Please Revert The Time Needed to Become a Member

Forum Help Forum Features
#1

I have seen several users with <7 days visited <5 hours read now. I just flagged a post by a user with stats less than these. Professionalism was non-existent in this post and was just an advertisement in the wrong category.

If this is some test to see if the conditions should be lowered, it is clear that they should not.

In my case, it took weeks/months of visiting and helped massively helped me understand the minute mechanics and etiquette of the Forum.

DevRel, please re-heighten restrictions.

47 Likes
#2

No, there shouldn’t be a change for this at all considering all of the restrictions members currently have on the forums. You aren’t required to be professional in every post you make and you have the power as a community member to flag these posts yourself for moderation to look at. There’s no reason it should be changed and some of the newer people who would like to come and join the DevForums would also like to experience it the way we do with being able to reply to posts and make their own for whatever reason they choose.

It’s just a different variation of members who join the Forums daily and there’s a surplus of users that are also underaged, but there’s no sufficient way to stop them from joining and making posts and ranking up just as us. If they were even to take this into consideration, this would stop a lot of the current users and newer users from even touching the Forums because of the time it would take them to become a member and having access to commenting and making their own posts. No one wants to struggle behind just to be able to have some access to the forums.

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#3

<7 days is utterly ridiculous though. Even DevRel members take a while to create their own introduction posts.

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#4

Yeah, that is a bit ridiculous to be able to join within just a week of being on the forums, but it’s also different for a lot of users. Some sitting here for a month or maybe longer doing the same as someone who got member within a couple days. There should be some type of change, but not one that is drastic that make a lot of people want to leave or quit the forums because they aren’t able to rank up to member.

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#5

Unless they have a plugin that changes the requirements randomly, the way Discourse works means that once a user does X, they attain a new Trust Level, in this case, Member. (Some higher Trust Levels are manual.)

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#6

That is in your case… A person can join the devforum, read the rules and still be professional. When you join something (e.g signing up for a gym membership or soccer club) as soon as you sign up,log in or pay you are a member. This applies everywhere else.

People abuse the categories or just don’t bother to read the rules. You will always see this on the forum even if you had member restrictions. You can’t gatekeep a community from one getting the literal lowest rank.

The only thing that should be changed for members is that they must read the rules. It would reduce people who ignore the rules or don’t bother to read it.
Also, there have been many topics on this before and yet the ranking system and member time stays the same and I doubt it’ll change anytime soon. hope this helped

18 Likes
#7

Assuming you flagged it because they joined too quickly, you have actually broken a rule. Don’t flag unless you have to. Flagging because they joined fast is not a reason to flag someone.

It took me about 8 - 10 days for me to become a new member on the forums.

And, why is it a problem having visitors becoming members quickly? According to you, they are “unprofessional”, we can all agree that no matter how fast you join, you are always unprofessional to start out with.

24 Likes
#8

First I should tell this is most probably Off - Topic
I think people with less time are more good developers.
They can’t just wait for weeks for posting their error and for recruiting a team for their game.

People who take a long time to get promoted as a member are real newbies like ME.
It took me almost 3 and more weeks to get promoted as a member.

This is because I didn’t know any shortcuts to have to get promoted fast.

Every one starts their journey as a newbie.
Even if I was promoted after 2 weeks i have still posted in the wrong category and I’m sure that most people have done it too.

Also I think you can’t flag a person for have a low read time/Days visited.

8 Likes
#10

Bear in mind Roblox is trying to market itself as a serious platform. How many serious platforms block you from using their forum and force you to read lots of topics first.

If you’re coming over from Unity or Unreal Engine and want proof Roblox is a serious platform where you can collaborate with others, learn from them, and become a successful developer here, being blocked from the ability to ask questions and get into the community would just turn them away again.

If you encounter a bad post, just flag it. They are dealt with pretty quickly here, and in the absolute worst case of that topic existing for a few hours, just look at the next topic and carry on with your day. In my experience, they aren’t that intrusive that they stop you from being able to do work.

17 Likes
#11

Despite having an account for about 2 years now(???), it was only today that i’ve actually gained access to post on the forum, despite having a game of my own that people play for most of that time. I find it interesting that I only gained access after completing dev ex forms, rather than the previous times i’ve constantly read articles to get the read time up.

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#12

All of those requirements are false and they’re not even close. I’m not sure how the exact requirements are relevant, though, unless you’re pointing out how someone can get promoted in just a day?

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#13

I think it’s nice to see how much progress you or another person has made towards hitting the member rank. The same thing could also be said about the regular rank.

But, since the community doesn’t know what the requirements are for ranking up, the whole progress, feels arbitrarely and creates this feeling of having no progress made at all even though a user has been stuck at a rank for quite a long time with substantial stats and a good moderation standing.

Personally, I’ve joined Devforum 2 years ago and honestly, I don’t feel fully apart of the community because certain features are locked away from me due to my rank.

6 Likes
#14

I joined in less than a week. I don’t see an issue with it if you binge read. My problem is the time it takes is variable. It took me 5 hours of read time, but I saw a guy with 3. That isn’t fair

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#15

It is fair. It is based on topics as well. You can’t expect to read an announcement with 1000 replies and expect instant access. You need to read topics as well.

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#16

Yeah but then couldn’t they make a topic read time thing? Idk, people shouldn’t have various times if they binge read.

