The Forum is continuously growing. It’s partially why Post Approval had to shut down. There were too many requests and not enough people who had the time or willingness to sort through dozens of posts. Wait times started growing by days, then weeks.
Before this, we had an application system. My understanding is that due to scalability concerns, it became unmaintainable. So, the Forum moved to an automated process, where you could gain access to several features, and if you’re active enough, and show you have a good understanding of the rules, you would become a Regular. The problem is that that process in and of itself was susceptible to sustainability concerns. It was reliant on Post Approval, which was, of course, shut down.
There is no automated process of judging how well someone will follow the rules and use the Forum. Using such systems inevitably results in bad actors abusing their flaws. Adding human oversight, giving someone the final decision on becoming a Regular, is also susceptible to sustainability issues. You could provide someone with a quick summary of the user’s stats and history, but that doesn’t go in-depth enough. Getting read time or posts viewed up is as simple as just scrolling through random posts quickly.
The only effective way I can see is a return to an application system. If someone has already amassed enough read time, posts viewed, posts made, etc. they should be allowed to write an application to Regular.
Some pros of this system would be:
Scalability is less of an issue. To be able to write an application, you’d have to be active.
It would be more effective than a fully automated or fully manual system.
It’s faster than reviewing posts. An application would be at most a couple of questions and paragraphs long, while Post Approval entailed having to read multiple, often lengthy posts.
An application does not verify the user’s ability to make good contributions, making it a worthless assessment.
Further, Post Approval had over a thousand requests monthly. This is unreasonable, and given that an application explicitly to rank up is more desirable than creating bug reports, volume will only increase violently from this baseline.
Sorry, but no. The only way to make the forum scale is to move it to fully automated processes that clean up after themselves.
This would be like post approval like thousands of post per month and it will just be in the same manner which is unnecessary, for now we can just wait until Roblox Staff finds a solution about this
The problem is, the only fully automated process available is stat-based promotion. You can measure word count, line count, text length, sentence length, syllable length, sentence structure, and post count, but in the end, if you truly want to measure the potentiality of contributions of a user, a human has to be at there. But having a system that relies solely on a manual checking system is unsustainable, while a fully automated system is untrustworthy.
So, I’m suggesting we combine the two. Once you become a Member, if you’re active, have a quite a few posts and comments that have gone unflagged and liked by several people, then you can have access to a short application. This system ensures that before you even have access to the application, you have created several helpful contributions that fellow Forum users agree are contributing and not breaking any rules. This application should only ask questions like what’s wrong with this post, what are your intentions on the Forum, what post are you most proud of, etc.
Finally, I think you’re missing the point. Forums are supposed to be open, public places for discussion. The Regular rank is supposed to mean that a user, is well, a Regular. They come here often and can be trusted to chat in an area that can be abused. Bug reports don’t create discussion and should not be used as a metric for contributing.
Edit, an example: If I can’t find bugs on a platform that has been worked on actively for 10+ years with dozens of staff, then I am just forever locked out of the Lounge and similar areas?
No, there shouldn’t be a mix of both. As a forum that’s continuously growing, returning to applications will just create a heck of a workload for volunteers in replacement of PA. The point of having an automated system is to balance the ever-growing influx of users so It doesn’t go overs the heads of replacements, putting in a lot of pressure to thoroughly check through the applications, given that there would be a time constraint.
Alternatively what do those questions serve then waiting for a logical response from the interviewee. It doesn’t demonstrate you’re ability to answer under certain conditions or cases, nor prove for consistent contributions, rather a one-time application that seems rather pointless. It doesn’t reveal the person behind the mask, you could after-all wing it. Don’t get me wrong, a manual system can be nice and justified but it doesn’t prove for any long-term scalability, considering something like that would die off sooner or later for aforementioned reasons.
An automated system just means there’s less hassle.
Bug reports and features don’t create discussion, but they can proof for an individuals ideology and ability to post successful reports. Overtime, consistency is the key and that can be a valid metric for validating a user’s promotion to regular. That goes for all.
Also, it wouldn’t be quicker or effective. Once again someone could simply wing it, use google as their open source dictionary and so forth. It doesn’t prove anything but someone statement over a few questions. Having consistent posts is a valid metric, but a one-time thing doesn’ t determine anything.
If you want to determine whether someone should be promoted or not, you have to be picky. That means putting in time and effort to validate if it should go ahead, backed up by stats.
Yea… no. As someone who waited almost 6 months after the supposed deadlines every time I applied for the DevForum I can tell you that having someone go through your post and make sure it is up to community standards is way better than applications.
You seem to misunderstand, Regular is not a reward for generically making good contributions. The purpose of Regular shifted to be exclusively about filtering bad threads out of platform feedback, most other categories are now open. Lounge is a legacy category and is not really meant to be tied to the trust level. The previous model was that Regular was only for people who could be trusted to post in PF, because that was the only real permission it granted. With PA finished, another method of granting this permission to post into PF or weeding out bad posts is required, and a manually reviewed test or application is not going to be that method.