I think that’s the issue. The Unity community is consisted of more mature developers and the age framework is completely different. Here in Roblox, it seems like many people lack this type of maturity, cause they simply don’t want to behave, something that needs to be changed immidiately.
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Okay, and what would you rather see? If you look at the thread and it seems useless, why go into it?
If you’re looking for something specific (like EgoMoose’s cool new stuff) there are specific subforums for it. What do you want out of Developer Discussion? For it to be the HackerNews of Roblox? I’m sorry, but Roblox is a game and game development platform designed to be kid-friendly - you aren’t going to get HackerNews quality threads.
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I find some topics on #development-discussion pretty meaningful and interesting, and I find worth replying to. But when I keep running into topics like these mentioned above, it’s hard to contain yourself.
No? #lounge is the equivalent to #general-chat. #development-discussion is for meaningful discussions related to Roblox, not about a funny meme you saw on the internet.
Also, hundreds of members are joining each week, can you imagine the way DevForum will look in a month or two? We need to solve this before it’s too late.
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Roblox is a platform, not a game. It being a platform for game development is correct though. It doesn’t look like you fully read the OP, or understand the target audience of the devforum. The devforum is strictly 13+.
The forum is simply not as useful for more experienced developers, the point of the feature request is to change that so it is useful for everyone, not just starting developers.
Please don’t tell people to just “ignore” “dumb” topics — there are far too many new users joining that do not care for forum etiquette posting everywhere, which clutter forum sorts. “Ignoring” is not a solution.
Developers that will actually benefit from it and don’t use it for miscellaneous topics won’t have an issue getting in 
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I have a hard time believing that anyone browses Development Discussion other than to kill time or maybe occasionally to run into some inspiration to make a game. So
- You’re browsing it to kill time, ignore stupid stuff and look at cool stuff
- You’re browsing it for inspiration, and there will never be enough threads of this quality to expect anything anyway
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It’s already hard enough to find “cool stuff” among low-effort and off-topic topics at #development-discussion . And as @sjr04 mentioned:
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The forum is simply not as useful for more experienced developers, the point of the feature request is to change that so it is useful for everyone, not just starting developers.
When has the forum ever been useful for more experienced developers outside of the threads someome makes something cool?
Please don’t tell people to just “ignore” “dumb” topics — there are far too many new users joining that do not care for forum etiquette posting everywhere, which clutter forum sorts. “Ignoring” is not a solution.
Sounds like what’s actually needed is better moderation, not higher entry barriers.
Developers that will actually benefit from it and don’t use it for miscellaneous topics won’t have an issue getting in
No idea about you, but if the DevForum is going to require me to verify my ID so I can post a question about how to make my metatable work I don’t think I’m ever using it again.
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The devforum literally started as an “elite group” where it was invite only, eventually they opened up applications and dropped those to let anyone in. If you read the solution (by a staff member) of this topic, Roblox’s vision is to be an open platform. Just because it is open does not mean it should all of a sudden be impossible to use for more experienced developers. So we can say before the forums went completely open that is probably when. But going back to the old times is obviously not a good idea.
We need both. While I am not the author of the OP I invite you to at least read it, all the concerns are addressed there as well as in replies.
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I’m so surprised that the developer forum about a platform designed for 10 year olds that you browse to kill time doesn’t have posts of as high of a quality as you’d expect.
And this sucked because people who would otherwise greatly benefit from the forum couldn’t get in.
The staff member’s answer hints at something far more reasonable, which is an exclusive space within the DevForum for more experienced developers.
That is what the OP is suggesting when he/she says
Verify a user’s real name / age to automatically be promoted to a certain rank (deter 13- users)
I think there is a misunderstanding here, my point is that the forum should cater to developers of all skill levels, for the past year or two the forum has only done so for newer developers. It can still be open, but if certain users are not going to take development seriously they should not be in the forum as they are unlikely to benefit from it or contribute.
That says to a certain rank, e.g. promoting them to TL2 if they are verified, not necessarily that you need to provide that information to even post.
Also going back to
The devforum is 13+, we are talking about the devforum, not the main platform. Yes, underage users joining/wanting to join is inevitable, but there should be higher restrictions so the amount of them joining is much smaller, and if possible, zero.
off topic
A feature request: since most of these users try logging into the devforum via their main (for which its birthdate is correctly configured), they make an alt and set the birthdate to a date over 13 years ago. The IP or entire device could be banned from creating an account until the user is 13.
