Slight rant — The problem with the Roblox devforum in 1 picture

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#38

This is going to be more or less my personal experience on the forums with a little of my opinion on some topics discussed within this post. I want to finish this off of course with how I feel, but first my experience.

Being a person who very infrequently replies to posts for whatever reason, I’m inclined so much to reply to this because I feel like I have so much yet so little to say on this topic. I’ve not been an active member on the forum for long, although I’ve been a member just browsing for a bit over a year probably closer to two years now, so I feel like I’ve been more a spectator to some of these issues brought up in this discussion while not being an active participant in them.

I browse the forums 99% of the time on mobile viewing at anything “New”(which is how I came across this post), and the few responses I’ve done on posts, usually pertaining to Scripting Support, have mostly been through my phone, so I’ve never gotten the chance to send like major script support on people’s issues. I have no personal feelings on the titles given to people through activity and likes, but I can definitely understand the issue that can arise from this on any platform, or anything really that someone can gain any status within. Of the many posts I’ve read, I can say for certain that I don’t see specific figures sticking out, excluding one singular name that unfortunately resonates negatively with me, as rather toxic, or problematic abusers of the system and it’s titles.

I heavily agree that reorganizing the forums in a way that focuses more on promoting active discussion on topics that are more relevant to the members would do nothing but benefit the community, and secondary topics of course still having their own places still presented preferably on the same page, just not obstructing the meat of the meal we’re trying to get into and digest.

Personally, I’d like Roblox to really sit down and start asking themselves, and then of course the community, just what is a good forum. I think as a community, this forum can become a much more powerful tool for not only supporting developers creating and improving their games, or learning new tricks of the trade, or even just browsing a quick update release, but forging bonds between the members. Going down the line, I think recreating the forums in a way that properly supports everyone both in craft and communal actions would be nothing short of spectacular, and the suggestions written all over this post are fine examples of improvements that should be considered if ever Roblox sits down on this subject.

My apologies for the somewhat lengthy reply that may or may not have been inconsistent in some places. So much for so little to say on this topic. :sweat_smile:

Edit:

Apologies again for this extra tag onto my old post, but I just wanted to state this because it may be something others may be going through. I’ve never been one to use any forums on any platform whatsoever, so the term itself is essentially a mystery to me.

@Quenty defined in his post the term forum: “A forum is a place of discussion.”

I honestly have never thought of the forums or used them as that such thing, so I’ve essentially detached myself from being apart of the real solution, which is rather unfortunate because I’m not doing any better for the community than if I weren’t even on the platform. I had been using the forums exclusively as a support center built off community members, but not as a place of discussing anything, not even those issues of support. I felt almost as if I had replied to a post incorrectly, I’d be assaulted on the spot by moderation. This isn’t due to stiff ruling or anything of the sort, just the impression I developed myself due to my own actions(or lack there of) and use of the forums.

This is honestly a bit eye opening to using the forums for active discussion far beyond simple How To's, so I definitely want to thank Quenty for creating this post, and at the very least to anyone who reads, encourage you to jump into posts that appeal to you, and maybe those you are uncertain of, and start discussing. Be apart of the movement to strengthen the community, and then with this strength invoke change.

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#40

I don’t really use the DevForum that much but look at topics and portfolios but I highly agree with you. It is more of a webpage with information rather than actual discussions with other community members. I mean I’m a developer that looks for conversations, I like talking to fellow people about what they are doing and how they are doing. While looking at the DevForum to see topics and other related stuff I never see any topics about what people are building/scripting/modeling/etc and that’s discussions I would want to see in a forum page, I mean I understand that there is the portfolio where developers can share their creations with other developers and receive feedback but that’s something different.

Although what I say others will take in their own way which is highly appreciated. There are several things I think the DevForum should have. Anyway, this is just how I deeply feel about the DevForum, but you are not the only one feeling this.

