As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard to find useful information and discussion on the developer forum because of the avalanche of noisy / loldeep / trolling / immature discussion.
Roblox should extend the rules of the forum so that they can strike people for starting non-development discussion or posting for the sake of posting. These users should receive a 1-year ban if they continue to break forum rules. Users that are obviously here for bad intentions should immediately receive three strikes and the 1-year ban.
The ban message should be friendly and written along the lines of “At this time we need to limit your access to the forum due to continued off-topic conversation / suspicion of ill intent / suspicion of being underage. We welcome you back to discuss about Roblox development at <date>.”.
If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would improve my experience using the forum because the people using the forum would be the ones that are seriously trying to get things done, leading to interesting and meaningful development discussion.
This is completely necessary at this time. If DET refuses to lock #development-discussion to members, then it is essential that there is a strict system in place so mature discussions can continue. 3 strikes seems very fair IMO, 3 is a very generous amount of warnings before removal from the forum.
I might also suggest implementing some temporary restrictions just on certain categories, i.e. one strike = 1 week temporary ban from using #development-discussion, two strikes = 1 month ban from using #development-discussion, and three strikes = 1 year ban from using #development-discussion.
We cannot continue to have #development-discussion be a catch-all category for trash. It is unacceptable in it’s current state.
DET has been so nice to the users who break the rules in #development-discussion that it seems members aren’t getting the message. Harsher punishments will get to them a lot more than just a feedback message.
We’re at a point of no return. We’re in a sinking ship and at this stage not enough is being done.
DET need to start to enforce the repeat offender rule for feedback or make more clear attempts strikable (current efforts if they do exist don’t show well enough). Maybe it’s via the standard strike policy? Maybe it’s via this new idea. Things need to change.
For any serious developer, the current advice is simple. Mute almost all of the forum, unless it’s an announcement (and only it, not the replies), a bug, or a feature, just mute it. It’s not worth it. You’re going to be searching through cow pat for gold
That is quite sad to really say, things do need to change and DET need to be clear on where they want the forum want to go. Maybe a roadmap, something to show they are handling these problem users and the forum at large.
Maybe it’s just me that feels like moderation can be wishy washy here sometimes, where more clear cases are rejected.
I agree with this too as some users report topics for no reason, but it relates to the category anyways, and some people post topics that aren’t even related to the category.
But when someone gets a warning to not post topics that aren’t related, they ignore it anyways and it keeps repeating. It seems that they should implement harsher punishments as there isn’t really discipline around here either…
Alternatively, look elsewhere for help. There are discord servers and more serious alternatives to the forum popping up all the time. While most of them are more strict on what you can post or not, there are others that double down on the current devforum behavior so you need to tread carefully when looking for them.
This has nothing to do with the site being public or not – it’s a matter of what behaviors and etiquette are promoted through design and where it is linked externally. There are plenty of mature discussion forums with completely open signup (more open than the DevForum) on the internet.
I agree with this, but I think that a 1 year ban is excessive. Only very serious offenses should cause a punishment that harsh. A 6 month ban would likely be enough to give the user time to change their behavior.
The rationale I have in mind is that this “ban” would be given to users who are in their 13-18s and haven’t fully finished developing mentally yet time to grow and become mature enough to use the forum. 6 months or a year makes a big difference in these younger age ranges. A month or a few weeks is not long enough to make a significant personality difference.
To be honest if all someone is going to do is repeatedly post off topic and not contribute anything meaningful, despite warnings, they don’t deserve to use the devforum. And frankly a 2 week ban wouldn’t do anything.
If someone is a better person and more ready to contribute in a year then that’s better then just having to make a new account.
Fully agree on this topic. Another major issue which I see today is that many members personally attack other developers or target other developers’ games. I’d like to see the same system in place for these kinds of people in addition to the people who generally post things that are off topic.
These threads are often framed in an attempt to make it seem like a developer-related post but are really just blatant forms of bullying.
A few I have seen in the past are “What are some of the worst game fails on Roblox?”, and “Why do you think (this game) failed?” These are almost always personal opinions and ways for players to trash games they dislike and their developers, and are often explained with “It would help me understand how games work better if I knew why this happened”. These people know exactly what they are doing when they create a post like that and it’s frustrating for both people who use the devforum seriously and the developers who are being attacked.
