"What are you working on" / Cool Creation type threads shouldn't belong in the Inception Forum

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#1

“What are you working on” of the year type threads have been one of my favorite parts of the forums and it concerns me that the activity among the current thread isn’t as frequent as it used to be, or at least, it seems like it.

https://devforum.roblox.com/t/what-are-you-working-on-currently-2019/218270/ with 451 replies so far
https://devforum.roblox.com/t/what-are-you-working-on-currently-2018/72174 with 3356 replies total
https://devforum.roblox.com/t/what-are-you-working-on-currently-2017/32228/6330 with 6246 replies total

Comparing how many replies these threads had around the same time of year ( early march) we can see noticeable differences.

2019: 451 replies
2018: 961 replies
2017: 1198 replies

This decrease in popularity is certainly concerning.

We’re in march so far and if the current pace keeps up we’d maybe reach about about 2000 replies by the end of the year.
If the current engagement rate is about 451 replies every 3 months, while keeping in mind other holiday breaks where people develop more, I still don’t think that this year’s thread will reach the same engagement as 2017’s.

Which is sad if I may say so myself.

Considering the amount of new features being added over the past two years and Roblox’ growth it’s surprising to see that the thread type is decreasing in engagement compared to other years. This certainly does not reflect Roblox’ current developer community stance on interacting with each other, but it does reveal that the inception forum is an inappropriate place for hosting cool-creation type threads.

It is important to note that the thread of 2018 was first in the #development-discussion:cool-creations category of the forums but was later moved so that new members could post in it. This however really hasn’t helped much with making the thread a more relevant part of the forums. It is better that the thread gets moved from #inception-forum and back to its original category. If new members could still see this type of thread once moved back to #development-discussion:cool-creations, it would certainly be a great resolution.

In conclusion: moving the thread type from its rightful category has done nothing more than to decrease overall community interaction and to solve this declining prevalence, would require making a compromise between viewing/posting permissions for new members as well as members within the #development-discussion:cool-creations category.

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#2

This is something that we are aware of, have actively discussed with Developer Relations, and will be fixed soon™.

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#3

I really hope this means that the thread doesn’t get returned to #development-discussion as this will mean new members can no longer participate in these threads without adjustment to permissions. New members should always have the ability to participate in a thread like this.

I’d really like to participate in numerous #development-discussion threads in general as a lot of threads there take my interest - but being a new member I cannot sadly. It’s quite a shame to be so restricted - but I understand the reasoning from numerous low quality new member posts I’ve seen so far.

I do get the feeling of being slightly “unwanted” on the forum from full members which shouldn’t be the environment this forum should be setting that’s designed to foster and provide a central hub for all Roblox developers. Just because there’s some bad grapes in a bunch of grapes, doesn’t mean all the grapes are bad - look at the back of the bunch, there’s some tasty good ones! :grapes:

I am aware that posts can be moved easily after the “post approval process” but it can be quite frustrating/clunky to do so and a lot of the time I’ve gone to participate in a thread I cannot currently post but then ditched the idea. Without the ability to freely reply, participate and engage in the thread it’s quite off-putting?

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#4

I totally agree with you on this one. Threads such as this should be open to everyone (who is a part of the forums of course).

Also, how does restricting it from New Members solve the problem? The problem was lack of replies, and this will definitely decrease it even more.

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#5

Yeah, obviously we wouldn’t be going back in time, otherwise we would already have moved it back by now.

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#6

Solved, both the 2018 and 2019 “What are you working on” threads are moved back to #development-discussion:cool-creations, and New Members can now also reply there.

6 Likes