Thing is everyone is going to post in the “advanced” section so this won’t work.
I agree with all of this. Although I got in same as many other people, I’ve at least been using the forum and studio for multiple years despite membership status. Many of these people are now asking questions that used to be put on ScriptingHelpers and are flooding #help-and-feedback:scripting-support preventing more advanced questions from being asked. I’ve ended up going to the advanced question area of the ScriptingHelper’s Discord to ask questions since the DevForum has few people now who will even see my question before it flies by with posts.
Some examples of low-level posts that floods the forum are:
“How to make my motor rotates?”
“How to get the player from touch?”
“How do I make a open button, and make it visible for group members?”
“Can some one scripter or if u know what is wrong help me”
I’ve pretty much just gone to recent and started reading down and that’s out of 15 posts.
Those are all things that members of the forum should know all ready. If Roblox wishes to open the forum to the public, they should still have an application for the actual roles. I’ve seen many people indicate themselves as a “Programmer” who can’t read documentation for the life of them.
New member here I totally agree it is way too easy to get into the forums and I think they should make it harder to get in. Only 2 hours read time to get in which is easy to do.
Edit: I think maybe there should be a section for new people to the forums maybe?
New members are new because they don’t know how to use the platform. What I am suggesting here is that new members would be less knowledgeable on the divide and thus are less likely to abuse it. Think of akin to the forum’s private messaging which hasn’t been abused yet (but I do suspect that they’ll learn about it and stat abusing it).
Additionally, I never said that this was the sole approach to solving the problem. As mentioned in the first post, the approach is two-pronged, involving tiered sections as well as stricter criteria to join the DevForum. There is no strategy that does not have limitations and the approach I am proposing is to allow both prongs to complement each other and reduce their respective limitations.
Also speaking as a new member here. I mainly joined the DevForum just to expand my knowledge and meet new people, and I totally agree with this post. 90% of my time is spend trying to get help/give help on the scripting support page and most of the posts are just flooded with questions that can be answered with a google search.
A basic, intermediate, and advanced section for scripting support would benefit alot but as @sjr04 said it might just get overran by beginners either way.
Although maybe a quick fix could be adding more requirements to use those categories, but then again I dont know how that would work.
I understand you said that wasn’t the only solution to the problem. I am just saying why it wouldn’t work. “Advanced” is relative. There is no objective view on what “advanced” is. What everyone calls “advanced” I call the basics. I have a lot of experience.
And @chexburger: application for the roles won’t work, because there will just be a backlog. It will be much smaller since it’s 1 little role vs the applying for entire forum, but still a significant backlog for each role.
However a small quiz that all programmers even with the least amount of experience should know the answers to, might be useful. As well as for other roles like building, 3d modeling etc.
Although, do keep in mind that of course there will be basic questions, as the stickied “About” section on each help category says:
Oh yes I know what you are talking about.
And there is one more thing the new users(Not everyone) join today and gets promoted the next day. How?
I took me 2 weeks to get promoted.
We all can relate with that but new people to the dev forum is mostly new developers and it is out job to help newbies and make a bit advanced like us.
Yeah but still your point is correct.
@sikowwitzz
Good idea but the forum isn’t allowing new members to post instantly because they are new they wouldn’t know which category to post and as you said a forum for newbies would be non - useful because of new members there are a few people who can answer scripting problems.
But I appreciate being honest that you just had 2 hours of read time.
Edit 1
@AbandonedRick
Also I wanted to talk about something that is common.
As I mentioned above that new players wouldn’t know which Category to post often people flag it and complain it is in wrong category. Can’t they see that their days visited would be low? It is very obvious to everyone and every new person can relate with it.
You could probably fix posts being spammed by beginners in a advanced category if they ever added it by possibly flagging it as off-topic to that category? Which would make sense because a beginner question like how to detect a touched event should not belong in a advanced section.
Just a thought.
A quiz would be a good idea. This should be a very in-depth quiz though designed to pick out the levels of people. Like 50+ questions as anyone serious about the forum would do that.
A quiz should contain basic, intermediate, and advanced concepts.
Only problem with this is people giving out the answers. A rotating bank of questions in that case would be more effective.
Maybe the quiz could force the person to use the documentation just so those who do the quiz can know where to find most the information they’re looking for.
Again, there is no objective stance on what “advanced” is. It is entirely based on the person asking. So no.
I feel like that is a bit rude to suggest that. You should welcome new members. Yeah no, applications don’t sound like a good thing.
I think this is a bold idea, yet a good one. I think there should be requirements to gain these channels but not as much reading the forum, more experience in actual coding or roblox itself, I can’t think of anything that could work but if you just let all users post in all channels, like @sjr04 said, it isn’t going to work.
There should be set guidelines for “advanced” “experienced” or the other mentioned parts of this. It would be really silly if someone asked how to use print() in the highest level. Imagine someone posting something like Why are my topics grey? in an experienced category; it wouldn’t make sense.
If you are referring to the current topic “Adding an advanced, intermediate, beginner section”, I dont quite understand why you think this way. If you could share your opinion on why this would be a bad idea I would love to hear it.
Edit: If you meant something else then just ignore what I said…
There are not like 50million members on the dev forum (I am exaggerating). If we do we might as well get kicked off of the dev forum. Not a good idea in my opinion.
I dont quite think you understand the point of this post?
The whole point of this post is to just make seperate sections just depending on the skill level of current members.
You are still being welcomed to the DevForum, he is just suggesting to make different sections just depending on the current skill level of said member so that scripting help does not get flooded.
Edit: Once again, if that is not what you meant then feel free to correct me.
But you never explained why you had that opinion, which is what @Syntheix wants to know (the explanation)
Seemed like you were just repeating this in your own words.
The topic isn’t even about that, it’s about different sections for the forum.
Yeah I think maybe a forum for new forum members and after a month they get reviewed and if they follow the rules and post in the right category etc they can get moved to the main forums? People from the main forum can answer people from the lower forum though
This just means another platform for devrel to monitor, it will require more resources like moderation.
Best that they learn here.
That’s also very true I never thought of that, maybe a quiz or something to be allowed to post?