Forums

This article is about the discontinued Roblox forums. For the Roblox DevForum, go to Developer Forum. For the 's editing discussion forum, go to Forum:Index.
The Roblox Forums were used for discussing and socializing with other people in a text-based format. The forums housed different subforums that each had their purposes. 
The Forums were introduced on July 12, 2004, and were closed on December 4, 2017, after a post by an admin account announced their eventual removal which happened a week later on December 11. In the 13-and-a-half-year lifespan of the Forums, many users made posts and participated in the subcultures of each subforum, and the forums were often a site of much controversy and raiding, especially in their later years.
All content in the Roblox Forums was subjected to Roblox's Terms of Use. A team of moderators ensured that forum content remained appropriate for Roblox's audience, though certain moderators were criticized by many forum users.
==Subforums==
The following are descriptions of each of the Roblox sub forums and the associated categories they were nestled under:
===Roblox===
====All Things Roblox====
Thread count: approximately 1,737,114
Post count: approximately 11,181,817
The first sub-forum on the Roblox forums page, All Things Roblox (ATR) was a forum where members could discuss things about Roblox. It was one of the most heavily moderated subforums, as any post not related to Roblox would have gotten deleted by a moderator, and users were often warned or banned for breaking this rule. It was removed after the July 2017 forum upgrade and merged with Roblox News & Discussion.
====Help (Technical Support and Account Issues) ====
Thread count: 352,604
Post count: 1,675,992
This subforum was used for users to contact moderators, administrators, or knowledgeable players when they had issues regarding their accounts or playing Roblox.
====Suggestions & Ideas ====
Thread count: approximately 555,071
Post count: approximately 5,013,644
Suggestions & Ideas (S&I) was created for players to suggest new Roblox features. A good portion of the ideas shared in S&I were related to updates and changes that Roblox makes, and reverting them. It was removed after the July 2017 forum upgrade.
====BLOXFaires and Roblox Events ====
Thread count: approximately 17,652
Post count: approximately 827,800
This forum allowed users to discuss real-life Roblox events. ROBLOX Contests was merged into this subform. It was the least used subforum before the July 2017 forum upgrade, after which it was removed.
===Club Houses===
==== ROBLOX Talk====
Thread count: approximately 5,623,399
Post count: approximately 39,306,111
ROBLOX Talk (RT) was the first subforum on the Roblox Forums page. ROBLOX Talk was the third most popular subforum, behind Off Topic and Let's Make a Deal. The subforum was originally known as General Discussion, but the name changed after many users believed that it broadened the topic of discussion too much. When All Things Roblox was created, this subforum was moved to Club Houses because many of the posts within RT had little to do with Roblox. The Admins had planned to change the name to Random Talk with the relocation of the forum, however, this did not occur due to the negative reaction from the ROBLOX Talk community. It was removed after the July 2017 forum upgrade and merged with Roblox News & Discussion.
====Off Topic====
Thread count: approximately 6,508,767
Post count: approximately 41,523,939
Off Topic (OT) was the subforum for discussion about anything unrelated to Roblox. Off Topic was the second most popular subforum, and its seemingly lax moderation and rules allowed for it to host much toxicity and drama. It was removed after the July 2017 forum upgrade.
====Clans & Guilds====
Thread count: 3,362,352
Post count: 24,740,043
Clans and Guilds (C&G) allowed users to discuss the group feature and the happenings within famous groups on Roblox. Big wars between large modern military-themed groups, known as Ro-Wars, were often discussed here. Users of C&G were often subject to frequent harassment on other subforums for the serious nature of many of the posts on C&G.
====Let's Make a Deal====
Thread count: 7,443,580
Post count: 50,645,677
Main article: Let's Make a Deal
Let's Make a Deal (LMaD) was the most popular subforum on the Roblox Forums. LMaD was created alongside the release of the Limited items system. In LMaD, players would negotiate trades and Limited item prices with other players. LMaD was often ridiculed because of the toxicity on the subforum and the stereotypes of Limited item traders.
