I don’t think they meant to link your post in particular.
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That’s why I put the edit in the reply, my opinion was a little harsh I guess.
If people want to have an off-topic discussion, they should just use Discord. The DevForum is a development resource, and they should just get rid of #lounge.
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How many people actually develop on Roblox professionally? We’re talking about maybe 600-700 people.
You’re a very experienced coder, so the question really is “will you ever be able to get useful feedback or a resolution if you ask a question” to which the answer is almost “certainly not.”
Unless I’m completely mistaken in Roblox developers tend to specialize in what they make and work with, and the number of people who are going to share a specialty with you at all is like 100 people, and the number of people who either know the answer to your question or are going to spend time to find the answer is like maybe 3 people.
But you’re asking for the forum to be gatekept better as well. Yes, I agree there’s a problem with people posting pointless nonsense, no I don’t think the solution is to comb through individual profiles and saying “yes this person is a ‘real’ dev, this person is not”.
But that’s still an insiders club and hurts those who would otherwise benefit because this still stops people from asking for and receiving help.
As an example had I been able to post on DevForum and get told that FindPartOnRay does not find parts the ray starts inside of it would’ve saved like 5-6 hours of my life.
The entry barrier is already pretty high (unless that’s changed) since you have to sit there browsing posts for multiple hours (and need to have a particular account age (?)). Personally this kept me out of the forum for a couple months.
Not necessarily more gatekeeping, just different gatekeeping than current. Instead of arbitrary read/post thresholds to reach a higher trust level (current), you’d be able to skip ahead if you are a prolific developer or meet other thresholds that are likely to attract more mature folks or just teenagers who are serious about development.
It roughly doubles each year as Roblox keeps growing explosively. Many people seem to agree that this is a real need that exists today based on the reactions on the first post. (I did not expect this to get 300+ likes)
That’s exactly the problem. I want this barrier gone and smarter barriers instead. Hence the post.
If you are a serious/mature developer there should be a way to prove that through these better metrics without needing to waste a lot of time reading content.
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So what barrier do you want people to skip ahead of? You’re proposing a slew of either questionable (name/age verification to use a forum) or hard to attain (DevEx history, Studio time (does Roblox even track this?)) metrics to keep people out.
But the number is still incredibly small and it’ll take a long while to get to the point you can make a useful forum specifically for professional developers.
And the fact that the number of serious/mature developers kept increasing while the lines to get in kept getting longer was why the switch to the automated system was made in the first place. Or am I insane?
If you want to argue there should be a subforum restricted to “so cool elite” developers I’d absolutely agree, but this again revives the issue of needing staff to review applications (unless you want it to be completely automated based off of DevEx or something). Trying to restrict access to the Developer Forum as a whole in my opinion achieves more harm than good.
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Read the recent posts above – not going to start a circular discussion.
This is not the point of this request, which you would have understood if you had taken the time to properly read through the responses on the topic. The point is that a serious 13+ year old, or a mature professional developer from another platform, can participate and ask meaningful questions from day 1 of using the forum. Without needing to go through the same tedious systems as 13- year olds posing as 13+ (people who haven’t verified age) or Roblox players who aren’t actually interested in getting into development.
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Which isn’t helped in the slightest by requiring age verification or trying to look at a combination of factors to determine if someone is even capable of posting.
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I heavily disagree with your proposal. Introducing these kinds of rules has been proven unhealthy for community ‘run’ platforms such as Roblox. The DevForum is for developers, sure, but the rules and quick response times of moderators keep it a Roblox hub as it was meant to be. The DevForum is not supposed to discourage use of official tools. What you are suggesting is to turn the DevForum into a ‘secret club’ or ‘back alley’ for only the most experience of developers. Sure, having elevated areas could help-however barriers for entry deter the purpose(s) of the DevForum entirely.
Dont turn the DevForum into a ‘back alley,’ else developers will simpily create other forums or quit public communication all together.
If anyone would like to work with me and the many others finding these posts to create a solution or possible rework, lets talk. Message me here or by other methods listed on my profile.
Makeineer
Player since '13/'14, developer since '16.
So we are stuck with a forum that is impossible to use for more experienced developers (some having close to or over a decade of experience) ?
It was never mentioned making the forum more exclusive? Just for the forum to target to the right audience (users who are actually interested in developing), that is not exclusive, as well as being stricter in terms of non-development stuff. If your concern is users who need the forum and will make good use of it not being able to discover it or whatever, the forum would target users who are very interested in developing in the first place, so accessibility is not a problem. Or if you mean the ideas presented, they are just ideas, nowhere did the post suggest that those and only those had to be the requirements for forum entry, obviously the requirements would ultimately be up to staff.