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#41

I used to come to the forums all the time in 2013-2017. I very much enjoyed reading through problems that people were having and other developers’ solutions to those problems or new workarounds that people found for existing problems on the platform. I kind of stopped using the forums as much in 2018 with really no rhyme or reason why. I feel like after reading this it was because all of the content that I enjoyed reading so much either stopped existing, got hidden behind pinned posts, or maybe a little bit of both. If I got stuff like that shoved in my face when I came here I’d probably use the forums way more than I do. At this point I usually just hop on, see if there’s anything new in Public Updates, and then head on my way.

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#42

I agree with most of your points but I have my own personal view on the quality of posts and particularly new members and the growth of the group. I know plenty of new members who have been consistent on the forum and deserve a place here. I know that most developers are trying to learn and improve their skills, but I can’t help that feel that the forum grew is growing too big, too fast.

There is a definite correlation between the opening up of this community and the average member maturity levels slightly lowering. Adding new members is great and I am all for adding new members, especially if they have something to contribute, but in my opinion, the automation process doesn’t guarantee that new people read the rules, nor know the standards required when making threads in the support sections or anywhere in the forum. The knock on effect is that if one user is doing it, then another will most certainly copy them and it goes on in a circle (it’s only human nature).

There needs to be more education and more focus on making sure people know what is expected of them. If I remember correctly, part of the reason why the bar of entry for member was so high in the past was to filter through the masses to find the people that will contribute and have something to put forward into the community. In order to get into the forum in the past, you had to demonstrate your passion in development through your work on the site, but right now, some of the support you get in the solution sections of the forum, is really unhelpful. Some individuals don’t read the questions asked and frequently provide vague and really unhelpful answers. Some don’t even answer the question at all.

In short, there should be a more consistent attitude when it comes to helping people and assisting people. Right now, some people don’t make very well informed solutions, and some people also ask questions that already have a solution. While the forum staff can make minor changes to assure the rules are read, stuff like this require a change in mindset from the community. I can only hope that people do change, but that can only start if we do something about it.

cx

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#43

Firstly, I welcome the interface changes to the DevFourms, ensuring that the right kind of topics are up front and easy for new and current members to travel through. I’m lucky in respect I know how to handle issues like pins and sections which simply don’t apply to my day to day use of the DevFourms.

Personally, whenever I post or view the DevFourms I hope to push at least one of 4 goals (to teach, to learn, to improve, or to remind) I have for the DevFourms.
I want to teach people new things and tell them about a new idea or concept which they may not know or isn’t thought about as much; I want to also learn from others and see what they feel and have learnt; along with improve, improving myself, others, Roblox and as a platform; finally to remind you about ideas and concepts which you may have forgot. This doesn’t always occur but it’s something I want to push forward.

For me, seeing the same repetitive stuff on each thread does bore me to some respect and ruins the word, seeing the same phase used over and over and over again. But I don’t believe that it’s always the fault of the person, but rather than lack of options on that respect. I find that thanking me in private away from a thread is much better than thanking me in a thread and that get flagged; even then there could be inconsistencies with some threads having it more than not.

Sometimes I do question if my work is ready for the public and here on the DevFourms, some of the private reactions to my work have created this kind of fear. The fear of, without the use of a better term, completely shitting on without true criticism. On top of that, I have some serious concerns over the Roblox developer mindset in regards to what I’ve seen both here on Roblox, on the DevFourms, at RDC and off Roblox itself. (But let’s make stay on topic)

I want the rules to always be clear and any of these hidden rules to be made clear. I admit I can be harsh with flagging but I also try and reach out and just point them in the right direction with minor things. These days, I don’t even bother to check if you’re a member or a new member, it doesn’t matter to me.

Like @Mariofly5 suggested, education is also important to ensure that when you enter into the DevFourms, you at least know the basics and the rules. In a way that’s clear and understandable for all.

Even outside of that, the issue feels quite deeply engraved into the ethos of the DevFourms and will requite a lot of work and change, which many may find too far.

In the end, I want the DevFourms to be a positive community, where we bring people up using our wide range of ideas to improve each other and push for cool creations which people feel little fear in posting.

