Or
They get hundreds if not thousands of false reports everyday by players while the 1 report that is actually important sent by a developer is now placed with the same people who get bot style replies.
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This. Developers and non-Developers should be moderated separately (or developers being given a separate moderation channel) because of the fact that it seems there is just too many non-Developer reports that just drown out all the Developer reports who may have a more important report that should be handled as soon as possible.
Because that non-Developer who reported about another player who keeps killing him too much in a pvp game is not a serious enough report to be put above a potential serious situation that a Developer is reporting about. I get that’s why we have categories to choose when reporting but even then it feels like the reason Developers have to wait so long to get replies from an actual person because of this long queue of reports in all categories of reports, probably from kids choosing the wrong category when reporting, just a theory.
So just like how we have Moderation Review Requests for assets that get declined, we should also have another option that devs can use to report other stuff that can be very serious and needs to be seen as soon as possible and any devs who abuse this report option can be removed from it to keep this report option as professional as possible.
Just my 2 cents lol.
27 Likes
The audio refund incident needs to be checked over again. I highly doubt a single person glitched intentionally, I doubt that people even knew about the glitch; yet even so, got banned permanently over it. Even if somebody knew about it by some strange means, they shouldn’t be terminated. This is entirely on Roblox, not on the users at all, shame that from the looks of things they will not admit that they are clearly the ones entirely at fault here. People spent money on this, some even make a living off this, to have this happen up and one day is a terrifying even to think of.
I will not let this topic die until something is done about it, you should all do the same.
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I would directly email dev-relations, or try to contact someone from dev-relations. My account was just un-terminated this morning.
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I wasn’t affected by this whole incident luckily. Glad to hear it all got resolved for you though.
I just want them to in the very least give us a reply on this whole situation.
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True, a lot had to be done to get here so I would like a general statement on the incident to everyone who was part of it.
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It would be amazing if they could just unban everybody affected by the incident and then give out an apology in some form or another. Admit that maybe they screwed up somewhere.
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Just want to say that I actually got to meet with someone internally about moderation today. I can’t talk about specifics, but I can tell you that these concerns aren’t falling on deaf ears - they have seen the concerns here and they are definitely listening. 
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Definitely support this. It’s 2020 and ROBLOX Support still hasn’t changed from being an automated maze. Moderation is constantly ignoring users and has told me to cease sending emails for an issue that can be easily resolved. Upon asking them any question with vital importance or is something that the user needs to know to proceed with their issue, they provide a copypasta message and closes the email thread. Upon sending multiple emails to continue getting information (information that has been learned over different email threads instead of just one of them) I was told to cease and desist, to stop sending emails again.
Moderation can’t ever be close to sympathizing with players and developers and simply cannot understand what something means to us. The current system upheld by ROBLOX is not held up to the standards of the website today and I am holding ROBLOX Support in contempt and in cynical thoughts. I hope reforms can happen.
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This thread is 100% relevant and true. I recently was banned for a day due to an audio I had uploaded in 2016. The audio was a high-pitched sound with legitimate use cases (flashbang sound from call of duty). Of course, this sound actually was against the rules, but based on the fact that it was uploaded for a real purpose, four years ago, I don’t believe my account should have been suspended for 24 hours.
To further highlight the uselessness of current communication flaws on the Roblox platform, last year my development group account holder was exploited. An exploiters account took the group, and instead of giving the group back to one of us devs, roblox terminated the hacker account and did not return the group, locking up 20k+ robux in group funds and forcing us to relocate our playerbase to a new development group. Here’s a link if you need proof. Midnight Racing Community - Roblox
They didn’t refund the 100k+ that the hacker took before the account was terminated, I might add.
All these great updates to the platform need to be met with a group of moderators who care about the devs who make it successful, and unfortunately, it’s clear that roblox moderators just do not care enough to take care of these issues. Just one of the reasons a big studio would never choose roblox.
