The current state of the Developer Forum

Forum Help Forum Features
#1

This is a subject that has been addressed by numerous developers but the problems still exist with no effort to fix them on Roblox’s side.

The Developer Forum used to be a professional forum in which developers discussed topics related to Roblox development but now you have hundreds of topics, even potentially thousands, which are either shitposts, unprofessional, completely unrelated & off topic or complaints about whatever new update Roblox has released.

There is a lack of legitimate topics on the Developer Forum (in the #development-discussion category), most “legitimate” ones are either reposts or just extremely simple questions, none really encourage any discussion and the ones that do are usually full of arguments.

Now these wouldn’t really be a problem if Developer Relations takes the effort to properly moderate the Developer Forum, however they fail to do that in most circumstances. Some completely unrelated posts are allowed to stay but serious ones will be taken down for whatever reason, with no actual explanation other than a copy and pasted message.

Another thing which annoys me is the fact that both Feature Requests & Bug Reports are locked to Regulars. Both of these categories should be open to all members, with or without a post-approval system like the Developer Forum used to have.

Developer Relations seems to be promoting random people or some “well known” people to Regular and completely ignoring the countless developers who have been active on the Developer Forum or have made great contributions to the Developer ecosystem, many of which are far more active than most of the Regulars on the forum or joined before the newly promoted regulars.

If a member wanted to submit a bug report or feature request, they’d have to go through a tedious process of sending DevRel a message and then waiting days for a response or just getting no response at all (which I’ve especially noticed for feature requests).

These issues need to be addressed by Developer Relations and Developer Relations needs to be much more transparent.

Anyways, this concludes my rant about the Developer Forum.

Also, just to point out, I’m not saying Developer Relations are bad, in fact many of them are great at what they do but they definitely need to be much more transparent.

Thank you.

52 Likes
#2

Good to see I’m not the only one who’s been seeing all this going on.

For anyone who still has hopes about the alleged moderation “team” (consisting of like 4-5 people actually doing anything) actually doing their job once in a while, throw all those hopes away so you don’t get let down when you realise they won’t.

13 Likes
#3

Yes.

First, arguments and debates are good, except when you’re not using your braincells, and actually contributing. People don’t think through their ideas and what they say before they post.

Second, Spam posts, dear lord. I must admit I might contribute to this myself, but: Some of the stuff in the developer discussion eco-system are absolute garbage. (mods dont kill me).

@cpguy5089, I think the moderation team does just fine with reports, they just don’t take into account quality of the posts unless you point it out to them, which is kinda the issue. They’re here and alive, just not actively monitoring every post.

I don’t have much to add, I just wish the DevForum was in a better place atm. I absolutely hate when people post one sentence posts (again, I’m guilty of this), with nothing to add to the conversation.

P.S. I’ve actually worked with you star, though we haven’t talked much (cav projects)

11 Likes
#5

Don’t plan on sticking around here but all I will say is great job contributing to the problem by posting this topic in the wrong category. If you have ideas on fixing the forum, go to #forum-help:forum-features

7 Likes
#6

@typedwaves

Translation: Move this topic to #forum-help:forum-features :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like
#7

I disagree, considering it got so bad that at one point I was putting out every report as a “Something Else” outlining exactly what rule(s) were being broken and seeing every report getting hit with a “We agree there is a problem” but nothing was happening, so I made this post here because of it.

4 Likes
#8

Yeah I’ll do that. I forgot that category existed lol.

2 Likes
#9

From what I know and understand from talking to some people, the original plan with sunsetting PA wasn’t to leave the categories inaccessible for long but something went wrong.

Personally, I believe that Roblox will end up sunsetting the forum in favor of moving to Guilded. It does make a lot of sense as Roblox seems to be completely uninterested in running the DevForum anymore. On top of moving a lot of the top programs to Guilded and running another public server for international members of the community, it allows them to carve out a space for all of us without worrying about running a site and throw primary responsibility to the daughter company. I might be very much wrong, I just think it makes a lot of sense given that DevRel only responds to critical bugs these days.

11 Likes
#10

On the first few pages of the #development-discussion category there are numerous off topic posts which have been up for hours and have yet to of been taken down, such as:
https://devforum.roblox.com/t/airline-builder-and-scripter/1940337
https://devforum.roblox.com/t/how-do-you-remove-the-roblox-chat-slowmode/1940371
https://devforum.roblox.com/t/last-words-before-retirement/1940367/

Only one has actually been flagged but hasn’t been taken down and chances are at least one of them won’t be taken down.

5 Likes
#11

Yeah it does seem like that. I hope they don’t end up sunsetting the forum and actually invest in making the forum a better place, instead of moving to alternate solutions and completely disregarding the issues of the forum.

I would like your reply but I reached the maximum like limit for today :pensive:
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12 Likes
#12

This stuff has always grinded my gears.

I’ve seen so many developers immediately rush over to the devforum before even diagnosing the problem with their script.

That said, the dev forum currently is just a cesspool of completely un-constructive discussions and it looks like that wont be changing anytime soon (i’ve even done this myself)

10 Likes
#13

Yeah. I seriously wish Developer Relations would put more effort into making the DevForum a better place. They should bring back Post Approval and Community Sages program, when they were around the DevForum was much better.

3 Likes
#14

I do see lots of posts not relating to Roblox development however I have seen quite a few of them getting taken down.

100% agree with that. Lots of posts used to get taken down by these people and in general the DevFourm was better when these where around.

Something else I wanna see come back soon is the being able to rank up to other trust levels.

3 Likes
#15

Professionalism is not given by birth. It is also not demanded on the forum, only maturity is an aspect in the rules.

Roblox is the first platform for many many people, and if they dont learn it here, where else? Do you expect every single new developer to talk like successful entrepreneur? Its unlikely. Therefore, as long as there’s no swearing, bullying, exploiting going around, nobody should be against the newer user’s behaviors.

8 Likes
#16

Yeah definitely. There are so many developers who deserve the regular rank but don’t get it because Developer Relations is only ranking people they know about or whatever

4 Likes
#17

That isn’t what I was meaning. I was more meaning that countless users will post shitposts or just unrelated & off-topic posts with little to no maturity in them.

3 Likes
#18
Trolling screenshot

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For the intentional trolls I agree, but illogic topics might not be made by people purposely to gain attention but potentially because they dont understand or cant write well.

As long as it doesn’t attack our topics or identity, it should be fine.

2 Likes
#19

Yeah.

For those who don’t quite understand, they should be given advice on how to properly use the Developer Forum.

1 Like
#20

What I think Roblox should do (and writing a feature request about it as we speak) is to add like activity levels where when you post lots, comment lots, read lots of posts and in general be active on the forums you can rank up to different levels. It would work a little bit like the trust levels used to but rather then just in some categories it would be based on all of the forum in general.

2 Likes
#21

Oh yeah that’s a great idea. It’d take quite a lot of work to implement though.

1 Like