discussions and/or close the newly created thread in favor of discoverability. When posts are made that don’t contribute to the topic of the thread, they get in the way of the discussion and actively make it harder for developers to participate.

Looking over the list of ‘flagged posts’ you have provided, I can safely state that all of those posts were flagged because they did not contribute to the aforementioned goals. This wasn’t done with the intention to cause negative feelings or out of personal attack. While it makes sense that disagreement forms around this topic, everyone must understand that we are all working towards making this forum a better, more professional place with each and every post. And as a long-time contributor I can safely say that that still is and always will be the intention and goal of all of us.

11 Likes
#3

In my opinion, most of the aforementioned flagged posts were rightly flagged, but I think there are sometimes valid posts which are flagged by people which do add to the discussion - luckily this is somewhat uncommon. I also think having a different form of moderation would be good as currently flagged posts still take up more screen real estate than they need to.

But most importantly, the rules should be more clear on what constitutes spam, with more examples of posts which are controversial/lie in a grey area.

Edit: can someone take a look at this example and please explain why it’s flagged? I don’t see anything wrong with it; Removing Support for Third Party Closed Source Modules

1 Like
#4

As it may be blatantly obvious, all of those posts were rightfully flagged. They did not continue nor enhance the conversation and could have all been solved by simply leaving a like.

Although I’m aware that the collective of the community “agrees”, 49%, I find it rather alarming that 38% of the community “disagrees”. I wish you had made the ability to see who voted what publicly available so we can properly analyze the statistics of what group, Members Vs New Members, voted which way.

#5

I think this should have been split in two:

  • is appropriate – which (in my opinion) definitely is, since it is intended to remove posts that clutter the thread.
  • is convenient – which it is not, because the hidden posts take up space and make it hard to browse since Developer Engagement isn’t immediately reacting to them.

The latter is the actual problem, and we can solve in many (better) ways than changing the flagging mechanism.

For example, we could create a plugin for the forum that reduces the vertical size of flagged posts to just a line that you can expand, similar to lock/unlist messages, and combines several consecutive flagged posts into one. (“Show 4 posts flagged by community” as a line item, rather than 4 greyed-out posts)

8 Likes
#6

Uncorroborated. No way for anyone to know whether it’s true or not.

2 Likes
#8

There are several flaws with this system aswell. Such as the flagging of posts that are ment to be short and snappy and to the point. Is it truely off-topic to agree with someone and say “(so and so) is correct?” Some posts are just meant to be short, and thats basically how it is. No matter the circumstances.

#9

It’s not off topic. It’s spam. It doesn’t add anything to the discussion. If you want to say someone is correct but don’t have anything else to add, just press the like button.

It’s never been post length that’s the problem. You can very easily talk for a long time about nothing. It’s substance. You can make a substantial post in a short reply. For example: “What do you mean by X?”

4 Likes
#10

Since the forum opened up a lot more, I’ve seen an increased amount of posts that are either off-topic or don’t contribute to the conversation at all. The closed source modules thread is a mess. People were posting things like “ROBLOX IS BREAKING SERVICES LIKE TERABYTE. SO HORRIBLE!!!”, yet that does not add to the conversation at all, and considering how hot of a topic modules are, you want posts that actually add new insight, and not just post something that attributes absolutelty nothing to the conversation. Furthermore, many of the posts pay absolutelty no regard to previous ones, and that is why that thread is 600+ messages going in circles with basically nothing being added to the conversation. Of course I am going to flag something that doesn’t add to the conversation at all, because if people didn’t do that, others would eventually find it acceptable to do the same and this forum will turn out like the old one with tons of posts that don’t accomplish anything and take away from the puropse of this forum. And if people only flag certain posts that derail the conversation, and not others, then one could argue it was “unjustified because you didn’t flag so and so’s post for being just as bad as mine”. In summary, any post that does not contribute to a conversation should be flagged so it doesn’t become a trend of useless posting, and in turn a mess, like the old forums.

2 Likes