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I believe that Roblox Support has become increasingly frustrating for users. With a lack of empathy and understanding, they now immediately sent me a shutdown message telling me that my questions couldn’t be answered when I specifically filed under “feedback and suggestions” and did not have any questions at all, only suggesting a change towards their systems. Roblox Support is negligent and its quality is not proportionate to other parts of the website and the number of users there are. This is absurd.
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As of this post from 3/23/2020 to 1/15/2020 and then now on 4/21/2020 and unterminated again on 4/22/2020… update below about termination status, I am/was/am again terminated on my account over code that was in my game that gotten flagged for review. I wasn’t provided a warning, didn’t have any previous moderation history on my account or a way of applying filtering or redacting content that caused this flag to occur in the first place and I’ve even sent numerous support tickets, 15737013, 15707739, 14624938, 14115202, 14091113, 14084488, 14059601, 14075877, 14067625, 14068087.
Only one ticket was able to tell me that the content of the game was inappropriate and replied with that they couldn’t provide any more information regarding my inquiry about my termination. Every single other support ticket for appealing is now either about
Hello,
Thank you for reaching out to us about your moderation concern. Our records indicate that an appeal has previously been sent for this account. Once a decision has been made to deny an appeal, further appeals for the same ban cannot be reviewed. Please do not send multiple emails about the same issue after a decision has been reached.
Sincerely, ###
or
Hello,
Thank you for contacting us about this issue. The ban you are trying to appeal was applied more than 30 days ago and can no longer be reviewed. Only recently banned accounts may be appealed.
In order to respond expediently to all appeals requests, we’ve established a reasonable timeline during which a moderation decision can be appealed. That timeline is one month, as this gives users enough time to contact us and for our team to review the situation.
Sincerely, ###
This alone is already demotivating me as a developer on Roblox over a simple mistake that I’m wanting to own up for doing accidently in studio. If I was provided a warning and the game to be set to private right away would of avoided this issue in entirety. Simply pasting user submitted quotes from another community of people into a script to your game ended up getting my account instantly terminated due to the content of the quotes. I’ve already resolved the issue about applying Text Filtering to the quotes and reuploaded the game to another account to be rest assured that my next revision is safe for use on Roblox.
I wasn’t informed at all that content in a Roblox game is subject to automated, strict, and harsh punishments against your own Roblox account until the DevForum post about code being flagged came up three days ago.
I’ve even went out of my way to contact a certain Roblox Staff member on DevForums, which if I didn’t stay logged into DevForum’s I wouldn’t be able to make this post right now because you need your Roblox account to login to DevForums in the first place. That Roblox Staff member simply isn’t even able to help appeal my account either so I’ve already ran out of options and already lost confidence in Roblox as a platform for me to develop on since I can’t even get my word across.
Does Roblox really want developers to make an alt for every single Roblox game they make and use a place teleporting hub on their main account to avoid this instant termination issue over code being flagged?
Will Roblox help offer another alternative way of appealing certain moderation activities or at least help developers find out more information to as of why their account has been terminated in further detail and more ways to restore their account instead of reciting the terms of service?
Edit: I’ve gotten my account unterminated by an unknown source as I wasn’t informed at all that it was unterminated. However, I’ll still be on my stance about the moderation system and appeals system letting me down as a developer.
Edit2:
I’ve now been re-terminated with yet another message. I’m confused to as what code has been deemed against the terms of service and feel that there’s no way of appealing said content.
Edit3: Now unterminated yet again on 4/22/2020, No update from any Roblox team as what steps I need to do or if I’m in the clear on Roblox now.
Edit4: There finally has been a message to me but the message in its context acted like the re-termination and un-termination was a glitch/bug and that if it wasn’t for community sage members arguing that my ban was unfair, the termination would of stayed on my account. No warning, no appeal, no previous moderation history, they were really going to consider keeping my account terminated.
121 Likes
I have had a problem very similar to NickoSCP’s.
My account was also terminated a few days before Christmas Day of last year with no warning. Despite being on Roblox since 2011 and being a small/medium sized developer (my game has two and a half million visits with 75 players at the time of me writing this), I was not able to have my termination addressed through the appeals process, either. I can only assume that I was banned because of my group, but my termination page does not even have a moderator’s note or a reason why I was banned, so I can only guess.
