Literally… i waited about 6 to 7 months. This update was just what we needed.
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Will this make it harder for those who were accepted via application to get ranked up to Member?
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The only issues I see with this are people who are not developers getting in and causing issues, but that’s why there are rules.
In the end I agree with this and hope it brings people here who want to be in the dev forum!
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That’s not a byproduct of automation. That’s something that could have happened - and did happen fairly frequently - under the application system, too. It’s no coincidence that we have moderation systems and policies here on the Developer Forum. The application wasn’t incredibly difficult and did not do much to help determine maturity, experience, or determination, and a background check doesn’t tell us how mature a user is (unless they’ve been moderated for it). In fact, a majority of people whose applications were denied ended up receiving that result because their places were closed when their application was reviewed - probably because it took so long because there were so many applications.
The automated system is an easy target to blame, but it’s really important to keep in mind that none of these incidents are new experiences for the Developer Forum.
I do want to take the time to thank you for voicing your concerns, though. We’re carefully monitoring this topic and reading everyone’s feedback. We’re really thankful for the passion shown by our developer community and love seeing the differing perspectives on this subject. Your feedback helps us decide where to take this in the future, but only time can tell whether or not this change is a successful one. I also want to state, publicly, something I said to another concerned developer privately:
The Developer Relations Team is dedicated to ensuring that developers have what they need in order to be successful. The Developer Engagement Team is a smaller team within the Community branch of Developer Relations that runs the DevForum and works with others to empower the developer community as a whole.
The Developer Engagement Team is mostly comprised of employees who aren’t just super passionate about Roblox - but who grew with the community itself. Nightgaladeld, InceptionTime, and I think of policies, procedures, and announcements from the perspective of developers and community members before we approach them as staff members.
We are not interested at all in degrading the quality of the conversations and discussions that take place on the Developer Forum. While we’re fully committed to ensuring that every well-intended developer on Roblox has access to the information that they need to be successful, we are also committed to continuing to foster an environment where developers feel comfortable and empowered to discuss subjects with other developers of comparable accomplishments and experience levels. We’re not looking to turn the Developer Forum into what the forums on the main website became. Our vision of the Developer Forum is for it to be an accessible resource and professional discussion board - not an online chat room.
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Thank you, Thomas, for your once again insightful responses, covering each and every of our questions. 
And yes, @Emilarity, I understand your frustration, I have approached it in one of my questions to Lilly and Carlos, to which they (actually only Carlos since duck-lady decided to ignore) assured me they are working on that.
You can read more about it here. But, please be sure they are actively thinking about a better way to improve that. I ask you to wait just a bit more, I am sure they will come up with something!
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Thank you for clarifying this. I speak for many of us who were concerned when I say that this message from you soothed all of our thoughts and brought us on board with this plan.
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Of course, thanks Arcuatus. Hopefully the new system is accessible for everybody who needs it.
My biggest hope is that hope we don’t have to keep relying on a whitelist system, where only selected posts are allowed in the major sections. It doesn’t help that the criteria is kind of confusing and inconsistent.
This is Roblox’s only official channel for all discussion about development. It’s replaced blog.roblox.com as home to posts about important updates, API changes, and new feature discussions. It’s so important for people like scripters to be able to talk here. With the amount of resources Roblox has, what’s stopping this forum from having a dedicated moderator team to filter out bad quality like most other forums?
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Thank you for making the fourm much more inclusive, and making many people feel welcome. It’s a wonderful change.
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I agree with many of the other applicants, they might as well have announced the destruction of the devforums. While pessimistic, an automated system in no way guarantees quality, causing the devforum to be open to the toxic rifraff that constantly bypassed the filter and made the old forum so bad. I know I’m a new member, but even so. If they are going to do this, they ought to make a new ‘Regular Visitor’ role that grants only the power to post in Bulletin Board, as their topics will immediately be closed.
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I was accepted a day or two ago through this very process! This was a needed change.
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The new member restrictions exist to allow the forum to still be a mostly professional environment while moving away from the old “elitist” status which used to be associated with it. Getting accepted is much easier and isn’t targeted at the elite, but much rather a developer who wants to contribute to a development community. Policing the large influx of posts to follow would be nearly impossible, and it’d take time away from other important aspects.
New members who contribute quality content in a positive manner will receive full membership (lead top contributors and staff are always watching), and I don’t see any other realistic way to retain a quality environment.
A new member could always use the post approval process outlined below.
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Limiting sections by subjectively approving high quality threads is always going to be “elitist.” This status hasn’t been moved away from.
In my thread above I complained about the approval process. It’s not enough.
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I disagree. There is a reason why this is called the “Roblox DevForum” and not just the “Roblox Forum” or the “Roblox Dev-Community Forum”.
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Lilly’s statement about the Developer Engagement Team being formed by people who grew with the community itself is extremely important, even if it doesn’t look like so at first sight.
Do you think any of this would have happened, if the staff behind it weren’t part of the Roblox community? I personally believe their choices reflect the great majority of these from the community.
Don’t worry about the future of the Forum, the DevRelations team knows what will be best for the community, because they literally grew up with it. I acknowledge that right now it might be a bit clouded, and uncertain, but that’s how life is, isn’t it?
They won’t get it right every time, but so far they made the right calls. It’s always like this, we always doubt the updates, we always fear the future. Give it a go, at least for once.
No, I am not saying you shouldn’t present your questions or expose flaws, I can assure you that’s the best feedback you can give to them. But, keeping pressing the same key, repeating endlessly what could go wrong, isn’t going to change anything. Instead of just pointing at the mistakes, you can give suggestions to avoid them.
All of the updates they gave us are fruit of our own requests. Think about it, in the past, when you weren’t a member, wouldn’t you have preferred if the system was like this? Yes, there’s the “Elite” question, which gives you a feeling that you didn’t deserve it, but putting that aside, didn’t you want to contribute to the community?
Tell me if I’m wrong. When asked why you wanted to join the Developer Forums, didn’t you write “I want to contribute and improve the community.”
edit: I actually forgot why I wrote this, since I spent so long writing it.
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However methods exist for new members to contribute high quality threads. I agree it’s only going to become more difficult and time consuming to manually approve posts, however as far as I’m aware there isn’t any other realistic way to maintain quality. The people who review these threads have been a part of the community for years and know what they’re talking about, it may seem subjective, and perhaps it is, however their goal isn’t to disagree with your suggestions or posts but to evaluate the new members contribution and provide them with useful feedback which they can use to improve on and eventually become a full member and start contributing unrestricted.
It’s a double edged sword I suppose, if the post approval process didn’t exist, staff would either no longer take feature requests and bug reports seriously or be unable to keep up with either.
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Well I’m not going to try to discredit what you’ve said, but I want to add that until this approval process is turned on its head, the devforum will not be the end-all for development discussion. It never has been. The developer community as a whole is not welcome here.
I think the very idea of manual approval being the only way to uphold quality is a preposterous one because great communities have remained great while still accepting public submissions since the dawn of the internet. It’s not a new concept.
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5 posts were merged into an existing topic: Off-topic and bump posts
Please stay on topic and discuss business you have with Lead_Top_Contributors in the appropriate private message.
I was wondering why I got on here and whether I still needed to file an application even though I was told by the system I was promoted, however, this clears up that mystery for me.
Thank you! 
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Did you read any of the original post? The concerns you present were already thought of, addressed, and made clear by the staff who knows far better about how this is working. In no way is this change going to cause the devforums to implode under the weight of “toxic riffraff.”
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I did, but I don’t have faith in it. We’ll have to see what they manage to pull off.
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