Too many new DevForum members

I’m still not sure how this would work though everyone has different meaning’s of advanced. A new scripter might think x is super advanced and post it in the advanced scripting support.

An user can also know x but not know y if we went by the user’s skill level.

A combination of a quiz and mini challenges could certainly help IMO, at least to filter out those who don’t have a clue.
Questions might be about documentation/API reference.
Challenges could be like: “What is this code trying to achieve?” “Where’s the bug here?”

Maybe deeper roblox details? like replication, when to use waitforchild(), renderstepped, heartbeat…

This could help with all those low quality posts that get repeatedly posted in the forum.

Actually that’s a pretty good idea but can’t you just search up those answers?

Mhm. That’s why I saw the naming having a problem, but, I’m not sure how this would be solved other than simply through guidelines. When you make a post, it creates a template for you, and, this would be the perfect place to include something like I mentioned above.

For example, if you post in the Advanced section you might see Advanced Scripting Support is for problems which are rarer and more difficult, enough so that its not super likely most people would have the answer

Even if there are problems, I think this would still result in a much much cleaner Scripting Support and the bumping issue would be way better. There will be less posts like that in the Advanced section even if sometimes there are a few, and, guidelines will help even more.

It’s sort of like when people post bugs in Engine features, its uncommon (more uncommon than it would probably be with more sections for scripting support), but it happens, and, there isn’t enough to cause problems. Active moderators will move the posts to their correct locations when they spot them.

Speaking of which, its also good to mention that this would maybe end up impacting moderation. I think that this can certainly be employed in a way which wouldn’t have an impact. Again, proper guidelines, and not being too strict would be great ways to at least keep the categories much cleaner than they are which is the overall goal. Its not necessarily to wall everything off as there will be overlap no matter how much you provide.

1 Like

If you want your post to be in a intermediate/adv/nonnoob section/tagged you would need to solve a set of quiz/challenges. If you know basic roblox and a bit of programming it wouldn’t be hard at all. If you were clueless, well, u’d have to look up the answers.

How long could it take? Wouldn’t it be easier to just let the post be tagged as basic.
People looking for quick and easy answers/solutions are more likely to ask garbage questions.
They don’t even bother to use the forum’s search utility or googling what they need in the first place, therefore posts like “How to get the player from touch?” are posted over and over.

So making them google the answers is already a win IMO. They would be taking a step they should’ve taken before ever thinking of opening a thread. And if they do get the answers, presumably they would be learning something at least.

Over-all DevForums just needs better moderating and more people to do it.

Nobody reads the DevForum rules and thats why many people will bypass the character limit as well as not search for similar posts.

3 Likes

I 100% agree 2h read time is too easy to do. Discussion is literally just people talking about non-realted stuff. This doesn’t feel like a development website, seems like a Discord server. They should bring back the application feature imo.

Once again, you cannot disregard the second prong in the two pronged approach. By setting stricter criterion for entry to new members, this would ensure greater discipline (if I may describe it as such) among the new members. However it has a limitation as less people are able to join.

Moving on to the second prong on tiered sections, it is beneficial as it allows members of different skills (new or old) to receive actual advice. However, as you have said, it can be easily abused as the term is subjective.

Combining the 2 prongs, by setting stricter criteria, the discipline of forum members would be higher. This would address the limitation of the second prong as there is an expectation to follow with. In addition, by splitting the forum into sections, The limitation that less people can join is addressed as the divide in sections allows less strict criteria to be enacted since members of different skill levels get can use different sections, sorting the DevForum into a more organised and productive place.

The key in addressing your aforementioned limitation is discipline. So dividing the help forum into sections must work in tandem with stricter criteria for joining (although not as strict as to become an application system).

I think more members is a good thing. It makes the forums grow more as a whole and it isn’t to be judged about a little too much. This topic is hurtful to a lot of people because the forums is for each developer and other ones.

Hate to bump this, but for the meantime we can tag our post:

…[Basic]
…[Intermediate]
…[Experienced]
…[Advanced]

Write whatever infront of the "[ ]" – Just makes it manageable and easier for people to know the context of the question, instead of having to click it. This theoretically could lower the amount of unanswered questions, as people are aware of the question.

There is no objective measure on what “advanced” is though, and if anything these tags would cause even more attraction since it’s clickbait. [Basic] will attract the most probably, since the people replying will want a quick :white_check_mark: and :heart:

and [Advanced] would attract people who don’t know what they are talking about but still try to respond anyway for a :white_check_mark: and :heart:

How this is clickbait? The op should be able to distinguish between each class.

Yes, butl at least people are aware of the context of the question, it may appeal to people easier. Instead of having a bunch of questions that people have no clue as for the context, which is how it’s currently. As it’s currently, you get all sorts of people doing that.

True that. Hopefully the implementation of subcategories will come sooner or later.

Hi there! New member here.
I have a few possibly viable ideas…

  • Members seeking “Advanced” TL should be recommended by already Advanced TL members. This can be done in many ways…

    • a current member can play the applying members
      games/creations to see how advanced they are.
    • the applying member can post links and/or pics
      of what they have made for current members to
      see.
  • Current Advanced TL members can be able to send DevForum staff messages recommending certain Roblox profiles. The staff may then send the recommended party an Invite to Join message.

These are just a couple ideas :slight_smile:

Actually the devforum used to have nominations but those were removed. Not sure why, but yeah that happened. By the way ranking up is based on your contributions, and nominations would be biased since people are just going to nominate their friends.

2 Likes

That’s true.
Maybe people should just post their creation links and have members see and play them to see if they’re advanced. Then if the person gets enough votes they can go through? Lol idk. The votes can only be made by Advanced TL members. People can’t possibly be friends with all of them lol

Nominations wouldn’t work. At that point what you are suggesting it’s an application process again, and as we all know the application workflow had to be removed because the backlog was huge.

Then maybe there’s really nothing that can be done? Welcome new members and ignore the “easy” topics? It took me almost 3 weeks to get Member TL and let me tell you, I was on daily and reading things like crazy. You learn a lot on here. And to be honest, a spammer isn’t really going to contribute 3 weeks of their time just go get the off chance opportunity of spamming for the sake of spamming.

A simple solution to this would be to remove marking solutions for Basic. Then, people who want to get solutions would have to answer questions that couldn’t be searched online easily, like “How to make a KillBrick?”. Basic questions would still be answered by the people who actually want to help out.

I know that Roblox can’t do this and would have to make a suggestion to someone else, but it’s just an idea.