The categories are misused all over the time

Forum Help
#1

Hello, everyone! In my opinion, the DevForum is now full of new users and many of them don’t know where to post anything.

Recently, I’ve seen many scripting questions in this category, like “How can I rotate this?” and “Please write code for me”. This category is the most misused one in the Developer Forum.

“Just flag the post”

I’m tired of doing this. The Developer Relations and Developer Engagement teams should take action themselves. However, there’s an alternative solution, which will probably also lower the posts in incorrect categories. Currently, this is the promotion to member message:

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Instead of that, it could look like this

Hey Developer,

We see you’ve been actively using the Developer Forum! We’ve promoted you to Member to give you even more access so you can continue your growth and use of the forums.

We recommend that you get started by reviewing the Official Rules of the Roblox Developer Forum.

We also encourage Members use our introduction topic to leave an introduction message.

Here are some more useful topics you may want to check out:

Use of categories:

  • Forum Feedback: Ask questions about the forum and provide suggestions.

  • Community Resources & Tutorials: Provide the community useful resources for their games and write descriptive tutorials to help the other developers.

  • Cool Creations: Receive feedback for your creations.

  • Scripting Support: Receive help on various scripting problems.

  • Building Support: Receive help on various building problems.

  • Art Design Support: Receive help on various animating and GFX problems.

  • Game Design Support: Receive help on various game designing problems.

  • Platform Feedback: Make feature requests and report bugs based on your device type.

  • Announcements: Learn the latest news about developing!

  • Recruitment: Hire people and share your portfolio!

  • Bulletin Board: In this place you can write topics for your Roblox communities like handbooks and release notes.

We are excited to have you join our community and look forward to seeing your contributions!

Thanks,
Developer Relations Team

Personally, I had to mute many categories because of them being misused or fulled with stuff that we don’t care. Once, in #resources:community-tutorials I had seen a tutorial telling you how to make your game lag forever. The DevForum is now full with many immature users, and, hopefully, this will just help users understand where they have to post each thing and not just tell all the time “I don’t know where to post this”.

Anyways, have a nice day and thanks for reading my post!

6 Likes
#2

I personally am in more of favour of the quiz suggestion, where there is effectively a multiple choice tests with different scenarios you may find yourself in, and the answers are what you do in that scenario.

Exempla:

Your having problems with your script, where do you ask for help?

  • Scripting Support
  • Game design support
  • Code review
  • Community resources

0 voters

This way there can be at least some commons standards on where you post topics, and it would be more justifiable to have harsher punishments for consistently mis-using them.

I do know this will take more engineering effort, but on the whole I feel this would be greatly beneficial in creating some common standards on this forum.

EDIT: Who answered community resources :eyes:

12 Likes
#3

That’s a nice idea, too! However, the polls feature would probably make this harder to script. It’d probably be simpler to just reply with your answer. Anyways, the use of each category should still be displayed. Nowadays, no one reads the “About the x category” posts.

yes, somebody voted for Community Resources

2 Likes
#4

Replying is a good idea, since I do think it would take less engineering effort, else something like a google form would most likely suffice even though its not the best user experience.

I think the advantage of the poll approach is, as we can see within education one big barrier many students face is turning facts into applications, I know some smart people who do awfully at exams since they know the facts but just cant put it into context, whereas here its turning it into a more context based situation.

Also the fact its a bit more like a ‘game’ one could say, and its been proven so many times people learn better through games then reading walls of text.

3 Likes
#5

Clearly its not been made clear enough because someone voted Community resources for… Some reason?!

#6

Id presume (and at least hope) they are joking, because anyone who reads forum feedback would know by now that you do not misuse community resources :eyes:

1 Like
#7

Nobody in 2020 reads long informational texts anymore. :slightly_smiling_face:

The longer the text the quicker they skip by it. Pushing info down people’s throat is not good UX.

10 Likes
#8

I absolutely support this. It’d be cool if you are given a quiz right before you get promoted to member. If you fail the quiz - you don’t get promoted and you should try again after a few minutes.

4 Likes
#9

Most of them are new and don’t read the rules clearly, also mention that.

#10

I agree with this one, some sort of straightforward and easy-to-comprehend quiz to test a user for required basic knowledge before promoting them (such as where to post what) could greatly help filter out posts in irrelevant categories.

1 Like
#11

As much as I’d love to agree, I have to disagree.

Whereas I feel the number of members on Devforum is increasing, and the competency of the general populous is decreasing. Casual misuse is bound to happen, no matter how much rules and restrictions we place on the forum itself.

Whereas it is agreeable some of the newer members have posted stupid questions with stupid category choice, it isn’t like it is happening every hour. You may get a single post once a day which appears in #forum-feedback where its intentional and not the person posting feeling they can’t find a category that fits.

I see your point in a new system being required but:

  • They have paid jobs that they have to do before they come onto the forum? Developer Relations and Developer Engagement are not huge teams, they do the forum as an addition to the tons of other work.

Before we start having a fit about how the new promotional system is bad, lets reflect on why its good.

  • It removes the application process, and rewards those who use the forum wisely.
  • It gives us a broader range of members as people aren’t dissuaded by lengthy applications and feeling they will not fit into the community.
  • Ironically, its better then an application when it comes down to knowing when you’ve been accepted. I have officially been accepted into the Devforum twice, I made an application the first time and did not realize I was accepted. Automation now means its more blatantly obvious I’m a member instead of looking to my disorganized email.

Now whereas I feel this process should remain, a second stepping stone is indefinitely required. Personally, I would propose a new form of rank “Initiate” for new members - who are required to demonstrate they understand the forum through tests using @discobot as a resource as a method. They should also have to have read through the rules etc so they have no excuse in the future.

Instead of complaining, we should maybe put forwards solutions which may have an effect? As @buildthomas stated no one was reading the UX much before, so you think sticking another 10 bullet points is going to improve the situation?

I have no doubt they are trying to improve the system but until then people who violate the rules, also quickly learn that moderation does not put up with it (and they are pretty on the ball when it comes to preventing it).

The best solutions in my eyes would be:

  • an initiate rank where they need to do some quizzes etc.
  • automation when it comes to topics, a bot which can say “are you sure this belongs in this category” based on key words.
  • a new, separate, team of users who can act as moderation assistants and handle category misuse and issues in regards to new members leaving the more serious rule violations to the proper moderators.
5 Likes
#12

:eyes: :eyes: I agree though. But this is also going on in the recruitment section as well!