If there is anything here in this post or my history of the DevFourms that you want to privately discuss it, you’re more than welcome than to PM me, DM me on Discord (railworks2#0001), Twitter, email, whatever.

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#44

After reading this thread, it made me think deeply about myself. If you have seen me on the forums before, it was most likely in Development Discussion contributing to a debate. I’ve always believed my arguments were formal and mature, but could they have offended someone? Could I have put someone down too much? Could I have been too nit-picky or gone too in-depth?

Also, on the point of saying “Thank you” instead of a heart: I actually fought for a bit on the “thank you” side a few months ago when it was a big topic; I brought out that those few words mean way more than a number on your post. But recently, this has changed for the worse: The hearts actually mean more. Just like on social media, these hearts give you status. This ruins the idea of a close-knit community; it ruins the person-to-person communication and reduces it to a number.

Civilized discussions like this are what I love and value the most; I am most active on these sorts of threads (most time they are on Development Discussion). I feel like effort is more appreciated here and the quality of posts are higher (perhaps due to New Members needing Post Approval). I feel like I actually learn things there and am respected. I honestly feel that people will look past the fact that I am a New Member (and any spelling mistakes) and look at what I am saying as a whole and comment on that; People will do research and give a constructive counter-argument (or even contribute to my argument) and help me learn another side of the coin. Most importantly, people will respect your opinion and will agree to disagree. To them, relationships mean more than a topic that will eventually become irrelevant, and I really appreciate that. We need more of this on the DevForum. Our goal should not be to climb the ranks but to make and sustain relationships and help each other.

Thank you for having the courage to post this; We all appreciate it, Quenty.
And thank you all for making this an enjoyable, mature, and upbuilding discussion.

Edit: Another example of something frustrating. This great thread apparently got flagged. I’m glad they didn’t spend too much time on it and moved on but the fact it got flagged angers me a lot. This thread was actually very informative and put some light on the abuse of the physics engine, but got flagged in the process? It’s very disappointing.

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#45

I think the main problem right now with the dev forums is having to ready entire books worth of opinions on almost every thread. This thread alone has enough words to write a textbook. There is no way most people are going to read 40+ paragraphs…

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#46

Over the past few months, I’ve given up on the forum except for occasional check-ins. It is too late, in my eyes, to fix this. That’s why we all meet in discord communities to discuss and debate: Roblox has failed its older users by cutting out dialog.

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#47

Why is this post flagged… dev forums you live to disappoint another day.

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New Exploit - How To Squash
#48

I was just about to post the same thing…

OP, do you by any chance have a video of this happening from either a bystander or yourself?

1 Like
#50

Quick note: The above three posts (from the thread I linked in my previous post) got merged into our thread so don’t be confused (I was for a good 5 minutes before I figured it out).

I have found another problem. With this rank-up system, many new users believe they need to post a certain amount of times to rank up. This makes them believe that quantity is over quality. This disappoints me, as every user should be thoroughly thinking through what he is going to post and should proof-read it multiple times. This results in the many problems multiple people here are frustrated with: Wrong answers, thoughtless replies, “filler” posts, the list goes on, all because someone did not take the time to think and reread his post. If the point could come across that “quality is over quantity, not the other way around” to the New Members, I believe many problems will be solved. The problem with this though is that they are looking to impress a bot to rank up, not a smart, discerning human with morals.

3 Likes
#51

Same happened to me. I wanted to join because it was cool, but then after a while, it just kind-of… blew away.

Same here. I made a topic a while long time ago on: what is "lerp" used for then later on it gets flagged. Or a topic / post that has little to nothing wrong with it and it gets flagged. Sometimes I wonder if people are targeted on the devforum. Or if people only use the devforum to notice every little mistake about something, then flag it.

I feel the exact same way. At the time of typing out this reply I honestly get scared to post a topic / write a post or something… Afraid that people are not gonna care, or people are gonna hate you for making that post or something.

I feel the exact same way here I agree with that one 1000000 / 1000000.

Agreed.