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How do you “cater” to a more skilled developer? What could you possibly need aside for maybe an exclusive subforum? What are you coming to the DevForum for that currently doesn’t exist? Do you expect Developer Discussion to be the equivalent of a Roblox Developer subreddit?
So I would never get TL2. Sounds annoying.
But because the average age of a Roblox player is like, 8-9 or something, you’d certainly expect most current or aspiring developers to be 13-15. The number of developers who actually make reasonably high-quality stuff on this platform that are 18+ is probably <1000.
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I want a place where I can discuss development professionally with similar peers. The devforum is currently too far balanced in the favor of new developers or people who are not here to talk about development at all and instead just rant about Roblox/etc. If I ask a question here at my level of experience I will not be able to get useful feedback or a resolution. So I’m asking for the target audience to be made more specific or to have better content sorts, so that I can use this forum properly again.
Not asking for an “insider’s club”, you are putting that into my mouth. Forum is publicly visible currently and that is totally fine. Anyone can log in and instantly participate by liking/viewing posts.
If you don’t have anything meaningful to say, refrain from posting instead of acting up for no reason.
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Many places do not accept birth certificates as valid ID.
Not all Roblox developers are Roblox game developers, many people (like myself) are more interested in developing tools and libraries for developers to use, rather than fully fledged games, and while I will admit I’m not the greatest of resources to the forum, I do still think I should be at least allowed in, despite the fact that I have never devexed, and my game only has about 4k visits.
You don’t have to have made a good game, or even be a good developer to make a game that makes a load of Robux, and likewise, you can be a great developer, but not want to monetise. You can be an amazing scripter, but without knowledge of building, game design, etc, not many people are going to play your game
Yes, In your location it might be easy to get ID, however in some places ID might not be available to minors, require parental consent, or cost money.
I propose a “reputation” system, where new members are allowed to post in certain forums such as development resources & help, and reply to some others, with stricter moderation standards, and if they get enough likes or higher ranked members can remove/add reputation for that user to access the greater forum.
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That’s fine, please review this post:
The list in the first post is just a suggestion and it doesn’t mean it would be “you need to meet all of these”. Roblox wouldn’t make the criteria related to just monetization, but it is one of the signals they can use among other signals.
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Personally I have no issue, I feel like the current system is working very well.
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I understand that it is not your job to create the solution to this, but out of the 3 signals you proposed, they can easily be circumvented/not include actual developers. (not everyone has/is willing to submit id, people have specialised skill sets and cannot make a full game and monetise it, people might not use Studio/leave it open in the background for hours and hours) Maybe continue the “new member” system currently in place, with even tighter moderation requirements, and forum limitations, and have those who can prove themself to be useful and a positive contribution get in, even if they match none of the “signals”.
Just to be clear I’m not suggesting to get rid of being able to participate on the forum right away. It would be more like you are able to skip ahead in forum trust level (and so do more things on the forum) if you meet some aggregation of these signals, and there would be more restrictions for lower trust levels.
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I’ve been reading over this for awhile. I agree with the point. Something needs to be done to increase the quality of the devforums, otherwise I don’t see the devforums being around in 5 years. Perhaps maybe as a meme but not as a useful resource. Even when searching questions in the search bar I often have to read through useless posts of nothing before I come across an actual answer to what I’m usually looking for.
The API Reference is still the best place to look, also those random golden threads. I only use the dev forums to read up on new features since there’s not usually any API References for them upon release. I do believe that’s an oversight and should be fixed so that its possible to omit the devforums completely. I’m not going to say the devforums isn’t helpful… but it is useless at this point. Making a new thread to probe for solutions to problems often end up being a timeline of “wrong category”, “obvious answer that doesn’t work for the current issue (usually the reason why the post is made in the first place)”. I end up looking for solutions on Unity or Unreal Engine and then adapt the code to Lua because that’s already 100 times more helpful.
It’s nice to be able to help other developers, but often you get into a power struggle with some beginner developer and then the OP starts listening to both and nothing works out precisely because of the two different sources and two different experience levels clashing.
Instead of making the target audience more specific, It might be worth abandoning ship, and put in place other avenues (the roblox blog, developer hub, some new product) and make sure that all new features are well documented before making an announcement thread on the devforums. Perhaps maybe throw the forums into read-only mode to preserve the historical threads that did answer questions at some point.
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