That makes sense; I was moreso wary of the fact that they were copy-left and not permissive, so any work featuring it would need to also be under that license (and have the copyright notices included), which I thought may have been a problem since enterprises tend to want to use more restrictive licenses.
Haha, my bad, to be honest I hadn’t done my due diligence in investigating how taxing such a thing would be.
Good to hear that it’ll be considered.
I have noticed that people don’t give feedback to people that are asking for it. Not to be mean, but I have noticed a trend where people ask for feedback and everybody says it’s great when it’s not. People need to be honest when giving feedback. There are also the people that ask for feedback and when somebody tells them what they can improve upon, they get mad. The bottom line is the toxicity and “fakeness” needs to go, Roblox should be doing something about this. I didn’t want to bump, I just wanted to express my feelings.
Both of these afaik are against the rules and can be flagged
[ unconstructive feedback and reposting the same feedback ]
It’s an interesting topic.
And we will see what the resolution is to iy.
I would love to see the devforum with focus on the Help section & less toxidity.
The developer forum is becoming more toxic. Smaller developers are preyed on by those who obtain large egos and always belittle you and compare you to someone larger than you in terms of popularity. It’s not healthy.
Smaller developers like myself, find it hard to form relationships with other larger developers as we’re always overlooked, and it’s a “status game” at this point. There is no solution to this, unless you can change people’s mindsets, which is very unlikely. It drives me away from developing, and why I don’t add to my portfolio anymore. You receive unconstructive criticism to drive down your morale.
Though it’s hard to change this, I know there is a way to solve this, I just don’t know how.
My personal focus on this argument is geared toward everyone, but I 100% agree the small developers are a huge victim in this issue. I felt it when I first joined too, and I can not hardly imagine how it must feel now. I don’t mean small developers as new ones, but just skilled but not yet popular yet. The line between small developers and new developers is seriously becoming invisible in DevForum with a proper member approval process removed. There are a lot of new small developers who really have the skills and maturity to be here, and then there are new developers who don’t have the skills but also seem to not have the maturity to be here either.
I agree with you, we definitely need to make DevForum more of a community once again and not a social media and self promotion like platform for larger more established developers who just need to boost their own self image on a meant to be helping community by putting others down, making everyone think they are the best, just so they can be seen as the best. And this platform shouldn’t be used by smaller developers who are overly obsessed with fame and popularity rather then using the DevForum for its true purpose, helping with development issues. Like those who act like each post is a step toward raising their imaginary “reputation points” and not seeing every new job as a new addition to their own popularity
It’s blatantly obvious that the line between them is blurred, I’ve been developing for a very long time, but I get seen as a less experienced developer. It’s more damaging to other developers than it is to me, because I’m used to it.
This community is just segregated.
Ignore the developer community then. Make a nice game and you will have a lot of players to appreciate your work, fans that will support you on your new projects. To them, there will be no difference between you and top developers, if they are enjoying the games.
No offense, but that answer makes no sense. The reasoning behind this whole argument is that this developer community isn’t even being used for its original purpose (of helping people) but rather used for self promotion and publicity. The forums do have a purpose, helping developers. It is needed. The problem is right now its useless because its not focusing on what its supposed to do.
This isn’t something like Twitter where you just back off and try doing your own thing if you can’t compete with top developers, this is a help community. There shouldn’t even be a separation between any developers. People shouldn’t have to feel forced to leave just because they can’t compete in popularity in a community like this. I mean come on, this is a support forum, why is it seen as okay to turn this into a social media site just for ROBLOX, basically turn it into a marketing platform?
None taken.
ashcide complained mostly about the prejudice of the developers and how he lost motivation, and I suggested that he should ignore all the pointless demoralisation and remember that there will always be people to appreciate his work as long as he creates something.
For seeking help, I completely support the topic, but its up to Roblox to fix that. We pointed out our complaints as developers, now we wait until they hear us.
how many times have people said this to no avail
We have been planning out some changes for the past 1-2 months or so and will be applying it later today together with DevRel. Thanks for your patience.
I’ve haven’t been on the DevDorum until recently, but I noticed your post.
I believe your post could help find improvement toward the DevForum. I personally believe the DevForum is pretty bland or “eh”. Besides it’s main focus, helping other devs and allowing them to showcase, I wish the DevForum was a little less strict. This could easily be routed around by having an actual “Off Topic” section where New Members and Members of the Forum could have actual posts and communicate with others.
Other than that, I agree on what you have said.
There is an Off Topic section, but I believe it’s only available to Members.