===Game Creation and Development===
====Game Marketing====
Thread count: approximately 59,231
Post count: approximately 689,231
This subforum was made for players to advertise their games and to discuss advertising techniques. It was removed after the July 2017 forum upgrade.
==== Game Design====
Thread count: approximately 153,046
Post count: approximately 1,165,731
In this subforum, users shared their ideas about games, discussed popular games on Roblox, and shared feedback with game creators. Several famous game developers also discussed updates and asked for feedback about their games. It was removed after the July 2017 forum upgrade.
====Scripters====
Thread count: 295,375
Post count: 2,513,368
This subforum was made for users to discuss scripting in Roblox.
===Entertainment===
===Video Game Central===
Thread count: approximately 172,685
Post count: approximately 1,517,919
Video Game Central (VGC) allowed users to discuss video games outside of Roblox. It was removed after the July 2017 forum upgrade.
====Video Creations with ROBLOX====
Thread count: approximately 32,158
Post count: approximately 316,495
Video Creations with ROBLOX (VCR) was dedicated to discussing Roblox YouTube videos and Twitch streams. It was removed after the July 2017 forum upgrade.
===Ro-Sports===
Thread count: approximately 793,952
Post count: approximately 4,351,656
This subforum was dedicated to conversations about sports-related topics and events. This forum was previously named Sports Fans (SF). It was removed after the July 2017 forum upgrade.
===Pop Culture (Music/Books/Movies/TV)===
Thread count: approximately 152,913
Post count: approximately 1,609,116
This subforum allowed users to discuss various movies, television shows, and books. It was removed after the July 2017 forum upgrade.
===Role-Playing===
Thread count: approximately 217,429
Post count: approximately 8,814,706
Role-Playing (RP) was made for players to participate in text-based role-playing stories, or to start their own. Some threads in this subforum continued getting replies for years, sometimes reaching hundreds or even thousands of pages. It was removed after the July 2017 forum upgrade.
==Removed Subforums==
During the existence of the forums, several subforums were removed. If you attempted to post a reply to a thread on a deleted forum, the reply would not have been posted. There used to a be secret forum, using the ID number 34, but anyone who posted on it got banned by MrDoomBringer. Some subforums were removed through various forum updates.
Some subforums that were removed include the following:
*Look What I Made
*ROBLOX Global
*Language Center
*Global Chat
*Forum Games
*All Things ROBLOX (merged)
*Suggestions & Ideas (merged)
*Off Topic
*ROBLOX Talk (merged)
*Game Marketing
*Video Creations with ROBLOX
*Video Game Central
*Pop-Culture (Movies/TV/Books)
*Role Playing
*BLOXFaires and ROBLOX Events (merged)
*General Discussion
*Test Site News
*Hi, I'm New
*Rate my ROBLOXian
*ROBLOXiwood
*Music (Music Fans/Music Talk)
*World Wide Chat
==Advanced buttons==
You may have noticed the little bar of buttons in the top right. Here they are, in case you missed them.
;Home
:This will bring you right back to the main page from wherever you are.
; Search
:This is useful for finding posts you want to talk about before making a new thread. However, some features that are part of the search page are currently broken. This search is discrete and cannot be accessed through the search box on the top bar.
;MyForums
:This lists the last 25 threads that you posted in and the threads you are watching. The newer threads are at the top. This will also show any threads you are currently tracking in a separate box at the top of the page.
==Community==
2013henry (now Volleybot) had the highest post count out of any user with over 131,000 posts. A list of every user with a 50K+ post count can be found here. As of now, Volleybot has quit Roblox but often checks the site.
Players who make T-shirts that are about popular forum topics, such as RT and LMaD, were the most popular. An example of one is here.
Unlike the "comment section" on Roblox, the forum had less spam in it (until about mid-2017) compared to the "comment section" due to it being more moderated.
===Trolling===
Many people in the forum were known as "trolls", people who often deliberately made fun of people or aggravated them on the forums for no specific reason. An example of a troll post would be: "You are a noob, you suck.".