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Your first sentance implies that the DevForum is. I may have only been around since late 2013, but I know that the DevForum has worked similarly to how it does now ever since its creation. I’m not sure if the pure scale or amount of content makes the DevForum harder to browse, but as a developer with almost half a decade of experience in development now, I find the DevForum easy to use and quick to find answers.
As for your second paragraph, I yet again find a bit of an issue there. In order to use the DevForum past recruitment and news you may as well need member access. I only recently gained mine on this account, and it’s refreshing after some odd deletion of content on my other account. BuildThomas quite literally asks for more barriers to entry, thus (in my opinion; based off my description) locking most users out of the DevForum’s intended uses.
You also described the audience, which I’d agree has flaws yet only to a point that players who are interested in development add opinions or ideas that we as developers may immediately identify flaws in. Blocking people from this would only encourage the exact problem that BuildThomas seemingly wants to solve: Keeping an audience of developers and those that the DevForum were indented for. Speak to these could-be players and show them what they can do to help and where not to step in. The community is the heart of Roblox. The admins are ‘just’ there to help against those with malicious drives or unintended error.
What if a group of developers (experienced and slightly more short term) were’d to get together and form a plan for the DevForum? Of course staff have the final desicion, however a structure or idea from us could make all the difference.
My contact info is under my profile. I’m looking forward to what is in store for us as in developers and us as in players,
Makeineer
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Please read through the responses before responding, it seems like you just read the title and went to writing your reply. I’ve mentioned several times throughout the topic that new developers with developer questions are welcome here just the same as experienced developers are. The problem is 13- users acting as 13+ and people who are here for the sake of trolling / posting for the sake of posting / posting as if this was a regular Roblox forum and not one specifically tailored to development.
Please stop insinuating this is about exclusivity of people. It’s about exclusivity of content, so we can all benefit from higher signal-to-noise ratio. Including developers without any experience yet that want to actually get into development.
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I read your full paragraph and have indirectly quoted it multiple times in my responses. This may not be about exclusivity of people, however creating exclusivity of content is, as I’ve said, not the purpose of the DevForum. If you find age a problem (which you’ve noted multiple times), I understand-however disagree. Restrictions have never fixed problems but instead held them back and introducing your suggestions only tells small/short time developers that they are not welcome on the DevForum, which in reality is quite the opposite.
Notice the cause and effect in my responses. I am not jumping ship and reusing any arguments.
I’m going to list this again, since I’m interested in working with fellow developers to bring the DevFourm back to its purpose without heavily restricting new developers.
Makeineer
Can you link an example of this? I’ve found (few) > no examples of the DevForum being used outside of Roblox Development, News, and Player Experience.
The title “Development discussion” itself is misleading based on the description, however, I went off by the description:
, I understand why the three you first mentioned are gone because they were entirely unrelated but the rest you listed had some involvement of discussion. Considering you linked the topic’s guidelines, mine encouraged some discussion and is specific. I’m just assuming you thought development discussion would encourage others to get better at developing but that isn’t what the description and guidelines state
Not only those, but there are tons of NSFW topics that have been
completely deleted.
The Among Us thread that has been mentioned and linked to many times and the ten second flag challenge have plenty of examples of users who are clearly underage.
(DISCLAIMER: I am not calling out any specific users, these are just examples)
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Discussion, yes. Development discussion? Not really, or if so it’s debatable.
The first guideline for #development-discussion is the following (and coincidentally supports “encouraging others to get better at developing”):
Discussing Roblox events, asking for game ideas or if you should quit development, and similar do not fit into development discussion because there’s no real benefit to anyone and they barely bring up the idea of development. I could elaborate on all the topics I posted if you wish, but the nitty gritty of it is that none of them meet all the guidelines to be considered on-topic. This resounds quite well with this entire topic’s first few lines:
Instead of actual development topics, we are more often than not receiving fluff rather than anything substantive.
As @greatneil80 's post contained an image where the topics description was related “Roblox Developers”, My topic was made to see how Roblox has changed peoples lives at the same time, where they would be, and what they would also do outside of Roblox.
The replies, however, were out of my control.
Ok- how in the world will someone verify someone is 13.
Ask for a pic of face? Ask for a picture of the middle school locker rooms?
What would be going on?
13 year olds dont have identification cards, so Im confused how this would go about
so - how would these tactical barriers be put in place?
anyways, if there is a good way to do this, then I would like it
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