My group is/was a Confederate Army (American Civil War) war group/clan. At the time of my termination, it had been operating for over ten years. Yeah, ten years. I have ran it since 2013. Due to the subject of the group, I and my admins controlled any misbehavior to the best of our ability, and due to Roblox’s community guidelines, my game has not had Confederate battle flags since they were banned a couple of years ago.
Like NickoSCP, I wasn’t given any warnings, either. Since my game was left up, I can only assume Roblox no longer wants Confederate Army groups, but I was not given the opportunity to rebrand my group, or anything like that, as I would be open to doing so. Instead, my eight year old account, around 45,000 Robux/lifetime Premium, and my over ten years old group were terminated.
I agree completely that things like this greatly shake the confidence of developers on Roblox. My game has millions of visits, and I have not been able to have this fixed for nearly four months.
I completely agree with Cindering that the appeals process needs some kind of reformation and that there needs to be additional safety checks before lengthy bans or terminations are given out. More ways to have an account unbanned in situations like this, as NickoSCP suggested, is probably an excellent idea, as most developers do not have the ability to directly contact people who can fix moderation issues on our accounts, as Cindering explains he had to do.
I expect what Cindering said about us being critical about the moderation system because we are passionate about Roblox is the truth for all of us; certainly it is for me, given that I have been a player on Roblox for almost a decade.
49 Likes
Yet another false moderation action was discussed in this post https://devforum.roblox.com/t/roblox-moderation-in-the-eyes-of-small-developers/533569/1
This post goes through how @Sentross friend, whom is a group owner getting terminated for "“trading, buying, or selling Robux off-site” even though he did nothing. This post also discusses how the ban system is broken overall along with the appeal system. The group was also locked, which is also a key issue discussed.
I am only bringing this up in this post because this moderation action is NOT an isolated incident. I have constantly been seeing people get false bans especially during the past few months.
14 Likes
This response is more about the appeals system than moderation/banning but here is the story of my group that can reflect some of the issues of the Roblox support team
A few months back the leader of our group got his account hacked, they stole all the Robux on the account and our group funds and then removed him from the group and set one of the hacker’s profiles as the leader. They thern proceeded to change his password and lock him out of the account. This was pretty serious for us because we actually had a game running that was generating us income.
He tried appealing to Roblox and they gave him some stupid method of “proving his identity” by making him provide the numbers on the back of the first Roblox gift card he ever used on his account. This was ridiculous as that was over 5 years ago and there was no way he still had the gift card.
He responded to Roblox’s email informing them he did not have that information and instead gave them proof of identity by sending them his Driver’s License, a copy of a DevEx Tax form that Roblox had previously sent him as well as a few other documents. Roblox STILL did not accept this and gave him some BS response. That should have been more than enough information to validate his identity and give his account back as he had DevEx-ed multiple times before and they should have that information linked to his account
Somehow he still had access to his account on Dev forums so he contacted someone that he had met in person before at RDC from Developer Relations and about a week later we were able to get things cleared up and all our stolen Robux was given back to us.
If another group was in the same situation as us and didn’t have the connections we had they probably would have been completely screwed. This is completely unacceptable on Roblox’s part, something needs to be done about this terrible system.
31 Likes
Another user by the name of @Wasteds has been falsely banned and this story is even more horrific. Before I do some quotes on what he has to say I want to say a few things about this wonderful user. This user has quite a following on Roblox and on Twitter and I don’t think anyone would ever say he did something to violate the terms of service. Wasteds was a very good developer on the devforums and I respect him.
Now for his story, first I will be giving a few quotes from his Twitter to explain a few things.
This guy is almost certainly telling the truth and I think we all believe him. This also brings up that this terrible moderation does not only affect Roblox and the internet but it can also have real life impacts such as mental health.
Seriously, is this how low Roblox has fell for moderation!? This guy was in the community for SEVEN YEARS and one accusation got him deleted. Just ONE accusation. Roblox should have actually had a proper investigation on this account instead of just deleting him over one small suspicion.
