I think the collaboration section should be kept private and invisible to non-devforum members.
A lot of developers using this platform are here looking for potential business opportunities as they have managed to make Roblox somewhat of a job. Considering this, it is likely that these developers want to keep thing strictly professional and for good job offers to be posted on the thread in question. While non-devforum members can be professional and also great developers, there are also a lot of people that aren’t so professional and are also new to developing and so aren’t in a position to collaborate with other developers regardless.
I’m all for opening up access to different resources as it helps to grow the aspiring developer community that Roblox has grown over the years, however I also feel that Roblox should cater a little to those that have made it as a developer and want to continue working with other creators amongst the devforum community.
Not only this, but a lot of developers wish to keep their development job opportunities and requests private as they do not wish to be spammed by people that aren’t necessarily professional about a job that they may be looking for or someone they may be looking to hire.
There’s definitely times I’d probably want to keep it private. For instance, if I’m giving a large payout to someone for work, I don’t want to get spammed on my Twitter DM by people just trying to make money.
It’s pretty easy to just share a collaboration effort publicly on other mediums. Or even just a screenshot of the post on here.
But I don’t feel heavily opinionated either way really.
I am definitely against making the category public.
I understand you want to expand the community, but whenever I post openings to the DevForum it is because:
everyone who can see the post has passed basic moderation and has had their skills recognized by the Developer Relations Team;
if something goes wrong (scamming, etc.), most (including myself) are confident the appropriate repercussions can be easily arranged, so the probability of any of that happening is much lower;
it is assumed that DevForum members will never go around “leaking” content restricted to them, so the basic ideas and descriptions behind games can be explained without a great risk of being copied.
As I see it, making collaborations public would lead to users:
being much less descriptive in their job posts, in most cases just posting things like Builder needed for $200, negotiable. Contact me for more details.;
just overall opting to use alternative channels when looking for developers, like limiting their search to the #collaboration channel on the DevForum Discord server;
That said, I don’t think the same would really apply to the #collaboration:portfolios sub, but I guess it’s not that useful on its own.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that making the category public would force users to adapt a new writing style (e.g., no cursing, no offsite-links, no references to external services like Discord and Trello, etc.)
Glad I read a bit before making a post pretty much suggesting the same thing.
I think that having a public and private collaboration category (public being less aimed at devforum members and more aimed at people who may see it when browsing the devforum) would be a really good idea.
I agree with most others in that Portfolios should be visible so that non-members and New Members have the knowledge of experienced developers that would be willing to be paid to do certain tasks, but that the Collaboration section should not be visible for a more safe experience in terms of reliability and history of the non/new member.
Personally I think that the collab section should be visible to everyone, While this forum is filled with great talent, I know for sure that there are a lot of others that have yet to join the forums as members and are missing out on great opportunities.
Making this collaboration section visible to everyone not only gives us more people to fill in the jobs we need done but it also gives those who are not in the forum a chance to build a portfolio and to network with top developers so they too would have a better chance on joining the forums.
I get that there is a down side of our posts will be seen by people who aren’t of enough skill or maturity, but that’s a small price to pay for unlocking a mine filled with undiscovered talent.
I don’t think that the collaboration should be public. There’s a reason there are people in the Devforums and those that are not.
They’re verified, higher skilled, and are generally qualified.
If y’all let it public for anyone to see, that means we’ll have so many unqualified people applying for jobs and it lowers the overall quality of the collaboration category.
It also opens up room for a lot more scammy people to apply to job posts.
In addition to what I previously said, I think there could be options, if y’all are deadset on doing this. Public (everyone sees it), Private (Only devforum members see it). Have a box to click on when making your post.
Or just have it where you can share a link and people can view it if they have the link, otherwise it doesn’t show up for everyone.
This is not possible with the forum software we use.
This would be problematic because it would not show up for forum members either. If you’re suggesting keeping it normal for forum members but direct link only for non-members, Discourse does not support that either.
I like it, but as people say being flooded with requests isn’t great. It also means discord links and handles will need to be removed.
Some people don’t like their work being shown to the public, either, at least until it is in a presentable state (so it doesn’t get stolen, for example).
For these reasons I think it’d be better to have them available in #bulletin-board or in a public version of the collaboration category.
Portfolios should also be public as with what others have suggested already – however I believe they should be unlisted.
(Discord links would still need to be removed, though.)