As a developer, it is too hard to use the forum because a majority of users are only here to comment on announcements as players, or are 13- users posing as 13+, or otherwise are posting for the sake of posting and not seriously interested in development.
Roblox should introduce tactical barriers for entry to the Developer Forum to refine the group that has access to the forum, without being overly restrictive. Some ideas to get you started:
Verify a user’s real name / age to automatically be promoted to a certain rank (deter 13- users)
Use information such as DevEx eligibility / history to promote the right users
Tie in information about a user’s created games/assets or Studio time
Additionally, Roblox should not stimulate non-developers into discovering the forum, here are some ideas to get started:
Do not make announcements that are about features/events not related to Roblox development
Do not link people to the forum from places on the website not intended for developers
Stop taking non-developer bug reports and feature requests on this forum; defer to customer support
Rewrite existing About/pinned posts to be extremely short/to-the-point and very clear about the fact that non-developers are not the target audience of this forum
Firmly punish people that are posting for the sake of posting or otherwise show bad intent
Hide user statistics entirely from user profiles to avoid users farming Likes or other meaningless numbers
If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would improve my experience using this forum because I can hope to see something interesting again some day.
I do like this however, I personally wouldn’t trust Roblox with my personal information. I already shared some of it for the sake of DevEx, however with how there have been more and more staff accounts being hijacked, I wouldn’t want to post my information somewhere where it could be stolen unless it’s completely inaccessible from the DevForum.
They don’t need to store or handle it themselves. There are plenty of identity verification products out there. Only thing that matters is verifying that a user is actually the age they say they are.
I think they should also link roblox.com bans to here, since a user literally made a (likely trolling) topic while they were terminated on roblox.com, and several times i’ve seen the forum used as an alternative to Support - Roblox (and to no avail for them because the community is not staff ) because the user was terminated on the main site however they lost access to their account through roblox.com, so they should lose their forum privileges as well. There also would not be much point in using the devforum under a terminated Roblox account since you would not be developing on it
It can be a healthy combination of any or none of the above suggestions I provide, as long as there is a tactical and automatable set of metrics that are used.
Great idea, I’d like to suggest some extra things. Roblox can use the same verification system as they do for GDPR.
Maybe separating minors? Required portfolios in the TalentHub?
Maybe use the DevHub for announcements? For critical bugs, use status.roblox.com more?
Things need to change and they need to change fast. We’re past acceptableness at this stage, you can either recover this ship or we’re going to go deeper into the ocean of no return
Not just DevEx, but other information Roblox has on us that can verify how trustworthy a user is. Examples:
QA membership.
Fast Track enrollment.
Bug Bounty program signal.
There’s plenty of other information that Roblox can use to determine if a user is trustworthy, I am shocked that this isn’t being used.
I don’t think I would be comfortable with sharing my ID; however in the event there is a user accused of being underage, then Roblox should require ID verification similar to how discord does it. If a user does not comply they shall not be allowed back onto the forum.
I’d also like to see more punishments on the Roblox accounts themselves; I.E. if a user is raiding the forums, that user must be banned off the forum and off Roblox; I do not understand why this is not the case.
Not sure why this isn’t even the case already, why do we still have badges? What good do badges do? Same thing with stats.
I don’t agree with separating minors as a significant portion of the developer population are minors; that doesn’t make them any less mature however many of the trolls are likely minors. I’d suggest fast-tracking 18+ members of the community into the forum and doing a more through search into members who apply and are minors.
I’ve said it earlier and I’ll say it again: The forum’s current state is unacceptable. Change needs to come, many users who are mature are leaving the forum in favor of alternatives because of this reason.
Catering to a younger age causes the issues the forum has. I don’t think buildthomas means that the forum shouldn’t allow or stop catering to minors, but rather, appeal to them more so the forum can be more usable for 18+.
Typically 18+ users are more mature than 13+ users. We’re at 13+ and it’s not working, that and users aged 18+ are more likely to own IDs compared to 13+ (so can prove their identity better).
Maybe 16? But 18 is a good start. Things need to change and an increased focus on more key demographics is part of that.
