19 replies to this topic

[FredFredrickson]

ATTENTION TUTORIAL MAKERS

We are currently making major changes in the Tutorial Forum of the Game Maker Community in order to

• Improve the quality of the tutorials
• Clean up the forum
• Improve the approval process
• Improve the editing process for tutorials not quite up to par by submitter
• Improve feedback from regular member on approved tutorials

A new layout for the tutorial Forum will be put in place and will be as follows

Tutorial Forums - Used for submitting new tutorials

• Staff Pick Tutorials - Here we would post the truly brilliant topics that are well written, well researched, and offer the most benefit to all users.
• General Tutorials and Examples - Much like the current forum where most topics that fulfill the basic guidelines are visible.
• Rejected Tutorials - All deficient topics go here. In principle these are the ones that don't meet the minimum guidelines

During this process, which may take a few weeks, we will move all tutorials to those three sub forums.If you have tutorials already in the Tutorial Forum, we would ask you to check on a regular basis the Rejected Forums to be on the lookout for any of your tutorials that may be rejected. To facilitate this you can use the advanced search option:

• Click the Advanced Search Option on the upper right of the forum layout
• Enter your user name in the user name box
• Select Rejected Tutorials forum and hit Search

If you find one of your tutorials in that section, don't panic! The topic is NOT going to be locked or deleted until 30 days have passed. In this way we hope that you can use any feedback left by ourselves or other users to change and improve your topic. Then, once you have fixed up the tutorial, you can hit the Report button and type;

-Tutorial Fixed

The tutorial will then be reviewed again by the forum moderators and moved to the General sub forum if approved (or you will be informed of what further changes are needed by a post in the topic itself).

Thank you very much for your patience whilst we improve the forum!  

[theg721]

Good to hear the changes, sounds a little better organised than the old structure tbh. May I ask how many mods and admins are reviewing and rejecting tutorials? Also, a l'il off topic, but will we ever be able to have replies in our Team Requests topics?

Thanks,

theg721

[Nocturne]

Good to hear the changes, sounds a little better organised than the old structure tbh. May I ask how many mods and admins are reviewing and rejecting tutorials? Also, a l'il off topic, but will we ever be able to have replies in our Team Requests topics?

Thanks,

theg721

Well the new guidlines state that the criteria for rejection is as follows:

• Has not used the posting template
• Contains obvious errors
• Has no download
• Does not meet a minimum standard of quality

Now I KNOW what you are going to say... the first three are clear, but the last? What's a minimum standard of quality? Quite simply something that Icuurd and I agree is not worth permitting into the main forum section. Now, before you all get upset and things, when this happens (and I hope it is infrequent!) we will ALWAYS post in the topic to explain our decision and offer support and advice on how to improve the tutorial/example. It will also be open to the rest of the community like any other topic so that you can get feedback from them too. In this way we hope that more people get involved and the over-all quality of the posted topics is raised.

One thing that should be stressed...

If you have posted a Tutorial or Example then revise the rejected section for the next couple of weeks! We WILL NOT be contacting authors with missing links, bad formatting or any other problems to tell them that there tutorial has been moved. It is the responsibility of each individual to make sure that their topic is correct and decent.

[theg721]

Good to hear the changes, sounds a little better organised than the old structure tbh. May I ask how many mods and admins are reviewing and rejecting tutorials? Also, a l'il off topic, but will we ever be able to have replies in our Team Requests topics?

Thanks,

theg721

Well the new guidlines state that the criteria for rejection is as follows:

• Has not used the posting template
• Contains obvious errors
• Has no download
• Does not meet a minimum standard of quality

Now I KNOW what you are going to say... the first three are clear, but the last? What's a minimum standard of quality? Quite simply something that Icuurd and I agree is not worth permitting into the main forum section. Now, before you all get upset and things, when this happens (and I hope it is infrequent!) we will ALWAYS post in the topic to explain our decision and offer support and advice on how to improve the tutorial/example. It will also be open to the rest of the community like any other topic so that you can get feedback from them too. In this way we hope that more people get involved and the over-all quality of the posted topics is raised.

One thing that should be stressed...

If you have posted a Tutorial or Example then revise the rejected section for the next couple of weeks! We WILL NOT be contacting authors with missing links, bad formatting or any other problems to tell them that there tutorial has been moved. It is the responsibility of each individual to make sure that their topic is correct and decent.

K, but why did you quote me?

[Nocturne]

K, but why did you quote me?

Erm... because I read "... how are the mods and admins reviewing..." not "... how many mods and admins..."

Oh and its Icuurd and myself plus any guest mod/admin that wished to pitch in!

