New member access to categories has been thoroughly discussed internally. There’s an observable difference between how quickly new users become accustomed to correctly responding to bug reports and feature requests. Bug reports are relatively simple, whereas feature requests are generally more abstract and new members typically have a tougher time responding to them without bloating the thread.
By using the post approval process, we can guarantee topics merged as replies meet our quality standards, address the problem, and justify use-case outside of “We need this feature because it’s good to have” which is initially very common in newer users. Meeting these standards is much easier with bug reports because typically it’s a yes/no type discussion, quickly and easily grasped by new users.
The approval process is quick for replies. We typically merge topics as replies within 10 minutes to 1 day at most.
New members not being able to reply to their own moved feature requests will hopefully be resolved in the long-term.
Dismissing post approval as a whole is somewhat irrational to me because it has led to significantly higher quality topics across the board in Platform Feedback and it makes both users and engineers put more effort into communicating through this category. This is a good thing for everyone because it means it is easier for Roblox to be transparent if the signal-to-noise ratio is high.
In terms of reply permissions, we can discuss whether we still need to have the feature requests category locked down, sure. We’ll get back to you on that one.
Public is basically a spam on its own. Most responses are in the lines on “nice!” or “can’t wait to use this”. The moderation in those boils down to removing inappropriate posts and there is no reason for exploiters to target it.
Help and Feedback is much more attractive, but still not ideal. Most posts last for a day or 2, but considering how many categories actually need to be went through that don’t require confirmation before posting, it is fairly easy to track down anything malicious.
The rest need to be confirmed before going out of Bulleting Board and can be pretty much ignored here.
I thought of a little suggestion: A “Reputation” System. Something mid-tier that once a New Member’s post have been approved a few times through the Approval system. the user can comment on Feature Requests and possibly more types of categories
This is unnecessary because new members who thoroughly grasp these concepts without the need for post approval and actively contribute to the forum are promoted to full member.
This takes a lot of time to do. the fact is that there are some users who may be less active but does not talk off topic. that ruins their chances of becoming a full Member and even though they are capable of talking correctly, they are still not able to comment on posts like Feature Requests
Quite! Many members like me are often occupied developing and can’t check on the forums often, a reputation system would be a welcomed change that allows less active but still contributing new members to easily post bug reports/feedback in the forums.
To add a little bit to your point, I for one have been through the post approval process multiple times when I was a new member. This process may be annoying and frustrating but it really helps you with creating better quality, on topic posts. It also helps you understand the forum and how to post correctly in certain categories. I think the process is super important and I feel as though all new members should take advantage of it.
Removing the need to go through the post approval process to reply to feature requests is a step back in my opinion. Remember engineers read through this category and I don’t suspect they want to read through a sea of low quality duplicated posts. With the use of post approval you are ensuring every post here is meaningful and constructive.
I find it more frustrating how I can’t reply to posts in development discussion, especially about programming where I feel I can make lots of good contributions. I don’t know how to become a member to do this because there is no proper system. Post approval takes far too long to be able to post relevant replies to topics, so my only option is to send personal messages which eliminates the purpose of a forum.
You aren’t removing the need. New members will still have to seek approval for new topics, but not to reply because the approval process takes days which means by the time your reply is approved it is already irrelevant and out of date.
We can process replies within 10 minutes of submission if they meet our required quality standards, further taking generally at most 1 day to be merged into a topic because of sage availability. This process will be quickened shortly once additional PA tools are released.
Perhaps you could have a staging area for feature requests that new members could post their idea? I have one right now and most modern 3d programs have this feature. Unfortunately I have no idea how much time it will take to become member. I can post here but not there… seems strange. If you agreed with my feature request then you could move it there yourself?
Topics will naturally take longer to be processed and moved. This also extends to replies which don’t meet our quality standards or require further discussion between PA members. I’m looking through our recent history and for the most part replies have been merged into their topic within 1 day.
I believe that back in May it was only the Community Sages (or as they were called then, Lead Top Contributors) doing Post Approval. These days we have a dedicated group for responding to Post Approval requests that consists of 14 people and another community sage, so the process is much faster than when it was only 3 people doing it.
The response time varies, but like byc14 said, we try to prioritize replies to threads so that they can get out as quick as possible.
Speaking on this anecdotally, we do (albeit somewhat infrequently), and when a ROBLOXCRITICAL thread comes out it’s consistently flooded with stuff like this (that’s part of why a lot of the time they’re closed).
To analogize, large scale feature requests like Crippling Developers & Roblox Communities - An Argument for the Reversal of the Blanket Discord Ban right now have pretty good quality replies. From a quick scroll, I see detailed paragraphs and replies that further discussion. These are under the new member lock. Comparatively, I do not see this quality from ROBLOXCRITICAL threads, which are not under new member lock, and I see that we have to move a large quantity of posts.
However, unlike ROBLOXCRITICAL threads where progress and a solution is going to be made quickly, we cannot close large scale feature request threads and be done with it–we’d have to constantly monitor any replies that come in.
Leaving the area of my two cents, the rest of the replies here from buildthomas and our wonderful post approval members are true. Post approval has a noticable improvement on the quality of replies/threads, and our post approval team is very good about moving replies quickly. On a side note, you may have noticed that when you make a thread in a place like #platform-feedback:engine-bugs, it’ll automatically file a post approval request. This behavior is going to come to replies too, where you can just create a normal reply and it’ll file a request automatically.
As a former New Member, I see your point. It’s a real hassle doing anything under the post approval system. You can’t really have a discussion with someone through it.
As a Member, I see why. Post approval is intentional friction - you’re not going to submit random, low quality posts because it takes too much effort. You only go through the process when you feel you have something really important or meaningful to add. Maybe that’s by design.
Sadly, this is still a thing… I can create a bug report that can very well be low quality without Post Approval but not comment on a feature request that can be as equally low quality as a bug report.