Personally, I agree. I used to be very active on this forum but in recent times, have stopped posting. Building Support feels more like Facebook than a place of congregation for developers, as well as all other subforums. The DevForum feels like a regimented, toxic form of social media.
Of course, all of my grievances have been mentioned by people here before. Only that I’ve been following this thread and wished to add my two cents. I love Roblox but opening up this forum into a wider community felt like it was getting progressively worse every day.
Quick Update: It looks like coefficients has released a post about a new update to the DevForum here:
Hopefully this will help with some of these issues.
What?
@coefficients and the DevRel team has met up with me and many people from this thread up directly and personally in regards to the issues shown here.
If that was on culture, or organisation, whatever it was, there was a meeting on that topic.
There was this reply as well
that was more of a comment on roblox staff as a whole, not just the “forum keepers”
Sure. Here is a live list for every single time someone who works for Roblox has responded to a feedback post in #help-and-feedback.
https://devforum.roblox.com/search?q=group%3ARoblox_Staff%20%23platform-feedback%20order%3Alatest
And that’s not just “forum keepers” (DevRel), there’s a range of people who’s job is to look at the feedback. Of course, not everyone will look here, especially those who roles don’t require review of our feedback on a constant basis. It’s atypical for someone from CS, HR to be here, but engineering team is often here and do review our feedback.
DevRel more do just than keep here running. Developer relations - Developer Forum | Roblox
To avoid going too off-topic, feel free to PM me for any further convos.
Hello. As a New Member, I’d like to share my perspective on not so much the issues in the OP, but in the replies. While I agree with the vast majority of them, there are some pretty obvious conflicting arguments that I want to point out in this post. Despite this, I am in no way taking sides nor do I have any sort of proposed solution, because I believe the problem lies not so much in the way the forum is organized, but in the overall quality of the community.
Background
At 14 years of age, while being classified as a “New Member”, I’m just the type of person all of you have been targeting and blaming for this recent mess, but the truth is that your view is justified. I have little experience in any kind of developing on this expansive platform and can understand and apply practically nothing in comparison to what Roblox has to offer. I originally heard about the DevForum about 1 year ago when searching the internet for answers to development questions. Sooner or later I created an account, although all I ever did was browse through questions when I needed support directly pertaining to my projects. I reacted to this very lightly; I didn’t feel particularly special about simply having an account. Thus I never spent the time to learn about how the Forum operated, or the resources it provides. Now fast forward to a couple months ago: I began to grow more curious about how things worked in this community and proceeded to read threads for entertainment instead of strictly for solutions to issues. I was interested to learn how skilled devs viewed Roblox in general. Spending a consistent amount of time per day on this site eventually led me to be promoted to the rank "New Member"a few days ago. This came as a shock since I had no clue that users were classified and divided other than “Top Contributor”, etc. It was only then I discovered that the entry requirements to this rank were drastically lowered back in January from a detailed application to pure activity and read-time. I was highly grateful for the change, although it still means little to me because of my minimal desire and incentive to post. I thoroughly enjoy skimming through threads to see the process and effort it requires to solve technical problems on the platform, and that’s sufficient for me.
Lead Up
My first impressions when reviewing the Rules were not the greatest. It initially reminded me of some kind of outline that included enough detail to be appropriate as part of a law book for a political government.
A forum is simply a place of discussion. In my opinion, these pages and pages of regulation are limiting our ability to speak freely; to openly discuss. In fact, this is my first true post, mostly because I don’t feel qualified to contribute to a community full of geniuses in contrast. The primary guideline of the DevForum is to provide new information and views on a topic, and in most cases I can’t fulfill that requirement; anything I can do, someone else could accomplish in a better fashion. I’m pretty shy in real life, but the flip side of shyness is that I like to perfect, reread, and edit my posts until I’m confident.
Perspective
Now, I have some things to say regarding the issues presented and what this Forum provides to developers to communicate and have a safe, constructive environment. Take this proposition of the manner in which we should approach our predicament with a grain of salt, because as I said earlier, I don’t have much personal experience with this.
A clear line between right and wrong can be a good thing, but the strict and specific rules are only hindering true discussion and are promoting frequent flagging of undeserving users, as well as pompous members who care more about achieving a higher status in terms of likes, ranks, solutions, and popularity then actually supporting other devs from the heart. I would almost suggest leaving it at the summary so that flagging might be limited to more severe and apparent violations.
