Ever since #help-and-feedback:platform-usage-support was introduced to the forum, people started using it as an alternative to the support page rather than for it’s intended use which is “how to use xyz on the website”.
The clarification does exist in the About post for the category but not in the New Topic template for the category. Because people tend to ignore the one post that explains what can and can’t be posted here, the users just guess what goes into this category instead of making sure that they’re not posting off-topic content.
If Roblox were to address this, it’d help people who are looking for actual customer support help not waste their time on the forum and instead go where they’d actually need to go in order to get help for their inquiries.
This category is a general support category for users looking for help with:
getting something done on the Roblox websites or how to do something on Roblox applications such as Roblox Studio .
Users asking questions here can be redirected to support if their question is unanswerable by other users, but def agree a note in the About wouldn’t hurt. This category is not a proxy for support. Issues that only support can help with obviously won’t go anywhere.
In most cases though I imagine users just want to be told that they should e.g. be more patient (maybe they didn’t get their robux back after rejected devex) or if they should go through the gauntlet that is support. They may be trying to save the effort if they don’t need to.
Unfortunately this is what I kind of expected to happen (and the reason why I was against the idea of this category being created when it was first requested). People will use the category as a sort-of dump for anything that doesn’t quite fit any other category because it’s naming is incredibly vague, it will be a constant battle that in all honesty can’t be fixed (take the fact that people report bugs in #forum-help:forum-bugs despite the fact that it says in bold writing that it is not for platform bugs). #help-and-feedback:platform-usage-support implies that you are getting ‘support’ about the platform from those experienced in the platform which one could imply that Roblox staff would be helping there, which is obviously not the case. In all honesty, I still don’t see a proper use for the category other than a few UX flaws Roblox has. Personally I see it similar to #help-and-feedback:education-support, it’s titling being so vague (and valid topics being so niche) that people abuse the category.
I do not see these issues you’re mentioning in any significant amount. I see people using this category properly in the vast majority. Previously people were dumping topics that belong in this category into game design or discussion. Some still are, but they’re starting to move. Further, we need people to have a misc. category for generic platform issues or questions about how to do things, otherwise they will just abuse other categories because there’s nowhere else for them to go.
Oftentimes “bugs” posted into that category are people trying to confirm if what they’re experiencing is their problem, or in fact a bug. You can do your due diligence by telling them to contact bug-support if they have in fact found a bug, or to link a relevant bug report.
Although there are some topics created that aren’t exactly used for sub-category’s purpose, I think it’s good for those kinds of topics to go there because:
It’s much better to have those kinds of topics all in one place instead of other topics
If there was a topic that no one can really do about it, we can always redirect the user to support in the replies.
All in all, the DevForum is much more organized than it used to be now than it was before, and keeping all the support topics in #help-and-feedback:platform-usage-support are extremely beneficial since they’re all in one place.
In other words, I personally don’t think this is much of an issue.
Hey @ItsKoiske I added a couple sentences to the topic template to suggest what the category is about.
Looking over the category I don’t see many posts that seem inappropriately categorized (I can also see moderated posts), so hopefully this minor tweak will help redirect the remaining folks that are better off in another category.
