Edit: I have been told this is fine for the public announcement threads by a member of Developer Relations. This still applies to other threads.
Roblox Developer Conferences are the most anticipated event of the year for the forum. This is compounded by the growth of the developer forum. This excitement has led to me giving about 60 flags for spam, which means I am probably responsible for the thread being locked twice ().
The level of spam the thread has gotten to has several problems for the affected thread:
It takes more time to read.
Important points can get lost. This is more of a problem if the original poster is looking for feedback.
Saying “cool” or “excited” without anything else doesn’t contribute to the discussion.
It can add clutter to searches.
Please avoid making these types of posts. If you like the thread or post but don’t have anything else to contribute, give the post a like. If you are looking for if something is good or needs improvement, consider using a poll. Discourse and other forum software provide us a lot of tools to prevent the need to make short and unhelpful posts, so please use them.
There may be confusion for this. I got told as so did others in the New Members discord server that Roblox wanted to see these type of posts on announcment threads.
Message given to everyone in the server:
I heard from LTC that Roblox wants to see those short little “this is cool” / “wow epic” posts on announcement threads. Please stop flagging short “like” posts in the Public Updates and Announcements category.
I could see this point for marketing purposes. This wasn’t brought up in the outlet I would get this information (Top Contributor’s methods of communication), so I am not sure the validity of that. My guess is a lead top contributor or staff will be able to confirm this.
This type of discussion is valid to bring up in the original thread since it isn’t a generic “rip rdc eu” as it contributes to the discussion.
In the Members server a member of LTC mentioned that marketing(?) wants to see those types of posts on announcements. I asked for confirmation and did receive it, however it was only one member of LTC. It would be good to hear from devrel or other LTC as well.
I’m in the same boat you’re in trust me (and that’s from a new member) I hate nothing more than seeing no/low effort posts which just have;
xd, XD, cool, very good, awesome
I report instantly any reply which just has one word because I find that the most frustrating. Meanwhile it sinks down other valuable posts extremely easy when your “one word” or very few words response can easily be summed up with a like on the post you agree with.
I’ve noticed quite a few good replies that get lost in the thread and sometimes get ignored whilst all the low quality tier replies like “WOW SO BAD” get a reply. I myself try to measure how meaningful my replies are by using my like:post ratio
If DevForums wanted to expand in the future they could add that Discourse react plugin to help accommodate more of those very short/one word responses and still keep the thread clear, it would be neat to just add
The problem with enforcing a “no unimportant posts” rule is that there is no objective standard for what is considered non-contributive to a thread, and it is not immediately obvious to posters that a brief reaction would be considered spam by the moderation. In most cases a brief reaction to an announcement is all that is necessary. It’s important to preserve freedom of user feedback no matter how loquacious it is or isn’t.
Let’s assume that scrolling past one-word replies has become a crippling chore. Instead of manually moderating those responses, there are other systemic changes which could be made to the forum that could minimize the exposure of these less important posts, such as an upvote/downvote system. At that point you just have a drop-down organizer for “Sort by Date / Sort by Upvotes.”
You cannot read a linear discussion reordered by votes without completely destroying all conversation flow and context of replies. This makes no sense for conventional threads.
I would argue that there is a very clear and well defined standard for an important or contributive post, which is described in the rules that everyone should have read. Largely, if your post is wholly equivalent to a like with no additional feedback other than a statement that you like something, you should use the like button, don’t reply, or detail your response further.
As mentioned before, in the case of announcements, it seems Roblox would prefer an exception be made, which I agree with.
Most of the new feature announcement threads are spammed with “wow” “cool” “excited to use this new feature” etc etc and here I am trying to read importantly post and responses to questions from staff…
The amount of spam New Members are posting on these categories actually hurts my brain. (It also doesn’t help that the documentation for these new features are always incomplete or nonexistent so all the New User spam just completely blocks getting easy access to important staff post and replies…)
I don’t accept the notion that brief posts are inherently non-contributive, nor do I accept the idea that they are communicably identical to Liking a thread when there is no Dislike option available. I enjoy scrolling through and perceiving a general consensus to announcements. Reactions or upvotes/downvotes could replace this just fine in my estimation. If you’re concerned about it breaking the flow of discussion you’re thinking too in-the-box of how the current thread system works here. I will also add that discussion is not always a chronological chain. Many people only reply to answer the OP.
If I’ve learned anything from game design, it’s that the game itself should set the parameters of user interaction. Nobody cares about your tutorial, and so by the same token, people who scarcely use the forums won’t be aware of moderation’s stance on brevity until after they’re punished for it. I’ve never read the forum rules either, and assuming that everyone has/should/or will read them is an error. It’s not an immediately obvious offense, hence why OP has moderated 60 people for it in one thread.
This is why the site and forum system itself should set the parameters for the flow and organization of dialogue, not permanently relying on human moderation of subjectively non-contributive content. Bureaucratic policy enforced by moderation with the goal of changing the way people naturally communicate on a public forum is more destructive than doing nothing.
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