I definitely feel that this suggestion mixed with your other suggestion about restricting the devforum more to prevent these types of people from posting to begin with would help the devforum tremendously.
I can not agree more. I was surprised when I saw your response to that disgraceful Among Us post, yet I could not help but think about being in your shoes myself having to deal with irrelevant and disturbingly stupid topics which seem to be increasing in commonality every day.
It is beyond frustrating to see the same people treat this forum as a joke just to see them flagged and back the next day. I can not believe that today (this has to be a new record on the scale of ridiculous posts), I saw a post that was a literal “speedrun to get flagged”. I can understand why Roblox wants to make the forum open in the long term, and in many ways, I agree, but the people who repeatedly break rules have lost their privilege and do not deserve to participate in this forum. I think that they should be grateful that so many doors have been opened to them which was not opened to those who had to struggle a lot more to prove that they are willing to be upstanding members of the community.
Many members seem to be under the impression that the worst thing that could happen to them is getting flagged and possibly a suspension. They don’t seem to believe that a common action of breaking the rules would result in anything serious, so they don’t even make the effort to hold back the idiotic urge to troll and not care about the rules. This is why I agree that these people need to know – and I mean, seriously, they need to know that they will not have the option to participate in this forum if they can not be mature members.
It frustrates me to think about this, but at this point, I see the forum as so damaged that it can never really be the same as it was before. The overwhelming amount of off-topic posts, low-quality posts, and other posts that provide very little to no value that did not get unlisted will probably make it more difficult to find more informative posts. Things are already out of hand, and I would prefer that something is done now before it gets worse.
It is not at all fair to say that this is just a forum or to argue why anyone should care so much about this forum. This forum represents the community and professionalism of the Roblox platform for development, so its value is not to be underestimated.
I proposed a similar response on another topic. I agree with something like this. All you have to do is look at #development-discussion’stredning page and you’ll see off-topic posts and spam.
100% agree. Currently #development-discussion is at an all time low in average quality. I doubt that there’s that many new users coming in that fast that it would create so many bad posts in there.
If you post an offtopic post anywhere else, you’d get a strike, maybe a warn the first time. With the amount of subpar quality posts coming in, it doesn’t feel like people are truly getting the message, and I’d imagine it’s likely because there’s zero proper punishment for posting offtopic posts in #development-discussion
This would be great if it happened. I would much rather have a forum where I cannot post but can read quality posts than have to deal with whatever state the forum is in right now. Before automatic approval, I spent a lot of time reading useful/interesting posts by top devs and now that’s either no longer possible or very difficult. At this point you have to sift through so much junk to find anything of quality that its not worth coming back here.
I very much agree with this. Ive seen an increase in very suspicious activity from some users using DevForum for unprofessional or dumb topics/replies.
Not too sure about the locking #development-discussion to members. At least, bot until regular FINALLY is a thing. And once its all set, I can hope that it can at least fix some issues regarding rude behavior, poor professionalisms, and most of all, same similar copies of the same topic being asked over and over again. Personally, I look forward to reasonable topics, not ones that ask how I started development, etc that makes it sound like they just want it for some likes or something.
edit: was kinda in a rush at the time, grammar fixes
This might be a controversial idea, but why not tie in the punishments with the Roblox platform directly in extreme cases? If someone comes here just to troll or has malicious intent then suspend their account across all of Roblox’s services, not just the forums. The accounts are linked anyways, might as well use it for this.
This might be more effective since some users might have this kinda mindset; “I’ll mess around on the forums a bit, not like it’ll do much if they ban me.”
I fully agree. Something needs to be done. Off topic topics tend to be made by obviously underage users again and again in #development-discussion. I mentioned this in another topic but I might as well mention it again here.
A lot of users are trying to use this as the old Roblox Forum, using it only for posting in #development-discussion and trying to get regular just to post in #lounge.
Some people in the replies have been talking about a #development-discussion ban. A ban on the whole forum would be better than just a #development-discussion ban, I’ve already seen some people trashing up #forum-feedback.