Oh my gosh, this situation is getting worse and worse and I am getting even more disgusted at the Roblox moderators for allowing such a terrible thing to happen! This designer was just being paid to make designs (Not agianst the TOS) but because Roblox puts dang near no effort into looking into things before drawing the ban hammer this happened. I honestly don’t know what to say besides “Good job Roblox! You messed up two peoples mental health and potentially ruined there career”
Now you might be thinking that this will all be resolved with an appeal right? You might be thinking that this can’t possibly get any worse! Well it got worse!
I will now be quoting from another post on the devforums.
You have got to be kidding me!? I have NEVER seen someone take so much time and effort into an appeal! Imagine how much time this took to gather so much evidence and write such a long appeal only for the moderators to say “to bad” and deny it likely without even reading it.
If you think we are all being over dramatic, imagine having $40,000 worth of Robux only to wake up one day and have it all yanked from you unfairly! Imagine spending 6 years on this platform only to wake up to have it all gone! Imagine losing your childhood!
@Wasteds I am so sorry this happened to you and I hope this post brings attention to this issue, I am actually starting to tear up a bit right now because of how horrible this is and the thought that I could also lose 6 years of my hard work.
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I will say that ever since I originally posted this thread 2 years ago, there have definitely been some improvements to the day-to-day moderation systems, and I wanna give credit to them for that. Image moderation has been less of a pain, as things are getting approved much faster with fewer cases of incorrect rejections. The Fast Track reporting system was a great step towards more transparency, and I hope to see more features which provide transparency to all users (such as being notified when a moderator takes action on your report, so people can be confident that the system is working as intended). However, clearly there’s still some major shortcomings that are worth discussing.
It’s still obvious that the appeals process simply doesn’t work for the majority of people - if you don’t have a direct line to DevRel, then you’re completely out of luck if you get falsely punished. I do understand the rationale of automating some of the process, as I’m sure there’s a lot of regular kids who deliberately break the rules and then lie to the support emails. It would be a huge waste of time to manually reply to all of those kids. But the process used for those kids shouldn’t be the same process used for the developers who call Roblox their livelihood.
When you’re dealing with accounts that manage actual games/groups on the platform and can be worth thousands of dollars, it’s not acceptable to just hand them a canned response and block them from appealing. Moderators are human, and humans make mistakes - serious cases which can impact someone’s livelihood deserve a second, closer look to make sure no mistakes are being made.
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I still have a recent example of this exact problem occurring again. A dev in a small developer community was falsely banned for “Descriminatory language” with no explanation, no moderator note, and no luck with appeals. The ban was a 3 day ban, however, in my opinion it’s strange that these things happen to begin with.
I’ve seen multiple examples of completely random bans. I’ve had friends who’ve been banned over quite literally made up reasons, with moderator notes including things along the lines of: Literally gibberish (??? I’ve now seen three specific cases of this recently now), incomplete content (e.g. unfinished sentences), completely irrelevant information, and more. What makes it strange is, I have genuinely no clue how these moderator notes are coming into existence and seemingly going unnoticed. It just seems so weird that these are popping up, notably the first example, which I’ve genuinely seen more times than other reasons so far, with little to no explanation.
Overall though, I do tend to agree that things have improved from what they had been. I remember an image of a paper texture quickly getting rejected and simply changing the hue a tiny bit was the only way I could resubmit it. Now things have been much more consistent for me, and I feel like I’ve seen less complaints and strange bans in general.
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It’s been a while since I posted replies regarding moderation, but I want to address things. Yes, there is more transparency in player reports and better ways of handling image moderation. But there are still two factors that need to be considered in moderation, which I believe are two factors that can and will change the entire game of how moderation works and how people will see it.