Exactly the same here. People need to understand that this is the truth about the devforum, and there is no need to flag something that is true. Who would want to hear a bunch of lies? NOT ME.

2 Likes
#52

While I agree people are explaining their problems with the forums here, I hardly would consider it venting. But with each post, most have presented a solution too.

#53

One Reply:

I don’t want to reply multiple times so I will try to keep it in this one post by mentioning people.

@nick16757 I 100% agree, we should be utilizing the forums as a community, not an information center. That is really what the Developer Hub is for but right now, I feel the Developer Hub is not being used to its full purpose and potential, but rather used as a site to visit for quick info on scripting or something (like how the old wiki was used) I am sure the whole reason in the first place to go from ROBLOX Wiki to ROBLOX Developer Hub was to create this more organized, clean and informative space for not just quick information, but explanations, tutorials, the whole system. But right now it feels like a lot of things that should be on the Developer Hub is just being put in the DevForum’s instead, and were not using the Hub for this as we should. Using the Hub for all this stuff would probably fix a good chunk of the problem. Also, it kind of has an obvious sense to it too. I know if I was a new ROBLOX Developer, I’d expect new engine updates and stuff to be on the Developer Hub rather then the forums, that would make more sense to me.

@Mariofly5 With growth, problems are bound to come. The only way to fix these problems is to adapt constantly. Just looking at common history or events in your past, you can probably think of multiple moments where something has grown but that something never changed or adapted to the new number of people. There is nothing we can do about DevForum growing bigger, in fact, if ROBLOX continues to pursue the goal of more people developing on ROBLOX (Which I think we all want), the forums will only continue to grow. Really, that’s an accomplishment. And really, as the forum goes ROBLOX just needs to change it to work. We already saw one example of this with the new system for accepting new members into the forum. However, while I am glad this came, it felt long overdue even at its release. It almost feels as if ROBLOX decided to only add it at their breaking point (when they couldn’t handle the old system)

I think ROBLOX needs to be either quicker to make these changes or smarter to make good changes. And I think the first way is to prioritize the forums. I do completely agree when you say new members need to be better informed and thought. I generally believe one of the issues are the rules. They are kind of bulkish and intimidating to new members. Perhaps a more helpful tutorial or guide for new members would help better. Maybe ROBLOX can implement a more easy on the eyes interactive style tutorial when a new member signs up that goes page by page, step by step through the rules and then let them into the forum after they finish the tutorial.

@railworks2

This definitely agree. We are human beings, we are creative, we are resilient, and the fact was even here on this platform just proves it. But I think that people aren’t even getting a chance to express themselves, be who they really are, start acting like themselves so the forums aren’t so robotic and boring because DevForum not only has strict rules, but almost an entire strict guide on how to act, write, and interact with the forum in their own personal image. This is what I think is causing this major roadblock in the creative minds on DevForum, causing the forums not to be as great as they could be. And worst of all, DevForum strongly punishes those who even try to step into their personality. The second someone makes a joke or even writes an expression or something, everyone looks at them acting like they just set a house on fire. We have been thought to not even be a bit easy going on anyone, and we literally punish them so severely with not just flagging and strikes, but going as far as to put them in the ground and step on them. Embarrass them until they literally don’t want to even come back, which you can already see said from many people on this thread. That is the more severe punishment people probably don’t even realize their giving. We need to start acting a little bit more like human beings and actually treating others with respect and dignity not just interacting with them to get a solution, alike, or to put them down.

@DatOneRandomDude

This is understandable. It’s hard to interpret the complexities of the human mind. Not just here, but everywhere in life, we can run into these situations where we won’t understand how people really feel. But we can try to predict it and try to be friendly, tell them, “hey its alright dude, just get back up. You really got this.” and no, not the fake way of saying it at the end to not seem like a jerk. If you can’t dedicate a few sentences at the minimum just to be a friend, that’s honestly a bit sad.

