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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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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.
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I agree 100% but dont rlly wanna rant because it highkey pointless
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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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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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.
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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Well, there is another problem. The forums being open should be fine honestly, but the thing is DevForum has an over age 13 limit. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people joining the forums now are not even 13 but simply lied about their age, and they may be causing some piece of the trouble as well breaking the limit and rules.
But on our part, I feel we should be a little more understanding and help they understand what is considered unprofessional while also making sure we’re not computer-like perfect. But a lot of people seem to harsh against others.
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(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 1 hour unless flagged)
Couldn’t agree with you more.
There are some particular individuals that actually assist me with post quality (a particular Community Sage that knows who s/he is 
); I genuinely appreciate it. Others (particularly the ones known to flood threads) make opinionated responses that are self-contradictory, false, or unreasonable. I can easily respond to their invalid posts, but I feel as if it’s not worth posting—my response would indeed become low-quality. This brings me to another point: how I want to be known.
I make more mistakes in one day than anyone would make in their life, but I wouldn’t want to be known as one of those “low-quality posters.” Frequently, I ignore users who respond literal garbage (ie “This huge build by {the best builder in the world} is overpriced, bring it down to R$5!”) or plain-on, obviously-false, information (ie “2/2 = 6!”). However, I feel somewhat odd for being affiliated with these quality-lacking comments, even if I’m hardly affiliated.
I used to try avoiding specific categories like #public-collaboration:public-recruitment specifically because that’s the quality-lacking central, but nowadays I can hardly even post on any categories - either because of prior reasons or because I’m not engaged with the thread itself. Personally, I try limiting myself to certain threads - particularly threads that introduce complicated topics such as math, coding, etc. however I hardly contain knowledge about programming, and don’t come across many math-related topics.
Honestly, I believe it has to do with:
- Abuse of permission
- Race to promotion
- Believing that they are major authorities
This may sound odd, and is my personal belief, but I think the forum is too open, thus vulnerable to low-quality posters, which ultimately intimidates medium/high-quality posters. The fore-stated also supports why many of us feel scared to post.
Thanks for your input, and have a great evening.
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Thinking about this post further, education has come up both in mine and other people’s replies.
So I want to provide a direct solution for forums to do to ensure correct education.
- Require the completion of the certified badge
- Require the completion of the read guidelines badge
- Requite the completion of the Licensed badge
- Maybe require the use of the autobiographer badge
These 4 badges, I believe are the bare basics for all new members to complete to understand the basics of the DevForums and how to do basic tasks. These tasks means you know how to use the platform at a basic level, and you have read the rules.
What the badges over
Certified badge (Basic user tutorial)
- Bookmarking
- Link embed
- Emoji
- Mentioning
- Bold and italics
- Quotes (both formatting and posts)
- Like posts
- Image upload
- Flagging
- Searching a post
Read guidelines explains itself
Autobiographer - Fill out profile info
Licensed (Advanced user tutorial)
- Editing a post
- Deleting a post
- Undelete
- Linking to a tag or catagory
- Changing notification level per post
- Polling
- Hide details
As for education of more advanced and veteran users, this is an issue deeply embedded within the forums and I’m not fully sure of where to go on that respect.
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I think its an awesome idea to require certain badges that should have been a requirement from the start. I I love your approach of bringing them into the community and getting them to join it properly. But besides those few badges, I believe the entire ranking system of DevForum should be removed. The community seems to have turned DevForum into a workplace where everyone is battling for the next top spot. DevForum should be a community, not a job.
I truly believe this whole ranking system is what is causing instability kind of like @UmbrellaIdiot9 pointed out in his post. Where people think they are above someone else or more important, leading other people to follow that as well and believe they are less important which in turn leads to competition, which then leads to the race to get ranked up, which make the whole entire DevForum a battle every post, every second someone is on this site, to get ranked up. If we removed the intimidating factor, then the rest of the subproblems will be removed along with it.
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Those who’ve seen the post and/or just liked it and haven’t actually replied, I want to see you the most to actually give your opinions. For me, things aren’t going to improve if the silent majority just watches by. Without your ideas and thoughts, it’ll be those who actually contribute directly who’ll get all the say. Now into the reply…
In terms of badges, for me most of the badges give me a reason to try and 100% and they allow and actively promote posts and replies which promote engagement. For some, it may mean that you have to create content (links, replies, posts, etc.) which mean that you have to create content which a large amount has to agree to, that could be a debate on the use of badges to promote such actions. But moving back to your main point, ranking within the DevForums.
In the end, the DevFourms require a form of governance and I would in near all times would reject such an idea. DevRel as a team covers a large amount of content (although this has been reduced over time) and some human volunteers are required, these are our Community Sages and Post Approval teams. Unless there is a better idea or a great reason to remove those kinds of teams, I would personally object as such.
In terms of Top Contributors, I would love to hear your (both @Sentross and the community as a whole) views on that and if you feel that it has a place on the DevForums, to highlight users who have shown that they are worthy contributors to show what the best is like.
Looking at merging new member and member together, it’s quite a hard thing to answer to be honest. At the very least, it would be a good experiment but I’m not sure if it’s the right path or even the answer. It could mean that the goalpost is moved to Top Contributors and other teams. Would this migration be better? It’s something again I don’t really know but I would love to know your thoughts. On a scale from 1 to 10, 1 being the worst idea. 10 being the best idea, how do you feel about merging these two roles together?
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
0 voters
Finally, I wonder what’s your thoughts on the removal of inactive DevFourms users, such as those who just do not look at the DevFourms for 2 years. Should they be removed?
- Yes.
- No.
- Yes but let’s change how long.
- Other (Reply below)
0 voters
I prefer the third option, C: never post anything and just read patch notes and interesting articles.
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I just received this message an hour ago. What better example then this…
https://gyazo.com/4a726a7ae1db9bbe27bc1dc5bfdaca1f
I did not display the username, but I will say that it was a message from another New Member… This is the kind of things I am talking about. DevForum has attempted to mold these members into such professional people, but they are not doing it right. They are giving the wrong idea entirely and its negatively affecting the community. Either ROBLOX more strictly teaches the rules to new members, or no longer make DevForum open, or my preferred choice remove the need for 100% perfect perfectionism and just keep it at a regular realistic amount so people are not so pressured to do it right.
And while writing this post, I got a reply from him.
https://gyazo.com/5181cf968a8d44c46433bc5b508d54e3
https://gyazo.com/1ddf3bce92418d8c3c67dd2dd6ca978f
The problem is more then clear.
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Thats valid too.
No doubt. Its been a problem and at least some people at Roblox know it. Roblox originally designed this forum to accommodate small amounts of users with little regard to growth. The surge of egotism is a repeat of history (Seriously, those PMs comes from the same childish mentality of 15 year olds who think they got it all figured out.) and the noise is worse than it ever has been. People said the forums would be useless if they opened the floodgates like they did. Now everybody is complaining that there is little good content. Who would have guessed? I doubt the Roblox engineers even like using this place. Not to mention you can’t even post things in off-topic now without flag abuse.
All the actual devforum members are going to leave this place and it’ll become a ego/feeding ground for new members if something doesn’t change. Then we’ll be right back where we started with the old forums. Many have already abandoned it.
This would be an amazing feature. I’ve seen it in practice on other forums (2 min cooldown) I have been on and it greatly reduces the amount of reactionary responses a post gets. Not enough people will sit down and actually take in what is being said. Reactionary responses do no good and only serves to promote half thought out responses and trigger defensive/attacking behavior.
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