One of the most infamous of these was a terminated 2009 user who was known most often as ‘heartstrings’. This user had made over 100 alternate accounts utilizing a VPN over 8 years to continue flame-baiting the forums after the Roblox Staff had to poison-ban her from the website because she was so dedicated to upsetting users on the forums. Heartstrings always took small breaks and returned to the forums on alternate accounts to continue her tradition of flame baiting, only coming to an end when the forums were removed.
A large number of forumers tended to be slightly gullible, falling for the bait. Bait is when you create a sarcastic forum, wanting to make players talk about it. For instance, on July 29, 2016, a link to an article claiming that magnetic pole shifts on that day would end the world was posted, and some forums dissolved into havoc. ATR got a few posts about it, and one person on S&I suggested that all accounts should be deleted before the end. However, OT had a mix of countdowns, end-of-the-world parties, and religious wars. Although the forums did have a 13+ requirement, many younger users lie about their age to get past these restrictions and are partly responsible for this.
===Forum Raid===
Many users in the forums would tend to start a forum raid usually when the Roblox Admins were asleep. A forum raid is an activity of gaining a bunch of users from a sub-forum and commanding them to spam hate or unneeded threads in another sub forum.
===Signatures===
Some forum users used signatures, which are also used to express the player. There is also Roblox+, a Google Chrome extension (working on Opera as well) that automatically places a signature in your posts. The Roblox Staff allowed this but had certain restrictions on them such as making them consist of one line only.
==History==
===Pre-2017===
In January 2013, the forum section was revamped. This resulted in the moving and merging of forums with lower popularity or usage. In October 2013 the forums' layout was changed into an iOS 7-based theme.
====End of Summer 2014====
On August 22, 2014, Roblox began showing a banner notification notifying players to "Come celebrate the end of Summer with us on the Forums." During this time, the names of some Roblox and Club Houses subforums were changed to relate to summer.https://web.archive.org/web/20140822210759/http://www.roblox.com/Forum/Default.aspx The subforums' names were changed as follows:
Roblox
Original title 	Changed title
All Things Roblox 	At The Roblox Beach
Help (Technical Support and Account Issues)	Life Guards
Suggestions and Ideas 	Summertime Day-Dreams
Club Houses
Original title 	Changed title
ROBLOX Talk 	ROBLOX Tropical Vacation
Off Topic 	Out to Sea
Clans and Guilds 	Crabs and Gulls
Let's Make a Deal	Let's Make a Dope Sand Castle
===2017===
On May 1, 2017, a Twitch streamer known as Quackity launched a raid on the forums. His account, QuaciktyIsHot, was banned for 3 days as a result. Quackity created an alt account and continued the raid. The mods then discovered he was streaming and he was banned for stream-forum raiding. After that, QuackityIsHot was deleted and Quackity was IP Banned. The forums were then temporarily taken down afterwards.
On June 4, 2017, at 5:58 PM PDT, all the Roblox sub-forums were shut down temporarily due to major forum raids. These raids were led by Quackity, who had around 174,000 YouTube subscribers at the time. Many players were surprised at how the moderators took action for this forum raid, as they did not implement closing down the forums during similar DominusTrex and later, ClockworkHex bot raids. Some people believe the temporary shutdown was issued by a new moderator, OldBaronMondo, who was not around during the previous raids. During other forum raids, Roblox changed the minimum account age for someone to post. In some instances, it was as short as a 2-year account age minimum, while during other raids it was set so that nobody could post.
On July 14, 2017, Roblox announced that many of the sub-forums would be merging. The new sub-forums would include: Roblox News & Discussion, Clans & Guilds, Let's Make a Deal, Game Design and Scripts. Two major forums not included in this update were Roblox Talk and Off Topic, two popular off-topic sub-forums; this caused an outcry from some members of the Roblox community.