The manner in which users increase their overall recognition should be entirely remastered. Rushing to have the first reasonable answer is a childish move if you’re not actually taking the time and revised your post to create the most helpful answer you have the potential to. I’ve come across several posts in which they would reply extremely quickly followed by the remark “Dang, [so and so] beat me to it”. This is disrespectful to the original poster and basically straight up reveals their selfish intentions.
Hierarchy on the forum should be completely removed. Ranks only serve as a legitimized foundation on which users can be discriminated (collectively recognized as tolerable by the more honorable members). A New Member may say the same thing as a Top Contributor and still be flagged and called out for every little fault while the Top Contributor is just praised. Why does a title determine whether someone is correct or incorrect? All Top Contributors were once New Members whether it be under the old system or the new one. Edit: A possibility is to conceal ranks for either all or only the less credible users in order to place a focus on interpreting opinions from an objective standpoint (without prejudice).
A continuation of the last point: The purpose of a forum is to discuss and learn together as a supportive community, right? Why then, are members segregated based on their ranks, preventing some from posting in certain categories? Sure they can view, but suddenly, if they have a question, they have to go out of their way to ask in a different location and environment, or go through the tedious Post Approval process. The less educated are the ones who should be exposed, the fact that they are cut off could discourage them from the platform in general. I understand that you want higher quality discussions, and opening the Forum up to everyone is expectedly doing the opposite, but some members are more mature than others and don’t deserve to be automatically eliminated from play. How to remedy the poor-quality posts that are inevitable with this change? Perhaps a separate set of strikes for these more “secure” parts of the forum when the post isn’t exceptionally high-quality and acceptable, which results in loss of privileges after 3 marks?
A separate title named “Verified” should be adopted that is exclusive to members accepted prior to the requirement change and users that have since written an application to Roblox. The ability to flag posts is exclusive to developers with this rank. For the most part, this restricts flagging permission to responsible users.
I agree that a “thank you” comment will never equate to a number next to a virtual button (at least in my eyes) and these posts shouldn’t be flagged, however, imagine popular threads having a post/thank you ratio of 1:10. Wouldn’t that be a mess; all of a sudden these messages start looking like spam and the very low-quality posts you despise. The “like” button doesn’t have the desired effects, but the alternative is even less appealing, which is the reason why social media platforms (and ones like Roblox) often resort to this system. If you really want to display your appreciation, sending a PM would be advised.
I’m in favor of a cool-down on posts, it would encourage more thought to be put into each individual one and would additionally prevent spam.
Nobody should be afraid of constructively criticizing someone’s project if they ask for feedback, in fear of offending the other. They asked for feedback, so they want your honest opinion. I’m sick of people instantly rating 10/10 or 0/10 without adequately explaining their thought process.
Guidelines for posting in each specific section of the Forum should be compressed. Again, similar to number 1, this only increases the tension over whether the post follows the rules or not.
Conflicting Arguments
Here are some logical errors that are impossible to work around, therefore there is no “right” solution per say.
We block the newer members from some parts of the DevForum, segregate based on ranks, and rely on likes and solutions to progress, and then you blame them for posting low-quality answers in vision of passing the requirements instead of towards assisting the questioner.
You don’t want people to criticize every little flaw, but criticism is essential to discussion; constructive criticism that is. I could care less about criticism with nothing that describes how you can improve for the future. Flagging a post for not being perfect is not acceptable. Politely stating ways that your post could be better however, if the other is open to it, is acceptable, and should not be offensive to anyone.
Some of the above in the “Perspective” section are applicable here too.
The DevForum itself has features put in place that contradict each other as well, they have been pointed out over the course of this thread, unfortunately it would be risky to dunk all of them at once.
Summary: There are aspects that could definitely being improved, but changes made to the nature of the Forum and how it functions are quite redundant unless the maturity of the community is remediated first.
Thanks for reading!
To the staff: I would seriously think before making any major structural changes to the Forum, because everything has consequences.
While I’m unfortunately not in a position to comment on the rules or the way members get promoted, I’d like to address a few points that I am in a position to comment on.
The distinction between Members and New Members, while inconvenient for everyone involved, is unfortunately a necessary one. Specifically, restricting some categories is necessary to prevent them from being filled with poorly made posts or posts that don’t fit the category. It’s also necessary to give new members the time to adjust to how things work on the forum.
For example, new members have a tendency to not make good bug reports on their first several tries. Roblox engineers look at the bug reports directly, so making sure that they have as little noise as possible is important. So, in order to keep the category useful to engineers, we vet the bug reports from new members by making them go through Post Approval. We do the same for feature requests. This is just so that new members can learn to follow the category guidelines and provide necessary information.