Hey!
I have noticed that people who tend to help never get some sort of reward, now, before you say: “But you shouldn’t get one!! You should do it for no return”, I mean like a medal.
It can be like badges, but more shiny and harder to get. You can favourite 1-2 that you have and they get put on the summary page for quick view.
I feel like some people who are really dedicated should be recognised somehow. I know is a thing but it doesn’t mean much after a day or two,
I think people need to recommend them and maybe every month there is some quick medal give away to the people who the forums mods believe deserve one, there can be multiple types, but these could be good: Dedicated, Friendly, Active.
If someone gets a medal, it’s basically a aesthetic / I can be trusted sort of badge
If this gets added, then I think some dedicated people who deserve it can be noticed for there work.
The forums should be “de-gamified” as much as possible, to prevent people from trying to collect all the medals and badges like it’s some sort of Steam achievement.
You shouldn’t need incentive to be helpful. Otherwise, why are you even on the forums?
Exactly. The forums is a place to find, receive, and give help as well as feedback, and should not be treated as a competitive environment, as that is not what the forums were intended to be in the first place.
Plus I feel like they had something like this awhile ago with Top Contributors, Regular Ranks, etc, and some people got really toxic about it, and some who had these ranks would rub it in other people’s faces, while the people who didn’t have these ranks would just complain and demand that they get them.
All in all, I don’t think Roblox should promote the Developer forum as a competitive environment, but rather a laid back environment that you can enter without feeling like you need to prove yourself to be useful to anyone here.
As for regular rank (trust level), you actually do get added benefits, like the ability to post in #bug-reports and #feature-requests so I can see why some people complain and ‘demand’ that role.
AFAIK this did not happen, the issue with these ranks (thinking specifically of top contributor) was not at all like that. The issue was that users with these titles were perceived as “more correct” or “more official” than other users when responding to topics, even if they were misinformed, and it was not really possible to remove this role from people due to social complications (it’s kind of mean?). A few users also acted excessively and started inadvertently causing problems while trying to gain these roles artificially. The system to award these to people as well was fully manual and thus unscalable, and error prone.
This environment is just not good for “awards”, and has proven that multiple times in a few different ways.
Like what has been said on this topic already, you shouldn’t need an incentive to give a helping hand. If you know the answer to someone’s question then the best thing to do is to give them it.
Helping people alone should be enough for pretty much anyone, and I think a medal system would make people forget that.
If you’re on the Dev Forum often, then you’re bound to bump into some people that you’ve seen before. I know I have, and I’m sure some people have seen me on here from time to time as well. This forum isn’t a place for getting recognition, it’s a place to give feedback and help. The recognition is earned with time and patience, it isn’t something you should strive for.
People already do annoying things for hearts and solutions (ex: making pointless, spammy DD topics, creating excessive help topics then marking themselves as solution a few mins later, etc.).
Adding more things like this is the opposite direction the forums should go.
To be fair, you said:
And your only reason was that it’s like a medal. A medal is still a reward/return, you said so here:
All this is is giving people who actually try some attention. Someone brags on the forums, that’s off-topic, someone brags off forums, that’s not your issue, just ignore it.
Just because people can’t brag doesn’t mean that they don’t want it, correct? As I said, people do dumb things for hearts and solutions, so it makes sense they would do the same for medals. Plus, there are already badges. In what way would this make the forums better?
It’s not against the rules explicitly. #development-discussion is basically a dumpster fire, and moderation shouldn’t take action against someone self marking unless it’s very certain they are just spamming topics. They do have genuine questions, they just don’t attempt to solve them until after writing their topic.
There are badges on the Dev Forum already. They’re accessible from your Dev Forum profile page (Summary > Badges).
There’s even an option to favorite badges if you want to, so I think your idea is similar to an already implemented feature for the most part.
If you want to know if someone’s received 25 likes on a reply or if they’ve been on the Dev Forum for a year, then you can find out that information already.
Medals are rewards, by the way. Your entire post was about the same idea, so even if I only read a tiny portion of it the general concept is still there.
Things given to those who do good can be used by people who do bad. Giving people a reason to get something like a medal can make them do things that people dislike and frown upon.
The people with recognition are the ones who don’t talk about it.
This is a perk. This is something to try and earn. This is an incentive for people to do whatever they can to get this badge or medal or whatever so they seem trustworthy.
Also I looked at your edit you made to your post, and what you suggested was practically the same thing as the Top Contributor, Regular, etc, roles that I already mentioned and talked about why they were a problem for some people. The only difference is that they don’t have immediate perks, however like I stated above, having the title of “Trustworthy” or “Reliable” or “Recognized” or whatever will appear to be a perk to a lot of people, and my worry is that people who are asking for help will only seriously consider the advice given by people with these badges, meaning that if you want to be helpful, you’ll have to have this badge, and how do you get this badge/medal?
You’ll probably have to be active on the forums. And so suddenly, we find people creating topics for really no reason. Like other people said, these topics may have legitimate questions, so the moderators cannot immediately remove the topic. Then later, they just solve their own problem and mark their reply as the solution.
Plus, the badges that have already been implemented into the DevForums is enough in my opinion.
You should not have to have incentives in order to want to help someone.
is a thing but it doesn’t mean much after a day or two,