There are too few adults here on the forum, and as an adult myself I relate better to other adults in similar stages of their life and the problems and difficulties they experience as developers. 13-18 year olds have completely different mindsets, problems and insights compared to people who pursue Roblox as a hobby or as a professional career in their 20s. Hope that makes sense.
Yes, I fully support this as their are some people on the forums who don’t really care about development in general and just post the most random topics for clout or likes and then there at people who use the fourms as a tool for development and are engaged. I do think Roblox should implement these and focus on the forums as well and towards developers on the forums also. Maybe a team of some sort to add these?
He did not suggest an absolute requirement of 18+, but rather to design the forum in such a way that would promote 18+ users, whereas the current setup discourages them due to the lack of mature discussion.
I do agree with you on almost all of your suggestions. However, I might have to disagree with the one that prefers 18+ users instead of 13+ users. Someone did a poll interview a while back and one of the questions asked for the user’s age range:
As you can see, only around 10% of the DevForum community is over 18 according to this poll, and there are some great developers I know that are under 18 that have made significant contributions to the DevForum. Moderation history should have a much greater influence on forum promotions than age, but I do understand your point.
The DevForum is open to all developers, whether they are using it as a pass-time, or if they are using it as a career. However, we need to ensure that all discussions that are taking place on the DevForum are related to development. I personally wouldn’t mind hiding statistics from profiles because statistics turn the DevForum into a social media platform instead of a professional development resource.
And even though I am only a member, I would support removing this lounge category I have heard about that only regulars can access and you can post off-topic things, and as far as I know, it is only here today because of legacy. This is making many members use the DevForum as a social media platform and also making them try to get their stats really high so they can become a regular.
In addition to my previous suggestions, the moderators should also look into feature requests about the improvement of the forum. Here are a few topics that should be noticed:
If we emphasize that the target of the DevForum is for developers and not for people who think it’s the “new Roblox Forums”, it will solve most of the problems regarding #development-discussion and #resources, and a lot of the garbage that is produced in these categories will not be created as often.
I’m fairly sure I have it down as “prefer” 18+ users, as in stimulate acquisition in higher age ranges. I’m not saying anyone currently 18- should not be allowed to participate. Anyone who is legally 13+ is fine to have on the forum if they follow posting rules and etiquette.
Thank you for posting this. The devforum has gotten completely out of hand. As a developer, I see two main problems:
People who do not satisfy the term “developer” are overusing the developer forum in ways it was not intended
“Real”/serious developers are being drowned out, by spam, and by the large amount of questions or posts that frankly don’t belong here even if about development. Most of the development questions asked here can be answered easily by searching the wiki and most of the development related discussions are completely pointless
While I’m not a widely known or big developer, I take development seriously and have been at it for several years. It’s a significant source of income for me and it really sucks that all of the high quality questions and showcases are completely drowned out.
Roblox needs to take a serious step at preventing users who shouldn’t be here from using the forum. It’s the developer forum not the roblox forum 2.0.
Like @buildthomas said, there needs to be tactical barriers.
I would also add that it may be time to reverse membership ranks for some people since even if roblox plugs the hole there is still mold in the container.
I didn’t get into the forum until the first membership criteria change but I’ve read it for years and it’s quite sad that all the innovative discussions are mostly gone.
Delete 2/3 of the posts in development discussion lately and nothing bad will happen. There is a reason there are now twitter accounts that like to post screenshots of silly posts in development discussion. It seems like they all have endless content since they really do.
And frankly I have always loved seeing new and inexperienced developers start to learn how to code or build, but as harsh as this may sound I mean no offense:
The majority of the devforum should be for older, more experienced and serious developers. Making a super basic tycoon or obby as a 13 year old does not make you a developer in my mind, seeing as how 90% of our posts now are from that player group and regular players.
The forum is heading to become the next Roblox Forum v2, where its a meme and is too annoying to view anymore.
I don’t have any input for a resolve, just wanted to thank OP for bringing this to light. Miss the dev forum content from 2 years back, was very knowledgeable and enjoyable.
) because the user was terminated on the main site however they lost access to their account through 
% support for this.