The first thing would probably be the ban system. People generally know it for being trigger-happy and there are people getting moderated for things that shouldn’t even be humanly possible. The appeals system only works for a singular time, according to ROBLOX Support. Based on this, I feel that bans should have everything the player needs to know about the ban before they are banned. [images of what they did wrong, better elaboration on the issue, more details in general.] This would help the player understand more about their punishment and know for certain what they got banned for before they have to face Support. I have known many people who got banned from ROBLOX for something along the lines of black market deals or scamming others, but they had to ask Support directly because the punishment simply said “violation of the TOS.”
The second and arguably most important thing would be the moderators themselves. Countless amounts of copypasta, lack of reasoning and depth, and thoughts of superior judgment are the traits I can give them. They seem more robotic and automated to me than human and seem to be some sort of shadow entity, personally. My experiences with the Support team have been ghastly and unsatisfactory. Recently they got around to blocking my email for arguing their decisions, which they didn’t provide much detail about. I feel that if moderators had the time into delving into issues with importance and respond thoroughly and meaningfully, then we could improve moderation.
15 Likes
Well, that’s better then I put it. I only wish it didn’t feel like all hope was lost when an account gets terminated. Truthfully, I admit I got carried away with my own thread. While it started small, I was just astounded by the number of cases that came into light. It was just mind-blowing to see that so many developers were getting wrongfully ban. Seeing developers who have worked so hard to better Roblox as a whole, be an active and helpful person in the community getting ban was just unfathomable. I got frustrated after hearing @Wasteds story. I just couldn’t believe a successful developer who is an active and responsible user of the developer exchange program was just terminated like that. I was shocked when I read his 25-page appeal with evidence. The introduction of it only asked for 20 minutes, and I was able to read it in 5, so I just couldn’t believe someone out there on the appeal team just probably skimmed over it and just ruined his career.
For my own situation, I and my friend were saving Robux through commissions and the selling of limiteds (in-site) to start a fan group. Not really for profit, just for fun. We raised around 140k robux. That probably is not too much for more established developers, but regardless, it took quite a bit of effort to gain. Now I am just refreshing the recruitment page on the forum every few minutes to see if I can get hired to make the robux back. Looking back, my own anger and frustrations showed negatively in my thread. I realize now it was unacceptable and unnecessary. I do hope anyone reading this forgives me for that, I should’ve acted more calmy at the situation. At that moment it just seemed like we were trapped. We know all too well that the appeal system isn’t too great, and that most people get denied even with evidence. I started the thread out of panic, and while it eventually got filled with more off-topic and spam-like posts which were not my intention, I believe some message did come out of it.
I completely understand several aspects of the moderation system. I don’t expect Roblox not to use bots, on a platform this big, it’s kind of needed. I only wish much more consideration was at the least put into account deletion, as that is a quite serious punishment that can just ruin the Roblox careers of many developers who don’t have a large voice or as you said, a direct line to DevRel. I believe that a more well-drawn line is needed to divide players and developers so that legitimate Roblox developers who have been on the platform for years and have assets that date back those years don’t face undeserved punishment. With over 100 million active players on the platform, a false ban mistake here and there is understandable and expected. It just sucks that the appeal system which has the intent of fixing these mistakes is so flawed. Maybe Roblox can possibly implement a form like system specifically for appeals that directly asks for a brief explanation of your situation, and has different inputs for evidence so that a better level of organization can be achieved. And maybe appeals with evidence can be put on a higher priority list. It’d also be nice if this appeal form could also automatically check if the player is an active user of the Developer Exchange program so that their appeal could be put on an even higher priority.
For my situation, I believe we can somewhat manage. We will have to delay many things, probably work even harder to get the Robux back. I know others who have faced this same situation will be less fortunate and can not manage with their current situation. I really hope someone can do something about that.
To reiterate the possible ideas that I have presented:
- An appeals form system may be much better system with much better organization that can prioritize the needs of different players to make sure those who depend on Roblox get the immediate attention that they deserve.
- Maybe for appeals, some sort of investigation/evidence report can be created and given to the player so they know why they were punished.
- I understand if a reason for account termination can not always be given. But the fixing of the appeals system must be made a top priority of Roblox. There should be investigations with gathered evidence that can be used as reasoning for the accounts termination later on during the appeal process.
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