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#17

What restrictions? They’re now able to post in #resources, #discussion, and probably #lounge in the near future. It seems like the only “restriction” is only going to be on #platform-feedback, which is needed since engineers can’t waste their time scrolling through irrelevant posts.

I agree that inclusivity is good, but there should be a limit to that. Also, the Forum isn’t exactly that “exclusive” because anyone and everyone can become a Regular if they wanted to. It’s giving an equal chance to everyone to get in. You can think of it as a test. Regulars aren’t “better” than Members, if that’s what your hinting at, but it’s all about the trust (hence “Trust Level”). Regulars and Members are the same except that the former can post in more categories (which the number is shrinking) because they’re trusted to use the categories correctly and follow the rules of the Forum.

Exclusivity can be good in cases like these. Tests sort the eligible ones from the non-eligible ones, there’s nothing wrong that to have it be dissolved for exclusivity issues.

The argument of “just flag it” is like letting everyone in with a weak test, and then reminding them over and over again to follow the rules, which won’t get anywhere. Right now, repeatable violations don’t stack up to a strike, so it’s an infinite cycle of lax punishment designed to try and enforce the rules.

And professional in this sense isn’t used to refer to a doctorate level writing or something, but just some indicator of seriousness. A response like “OMG THANK YOU SO MUCHHHH” is something that feels more towards social media than a Forum where Staff and top developers actively read. Flagging posts or just even trying to ignore the posts just means more time taken. Why try and solve a problem after creating it? Just don’t create the problem.

If the people really want this “experience”, then they have to show that they’re eligible. Like I said before, everyone is allowed to try and join, but if most people can’t reach that threshold, that doesn’t mean we should lower it. It defeats the purpose of having this filter in the first place.

Also, let’s clarify why there should be a greater wait time for joining as a member: actively browsing (even one a day or not that frequently), reading, and following the discussions means that you’ll be able to understand what the Forum is, how it’s run, what are its rules, and how to post. Now if the threshold wasn’t so low, then people would get enough time to learn that themselves. If they’re just pampered by a less strict requirement, then of course there’s going to be these silly problems happening every day.

Lastly, people don’t come here to post whatever they want (not entirely) or are supposed to. People join the Forum to help out others, ask for help, discuss, and give feedback on Roblox development (I can’t stress that enough).

So, in all, having a low requirement is only going to make newcomers think of this like a social media platform, which is not what it is.

A thing I’ve noticed is that as the Forum is becoming more and more crowded with such posts, the Roblox Staff is getting less and less involved. If you go to the “ancient Forum”, as I like to refer to it, you’ll see that that form of exclusivity back then promoted quality discussion and much more frequent Staff responses, even outside of #platform-feedback.

1 Like
#18

If you read my post further, you would have noticed it was because the said user was breaking numerous rules. I only noticed their low stats. I mentioned nowhere that low stats = unprofessionalism. I think we can agree, however, that more users coming in with less experience, will undoubtedly lead to a higher amount of low-quality posts.

@Luxorz The reason you can instantly become a Member elsewhere, but not here, is because of the nature of the Forum. We already have hundreds of thousands of posts a year, which is constantly growing. We need to learn from the mistakes of the public Forum. At one point, the staff just couldn’t moderate it well enough.

@amalnk0007 This is not off-topic, this is feedback on the Forum’s entry process. Experience & exposure to people with experience will result in learning. It’s exactly how we were born to learn.

@BanTech A vast majority of Forums that use Discourse require you to fulfill certain requirements before being allowed to post.

A quote from Discourse:

By default, all new users start at trust level 0, meaning trust has yet to be earned… New users’ abilities are restricted for safety – both theirs and yours.

@MetroCammell Five hours of combined read time seems to be somewhat close to what you need to become a Member, so that makes sense. My point is somebody could spend a few hours reading for a day or two, then instantly become a member.

@rogchamp I’m fairly sure that someone can get promoted in just a day if they are persistent, which is exactly my point.

@Dev_Diablo To become a Member, you must fulfill a combination of requirements, in which read time is only one component.

I think @TheCarbyneUniverse said what I wanted too in much more detail. The requirements are laughably low, and by ignoring the problem and just flagging posts, staff are, and will, become overwhelmed.

#19

I personally agree with not shortening the stats required to join as a member. You do bring up a good point about how there is etiquette in the Forums and I agree it should be learned first. How ever when I joined the DevForum you needed to be top level and apply using your game(s), example builds, etc.

I believe the shorter we make the time the more it can be easily passed and or automated. So we’ll start seeing even more users who don’t even Dev come just to hand out or even bots. That bar needs to be raised in my opinion so needless to say I would have to agree with you.

Edit: I get that’s a tall order seeing as it took over a year. But when you strive for something you learn truly if it’s something you want to do. It personally took me a year to get in and wasn’t easy. Needless to say I know my place is here on the DevFroum.

#20

Because the last forum was really overlooked and abused by raids and other people who never read the rules.
The forum will always have this issue but I don’t think any raid is going to wait for X amount of reading time to visit a forum that’s moderated fairly well. The only real issue is children and people who ignore the rules which, is not even a big deal because as @BanTech said, in the worst case the post will remain up for a couple of hours so this is just not that big of a deal.

1 Like
#21

But if/when reading time becomes just a few hours, and arguably it already is, raids will become much easier.

I don’t think it should take a year to join, but I also don’t think it should take a couple of days.

1 Like