I am honestly very glad you believe that a “thank you” can’t be expressed by a single button or notification. And I am glad you want to build relationships between developers, instead of battles. Its sad to see how many times I see people on DevForum talking behind their backs about other people on DevForum and why they hate them on other apps. We should feel comfortable on this forum and with the people in it. DevForum needs to start lifting the barriers, promoting emotion and interaction, and promoting the helpfulness of the forum, not the helpfulness of information. While information is important, there is already a place for that. The Developer Hub.

And yeah reading that thread you linked, it looks like people didn’t even bother asking or contributing or even helping out. They just pointed only the flaws and mistakes, flagged them and got over with it. “This seems like an abuse of physics”, “I am not sure this works”. Those lines help no one. No contribution, nothing. And they just flag it. This behavior needs to stop, even from the members and top contributors (not all, but I do see some)

@ScriptOn Haha, I thought the same thing as well. I even went through the thread just to understand why, but I honestly just couldn’t tell anything ithat was wrong. But I am sure someone nitpicked on just one tiny flaw and saw it as a reason to flag the whole thing, move on with their day, leaving without a single explanation. And if you look through the thread, you may notice how many people are quick to point flaws but leave without helping or even trying to explain anything. The lack of contributions and nfriendlyness is sdissapointing.

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#54

Been waiting for a user with enough experience to say these words for a long time, as I’ve expressed these types of thoughts myself recently but have lacked the audience that notable developers have to push the message out.

Feels good to know that this feeling can be somewhat be mutually agreed upon, albeit it being a small group of users here.

Personally, I feel like the transition from private forum with less than a thousand users to open platform that anybody can join has definitely taken it’s toll on the website, wether we as a group want to realize it or not. The former community of few that this website fostered for many years has suffered greatly for the sake of public discussion, and honestly, I’ve sadly come to terms with it as time has gone on.

Many people forget that this forum was originally started as an entity entirley seprate from the Roblox website, and was only recently (in the forums history) changed over to support Roblox as a whole.

1 Like
#55

I agree 100% but dont rlly wanna rant because it highkey pointless

#56

No its really not… Nothing will ever change if you give up before you even start. People speaking on this and growing this thread will only lead to it eventually being listened too. Maybe not soon, but hopefully eventually.

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#57

I would say that if you don’t want to express your opinion, you don’t have too. However, I should also note that by doing so, we actually got a response from a DevRel Staff Member. If nobody voices the issues, nothing is ever done about it. (just as @Sentross) said.

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#58

Spot on, touché. I’ve always been ticked off by that, to be honest, the public forums should have stayed, even if that meant making the public forum moderation more strict.

Now to add on further onto the original matter, I can’t help but feel like this “discussion” problem on the devForum was due to happen, clearly, I don’t know if it is just me or not, but ever since it became more “open” (e.g applications getting scrapped), I felt like that the forums started to become a more hostile environment, remember those “Omg new members bad!!!1” threads ? Well, I sort of feel like it is part of why some might feel that the forums are “hostile towards mistakes” or something like that.

#59

Devforums are flag trigger happy.
I have my own problems with the forums needing every post to be nothing but 100% productive generating a robotic feel unless it is in lounge. It really hinders community bonding when an official Roblox resource should be encouraging this. They still have no idea how much power one post of acknowledgment has.

The Roblox staff was much more hands on when everybody was here and there was a handful of us. They talked to us, shared WIP stuff etc in 2013. Now we just have PR updates with some flavor text to make us think they are still interacting.

I understand your fears and I am going to be brutally honest here to highlight the truth of the matter. A lot of us on the devforum are young. Back in 2013 the original lot of us were drama-starters and talked bad about everyone. It was very mob mentality but we all sort of stayed together on the forums.

Today while most people have grown up and chilled out, it hasn’t prevented the development of cliques in which they now keep their bad-mouthing there.

It is literally high school all over again where people go on here and act all nice and buddy buddy then go in Discord and talk horribly about people. This has been an issue since the inception of the forums.

At this point your own choice is to either A. Do work to stop caring about others thoughts on you or B. Stick to your own groups and only come here if necessary.

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