Upcoming changes to the Public Roblox Forum

Updates Announcements
#1

Hello Developers,

We have an important announcement for our developers.

After much consideration, Roblox has decided to close the Roblox public forums at https://forum.roblox.com/forum/. We believe the Roblox public forums are no longer capable of providing a positive environment and have been proven to be prone to excessive abuse. This change does not impact the developer forum as the environment here continues to be positive and collaborative.

Groups will continue to serve as a platform for information sharing, collaboration, and conversations on a variety of topics, interests, and teams. We will also continue to post announcements and information on our public read-only sections of the Developer Forum, and on the Roblox blog as appropriate.

The public forums are now read-only and will be shutting down completely on December 11, 2017. If you have any posts or information on the public forums that you would like to save, please do so as soon as possible.

You can learn more about these changes here.
https://forum.roblox.com/Forum/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=228429979

If you have any comments, please let us know below!

Thanks,
Developer Relations Team

FAQ

Thank you to everyone who has shared their feedback with us so far. Our teams are collecting this feedback and taking it into account. We understand this is not a great situation, whoever it was critical to address the abuse in the public forums.

As of recently we have been looking into multiple options to improve group functionality in the future. The goal is to empower community building as we go forward using groups. We understand the social element of Roblox is important for our developers as it helps you create a fully social community.

For now the alternative to discuss development would be the Roblox Developer Forum. If you know of any friends who are interested in joining the forum please share this link with them.

Our team has created another alternative for anyone with the role set basic member and above to inform your group communities about any new updates.

310 Likes
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#2

I personally think this is a good idea. Anything that people should do in the public forums can be done here instead, and I agree that it has been barely anything else other than a hub for abuse

108 Likes
#3

So bye bye forum.
This is another thing that will have impact. For the good and for the bad.
For the good, because since a while (this is, from the beggining), they were that thing to everything but a civilized discussion.
For the bad, because I doubt that Groups, in their current state, can handle the Forum functionality. Many groups still use (or used to use) the Clans & Guilds to convey information to their members. How will they do that now?

87 Likes
#4

To be honest, I saw this coming as soon as the other subforums closed. There was no way that an atmosphere like that could ever be sustained.

That being said, are there any plans or ideas for an eventual Discourse version of the public ROBLOX forums? A forum for all ROBLOX players still has much potential for encouraging communication and activity.

Edit: It appears that they go into a bit more detail in the official announcment: https://forum.roblox.com/Forum/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=228429979
They plan on considering a better forum next year.

65 Likes
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#5

After seeing how the public forums have changed, I agree with this decision. It seems to have been too much of a strain on site moderators for too long.
It’s not worth keeping it, in my opinion, for the security of the users.

52 Likes
#6

The forums have developed a reputation of being at times toxic and abusive towards members and moderators alike. While I agree it’s quite difficult to provide a sustained positive environment, the closure of forums will hinder some aspects of groups/clans as most used forums such as C&G to make guides for their group, have votes, and post notices.

Some improvements to the group system overall would help the way members communicate with each other on a day-to-day basis.

61 Likes
#7

I got my start in scripting within the Helper’s Forum. I met a lot of really versed people through that.
I can understand it’s need to be removed, but that doesn’t make it any more pleasant.
My hope is that Roblox will find a way of allowing for categories like this to find a new home.

46 Likes
#8

About time, good riddance. Although public information threads from groups (such as the EBR where we direct people to information threads on how to apply/requirements and so on) will no longer be an option. So this will be a slight thorn in our side.

Would be neat to have something to replace this, or fix the group page to make it better an easier to use.

48 Likes
#9

I agree to this change, and we no longer have to worry about our old posts resulting in moderation action (albeit deserving since we did make the post, just odd to get a slap on the wrist ten years later).

31 Likes
#10

“Group updates” wha, what? Who said that?

42 Likes
#11

Overall a good change.

However, sad for the sensible people who actually use the forums efficiently, to look for groups, get feedback, give feedback, help others, get help, etc…

34 Likes
#12

it was the wind, it whispers

39 Likes
#13

If the forums are closed, that means the moderators don’t have to police them anymore, and that opens up more moderator resources for the rest of the site! :slight_smile:

40 Likes
#14

I think the change was too sudden, though I understand why they ripped off the bandage here.

There were a bunch of communities in each subforum that are all dead immediately because of this change. If there was a heads-up, the communities could organize themselves so they don’t fall apart (i.e. “Join this group if you’re an LMaDer!”)

I expect the /r/Roblox subreddit to soon be bustling with activity.

30 Likes
#15

If ROBLOX had made an announcement before the forums were made to be Read-Only, everyone would have lost their crap and nuked the forums. I don’t think anything very constructive would have occurred.

32 Likes
#16

I agree with this. Kinda like the failure that YouTube comments for discussions. I really hope we get an alternative that isn’t disguising offsite links to things like Reddit.
Not complaining about the forums being gone. It has been plagued by hostile people and baiters for years.

36 Likes
#17

Removing the forums was a great idea.

The bad part of this is that, again, there is no suitable replacement for forums, as the Roblox groups feature is sub-tier and outdated.

47 Likes
#18

Yeah, I feel this is a positive move for ROBLOX, as the forums are no longer used in a way they are intended for.

However, I do feel ROBLOX should provide alternatives for us, as a lot of groups used forums to get information across to their members.

25 Likes
#19

While I haven’t been using the forums myself, I think that it’s a bad idea to remove them.

The reason that I ain’t using them would be that I ain’t in a clan or any sort of Roblox group which actively uses it. I’m aware though that there are a lot of clans and Roblox groups which do actively use them. Some because they’d like to have some interaction with their community, and others because they’ve written down some rules their group enforces, or an announcement because the group shout has a character limit.

I feel like that we need a more modern functionality to communicate with group / clan members though, as we’ve also seen the improving enforcement about the off-site linking. I think that the off-site linking will improve if we don’t have a way to share information to our group members. People will make important announcements through Twitter and link it to a document, or something. An improved forum alternative would be really useful and I’m sure that the clan / group community would appreciate this.

37 Likes
#20

Just a heads up, when the forums are finally closed, please remember to remove the forum posts statistic from user profiles. It seems that every time a section of the site is changed or removed, some aspect of it is skipped over by accident.
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32 Likes