==Temporary restrictions==
===May 2017 1.9-year restriction===
On May 1, 2017, Quackity (a well-known YouTube user) was doing a stream on Twitch. He raided the Roblox sub-forums by instructing his viewers to spam on it. After viewing the stream, the Roblox admins decided to take action. Shortly after, Roblox shut down the Forums in an attempt to end the raids. Roblox then implemented a new rule that users who joined for less than 700 days (approximately 2 years) would not be allowed to reply to any threads, which quickly received backlash and criticism from the community. However, they still had access to all of the forums and could read the threads made by any Roblox users. In the end, the update was only temporary and it was removed within a day. After the incident, all accounts were required to fill out a CAPTCHA before posting, in an attempt to prevent spambots from spamming the forums.
===June 2017 13.7-year restriction===
thumb|372x372pxOn June 4, 2017, Quackity raided the forums once again, leading to Roblox barring all users from posting by imposing a 120,000-hour limit (or 13⅔ years). This dates back to October 2003, which was even 9 months before the forums were made. On the same day, at 5:58 PM PST, all Roblox subforums were temporarily shut down due to major forum raids. It was quite a surprise that the moderators took action against this since they did not do anything as serious when the forums were experiencing DominusTrex and ClockworkHex bot raids. Some users believe the shutdown was issued by a new moderator who wasn't around during the raids, OldBaronMondo. This limit was removed the next day after once again receiving heavy backlash from the community.
==Closure ==
===October 1 incident===
On October 1, 2017, at 5:11 PM CST, a throwaway account named "jaredpogi123kaba" posted a link on the forums that would redirect to an archived website that had material that contained illegal sexual abuse of minors. The post rose to the top of the forums and the link stayed for around 30 minutes. The account was deleted, the post was eventually removed, and the URL was excluded from the Wayback Machine. It's speculated that jaredpogi123kaba was hacked, as it looked like a normal user before the incident.
===Aftermath ===
On December 4, 2017, the Forums suddenly became read-only. The same day, an admin named RobloxStaff made a post on Roblox News & Discussion announcing the closure of the public forums, due to the moderators being unable to moderate them easily.https://archive.froast.io/forum/228429979 In the post however, it does state:
"This coming year, we'll be investigating options to re-build forums that better serve you, our community, and our goals in providing a safe and constructive environment".https://forum.roblox.com/Forum/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=228429979
On December 11, Roblox made the final decision to remove the Forums after 13.5 years of existence and subsequently the Post Count statistic from user profiles. The button on the sidebar to access them was also removed. Trying to go onto the forum page today redirects to this notice, telling forum users to consider other methods for the Forums. As of August 20, 2021, only 16.42% of users signed up when the forums still existed.
Existing forum posts have now been deleted, but there are still some unofficial websites that archive them, the most popular of which is https://archive.froast.io.
===Criticism===
Roblox was hit with heavy criticism from all parts of the forum community. Some people with up to 100k+ forum posts became outraged that all their precious time and memories were going to be taken from them, and some were confused about why certain subforums that affected the community as a whole (such as Let's Make A Deal and Game Design) were shut down without any immediate alternatives being provided.
It is commonly believed that the shutdown was caused by multiple forum raids, such as by a YouTuber known as "Quackity" and his viewers raiding the forums just a few months prior, with another YouTuber known as "iSoToxic" raiding them just a day before the closure announcement, along with many posts that went against the rules being posted to the forums often, such as the infamous post made by user "jaredpogi123kaba". Roblox may have deemed this to be too much to handle constantly as the forums became more and more out of control, and thought closing them was the best option.
There are many unofficial Roblox forums, some notable ones being robloxforum.com and this wiki's Forum.
==Gallery==
RobloxForums.png|ROBLOX Forums January 2013-October 2013
NewForumLayout.png|ROBLOX Forums October 2013 – December 11, 2017
Thread-unread.png|Unread thread icon
Thread-read.png|Read thread icon
Popular-unread .png|Popular thread icon
Popular-read.png|Popular read thread icon
Annotation 2020-10-26 122051.png|Forum closure with new font
File:Closure of forums.png|Announcement regarding the closing of the Forums.
==References==
Category:Forums
Category:History