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

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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.

2 Likes
#60

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.

2 Likes
#61

(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 1 hour unless flagged)

#62

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 :eyes:); 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.

4 Likes
#64

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.

  1. Require the completion of the certified badge
  2. Require the completion of the read guidelines badge
  3. Requite the completion of the Licensed badge
  4. 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.

5 Likes
Improve tutorial for new users
Improve tutorial for new users
#65

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.

2 Likes
#66

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

#67

I prefer the third option, C: never post anything and just read patch notes and interesting articles.

3 Likes
#68

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.

5 Likes
#69

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.

1 Like
#70

I’m not the only one saying that the developer forum expanded too quickly. Not trying to sound elitist, but I got so much more use out of the developer forum back in 2016-2017 before it was opened up to all. I believe that it should be open to everyone, but not to all. The quality of the devforums has decreased severely. Gone are the days of seeing constant valuable posts and genuine discussion. Hopefully we can one day return to the days of 2016-2017, but the devforums seriously needs a revamp in order to promote proper continuous and educational discussion.

14 Likes
#71

I can’t believe someone said those things to you over a very minor thing. The last sentence in the last message really shocks me because no one should be saying, “you really don’t belong here.” I think a lot of new members are taking this forum way too seriously and trying way to hard to get promoted and stand out. Something needs to be done about this as lots of people are leaving or laying low on this forum because they are afraid/don’t want to get these sorts of messages. This forum has turned into a place where you can’t do a single thing wrong without it being picked up on.

There is also way too many low quality replies scattered around the forum stating what a user has done wrong. If someone posts something in the wrong category I can grantee you the first 3 or 4 replies will state that the post is in the wrong place. There is no need to have 4 replies stating that a post in in the wrong place, all you need is one or even better just flag the post and let a moderator deal with it. This way you don’t clog the forum up with lots of low quality posts.

My thoughts on what could be done
At the moment is is extremely easy to get into the developers forum because as far as I know all you need to do is read for a certain amount of time. There needs to be more stricter requirements to even be promoted to new member. For example a requirement could be that you have to read the rules before you are promoted.

This forum is also lacking discussions. At the moment this forum has turned into a massive support hub. We need to have a complete rework of the whole forum to create places where discussions can happen and not just support. I really like the idea that @Quenty has with making a new category called projects.

2 Likes
#72

I agree, I got more use out of the devforum in that span of time. I do still post things when I need help with something, but from ~2016-2017 I enjoyed being on the forum more and engaging in discussion. Nowadays I find it hard to do that, but I don’t know what my true reasons are for that.

Time to start our own Inner Circle™ Devforum

2 Likes
#73

I agree completely @Quenty. The categories need to be reorganized so that ones that actually facilitate and encourage discussion are closer to the top and get more attention.

I also agree with the point that’s been expressed that people are aggressive and toxic. This place is starting to remind me of the Scripters forum on Roblox’s old forum…

Beyond those two points though I think I disagree with everything else being said here. There’s no ‘problem’ with flagging in the way that people like @ScriptOn assert. Nor is there a problem with people not saying ‘thank you’ to everyone they want to thank like people like @Sentross are saying. Label me toxic if you want, but please be realistic. A half dozen people flagging something out of 10,000 people isn’t a systemic issue. That’s half a dozen bad actors. People shouldn’t be filling threads with things that the majority of readers will just skip over. This forum is for everyone, not just the people who someone is saying thank you to.

There are real issues to be addressed that have been brought up here. Let’s not muddy the water with things that have no bearing or are outright off topic like posting threads that have been flagged with comments like “this is ridiculous…”.

5 Likes
#74

I think the post cool down is an excellent idea. It will force people to put more thought into their posts. They will have no choice but to see the situation at every angle, resulting in a much more high-quality reply.

Although while that is a good solution for length and clarity, it won’t change the main issue which is the attitude of members involved in the issue.

#75

This is a common problem associated with rapid growth but as harsh as it feels to say… I agree. I will always support the ambition and determination of any person who wants to be a developer. But I don’t feel those people should be allowed in this forum without first proving themselves. I’ve seen many people who really want to be developers but very basic (making simple out of standard things, staying small, etc.) I am talking about the people who just throw in a million free models into a game without doing anything themselves and consider that trying to be a developer. Is it a path? Yes. I am sure we all started at that point and grew to come here when we were new and young. And yes, I am essentially saying people should rough it out in the beginning without help on this forum.

Once again, sure this sounds harsh but I think giving them the first few months to figure stuff out on their own will only grow their experience not only in developing but developer conversation. They will be in an environment to make mistakes without penalty of being removed from the forums. They will learn from those mistakes, adapt, and build their own style of communication. Then if we let them into the forum, they’d be much better equipped. This is kind of what we did before we made the forums open. But I believe this way is better than letting these complete beginners start here on the DevForum to only be improperly molded into the forums image with no background experience or knowledge to know whats going on.

And to add on, ROBLOX is a platform full of kids. Yes, the top developers are most of the time young adults or either kid who probably started earlier and have built even more experience. But besides that the majority are still learning not only to develop, but being the fact most of the platform is full of kids, they are also still learning proper social skills. So to let the forum be open to all is opening it up to developers (kids or not) that have not built the communication skill set needed. Of course, mentioning kids is only one example. When I was in middle school, there were plenty of middle school kids not as mature as I was (since I spend a lot of time communicating with older developers at the time) and even in high school, I notice that once in a while.

And sure, DevForum does not let accounts under 13. But many people don’t even put in their real age, so by letting in everyone, we are literally letting in everyone.

#76

Hey everyone,

We just wanted to assert that we’re actively listening to your feedback and interested in improving the forum as a result of it.

Going forward, we’re going to set up some focus groups to meet with some of you to get a better understanding of some of the points you’re raising.

It’s really great to receive such passionate feedback about the forum. There’s a lot of potential to improve based on your feedback, and it’s incredibly well-timed too: our Q4 goal with the Community Sages is to improve the experience of using the forum for power users and those who want to have in-depth development discussions.

Your feedback honestly could not have come at a better time.

Thanks,
coefficients & Nightgaladeld

25 Likes
Add a feedback category so the support channels don't get flooded
#77

Virtually anyone can join and post in the dev forum. I appreciate that you do not lay the blame on new members, but this unrestricted access is definitely harmful to the dev forums.

I’ve been reading dev forum posts for awhile without really making an account, and I was surprised to find reading only a couple of articles while signed in registered me as a member.

There is a 13 age limit, but honestly young kids will fake their age anyways. A huge amount of dev forum members seek recognition and the forum’s incentive systems make it not much better than a glorified twitter. I barely check forums anymore, only going through to dig up older/actually useful posts.

#78

FWIW the beta user thread is preprocessed by a bot so it’s quicker to deal with for DevRel at high request volume, so they were actually trying to be helpful. The bot expects the format in OP of that topic.

I’m not sure if just their responses were inappropriate or if some response to the message you sent aggravated them before that, but in any case feel free to flag stuff in DMs too if it’s inappropriate. Staff look at those flags too.

4 Likes