Users who encourage troll/meme topics should receive feedback messages

Forum Help Forum Features
#1

We all know the off-topics posts that have been surfacing the DevForum, predominantly in #development-discussion. I know that a multitude of feature requests have been created to counter these types of posts, however, I have yet to see one that references my issue.

Many of these topics (I’ll call them “meme” topics) are not flagged in a reasonable amount of time due to the massive amount of users replying to them. From what I have seen on the forum, topics with several dozen replies are put further back in the moderation queue compared to topics with a small number replies. The issue is that many users think that a meme topic is a place where they can post whatever they want, including memes, character bypasses, and more. However, many users are unaware that posting in a meme topic just bumps it up and has no contribution to the forum.

Most of the meme topics we have seen in the past two months could have easily been prevented if users didn’t encourage or praise them and just let them be flagged and taken care of by the moderators.

Examples:

I am not going to use real examples (you should easily be able to find some on your own), but my made-up examples are similar to the real ones that are created on meme topics.

Detailed Example

Let’s say we have the following topic in #development-discussion:

What are your favorite pizza toppings?
Hello, my name is Bob what are your favorite pizza toppings?

As you can see, this has absolutely nothing to do with development at all. Now, people are starting to reply and UserA says:

I like pepperoni and olives on my pizza!

The only thing this reply does is that it encourages the topic and bumps it up in the category. Even though this user might have been new and didn’t know about which topics are appropriate or not, they should still get a feedback message just to make sure the user doesn’t make the same mistake again.

However, UserB sees the topic and is ready to answer the question, even though it is obviously off-topic.

UserB replies to UserA and says

Gotta have those olives :wink: :wink: :wink:

This type of reply is inappropriate in any topic; if you need to make a reply like this, please bring it into a DM because it doesn’t contribute to the topic at all and it just clutters it.

Since UserB is also encouraging the meme topic and is additionally bumping it up the category so even more users, they should also receive a feedback message so the user doesn’t continue to make these kind of replies.

Since the new topic is at the top of #development-discussion, UserC bumps into it while browsing the DevForum. UserC then gets disappointed about the deteriorating quality of the forum in general and replies:

DevForum surprises me more and more every single day

These type of replies might not explicitly encourage the topic, but they still clutter it, it’s non-contributive, it adds another reply, and it bumps it back to the top of the category.

Since three replies have already been created in a short amount of time, users flood into the topic and reply to it with similar responses from users A, B, and C. By the time the topic got taken down after five hours, it received 80 replies and countless likes.

Under my feature request, all the users I mentioned, users A and B especially, should receive feedback messages because they encouraged the topic in some way, and the person who posted the topic might want to create another off-topic post just to see the reaction.

What you should do if you see a meme or troll topic:

Please flag it if it’s not already flagged. I ask for you to avoid replying to it and do not like the topic. One of the reasons people make meme topics is to get likes from people thinking the topic is “funny” when it really just creates clutter.

Conclusion:

Users who reply to meme topics with non-contributive responses, memes, or any reply that encourages or praises the topic should receive a feedback message to prevent any future troll topics from “exploding” or being praised.

If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would improve my experience using the forum because I will be able to see useful topics and discussions I prefer to view instead of topics made for off-topic and immature discussions, and it will make the forum better overall.

Thank you.

15 Likes
#2

Thank you for addressing this, I have seen several meme topics today receiving replies long after the original post has been taken down. Maybe a feature where closed topics are no longer recommended could be implemented.

2 Likes
#3

They already do get feedback after the post gets closed. People just choose to ignore them. The punishment needs to be harsher.

1 Like
#4

False but ok whatever your opinion

1 Like
#5

If it was “Harsher”’ what would it be Mr. itskoske

1 Like
#6

First of all, please tell me what’s “false” about my statement.

Secondly - Discourse has an option to “silence” (something similar to mute but much harsher). Muting the users for a while either a few hours to a day depending on if the user posted in the wrong category on purpose. Sending someone a message that essentially boils down to “don’t do this again please :pleading_face::pleading_face::pleading_face:” doesn’t work anymore.

Lastly, I do appreciate you being emotional about this matter but I would love to not be misgendered if not gendered at all. I go by they and would appreciate if you used those pronouns.

2 Likes
#8

I think if someone said a good comment with a joke in it I would allow it. But if it’s just not important then I would consider this as spam. For example,

Someone make’s a meme game. The person makes a funny character and animates it, then asks for feedback.

Good comment:

Looks smooth, however I would try changing x part, and btw he looks handsome :).

Bad comment:

He looks handsome :slight_smile:

#9

Unfortunately for us Members, silencing is not an option and I heard somewhere that it is restricted to Regulars only; we only have normal and mute. They should let everyone use “silence” instead of just Regulars due to the fact that there is no way to become a Regular.

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A better example would be detailed feedback without the “looks smooth” or “btw he looks handsome” comments, since those encourage the topic. It’s best not to reply to meme topics at all in the first place.

#10

That isn’t what @ItsKoiske is referencing. I help moderate a forum similar to the devforum, and there is an option called “silence”. This option prevents the users from making any posts, but they can still read:

CoTdbSkyCg
CoTdbSkyCg1154×387 11.1 KB

Here’s more details from discourse meta:

(See the “Silence the user” section.)

The users who do this are really bad influcences, as some of them are “respected” by other users as they have lots of read time and likes. (This is a separate issue that I’ll be opening a feature request for). The problem is, this user got all of this respect by responding to a ton of these off-topic posts in ways such as:

As you described. These users need to be punished just as hard as the OP as it makes people think it’s okay to do that.

6 Likes