[chance]

Tutorial Forums - Used for submitting new tutorials

• Staff Pick Tutorials - Here we would post the truly brilliant topics that are well written, well researched, and offer the most benefit to all users.
• General Tutorials and Examples - Much like the current forum where most topics that fulfill the basic guidelines are visible.
• Rejected Tutorials - All deficient topics go here. In principle these are the ones that don't meet the minimum guidelines

I think this is a clever approach. Applying "quality standards" is hard, and a bit subjective. So this "segregation approach" is a good compromise. And giving contributors a chance to redeem themselves and get into the "general" section should encourage more quality. And it's less discouraging than outright rejection/deletion.

Nice job. I hope it works.

[Mr. RPG]

I really hope there are more Staff Picks this time around.

[paul23]

Tutorial Forums - Used for submitting new tutorials

• Staff Pick Tutorials - Here we would post the truly brilliant topics that are well written, well researched, and offer the most benefit to all users.
• General Tutorials and Examples - Much like the current forum where most topics that fulfill the basic guidelines are visible.
• Rejected Tutorials - All deficient topics go here. In principle these are the ones that don't meet the minimum guidelines

I think this is a clever approach. Applying "quality standards" is hard, and a bit subjective. So this "segregation approach" is a good compromise. And giving contributors a chance to redeem themselves and get into the "general" section should encourage more quality. And it's less discouraging than outright rejection/deletion.

Nice job. I hope it works.

Making a quality standard is not hard at all. If it were up to me I'd press the delete button 100% of the time, the collateral damage of too good tutorials removed would be neglectable .
Luckily I'm not going to judge too much there. The other mods (many thanks to icuurd & noct in advance already) will do a great job judging it.

I really hope there are more Staff Picks this time around.

The aim of the new setup is to make sure every important game dev topic is "covered" in staff choice. So you can actually search staff choice for tutorials (and succeed finding 1).

[chance]

Applying "quality standards" is hard, and a bit subjective.

Making a quality standard is not hard at all. If it were up to me I'd press the delete button 100% of the time...

Yes, I know the feeling.

One challenge with things like this, is keeping consistent standards over time. As weariness sets in, the temptation is to take the easy path. This leads judges to accept contributions that may be lacking, just to avoid the hassle of dealing with disappointed contributors.

Periodically, I serve as a science fair judge. All the judges start out being very careful about rankings. But after 3 days of judging, hundreds of projects, and dozens of complaints from disappointed kids (and angry parents)... it easier to give a "good" rating, instead of being brutally honest.

[FredFredrickson]

Also, a l'il off topic, but will we ever be able to have replies in our Team Requests topics?

Doubtful. One of the main reasons why we don't allow replies there is that it doesn't give the people with less popular requests a chance to be on the front page. Also, most of the business conducted after that initial post is private and should not be public anyway. Unless you're part of the GMCG (and of course, discussing the GMCG), the GMC isn't really supposed to be used for discussions amongst you and your team.

[icuurd12b42]

I really hope there are more Staff Picks this time around.

There are already some new ones in there... The old Democratic/Suggest method is gone. Any mod can go and pop one in there as long as enough effort was put in it and/or it's a very common method people want to learn

Applying "quality standards" is hard, and a bit subjective.

Making a quality standard is not hard at all. If it were up to me I'd press the delete button 100% of the time...

Yes, I know the feeling.

One challenge with things like this, is keeping consistent standards over time. As weariness sets in, the temptation is to take the easy path. This leads judges to accept contributions that may be lacking, just to avoid the hassle of dealing with disappointed contributors.

Periodically, I serve as a science fair judge. All the judges start out being very careful about rankings. But after 3 days of judging, hundreds of projects, and dozens of complaints from disappointed kids (and angry parents)... it easier to give a "good" rating, instead of being brutally honest.

I try to limit myself to 1 page a day. Yes after a while you start to want to be more lazy. But that is when I log off.

We don't judge much apart from checking if the tut does what it says. If it does, it's accepted. If it teaches well, it's staff pick. We hope people will be encouraged to teach more than just putting a few pieces together without any explanation and call it a tutorial. Those go into the general tutorial (currently misnamed as Tutorial and Example <same as parent forum>).

There are many tutorials that may go down the drain (too old)
There are many tutorials that may be rejected without a second look based on technicalities
- No dl links (Obviously)
- Not using zip for archives (because we have to go through all the gmks and rar files are too tedious to open-extract-find the folder-open the gmk and rar file need 3rd party extractor)
- Not using the new template (Which changes as we progress BTW)

The rejection rules also changes as we progress as we find things worthy of being more strict or less strict. In the end we'll have a good set of rules for new submissions

We do use some common sense for rejection, like I don't move all the tuts to the Rejected forum based on some loose criteria. Trying to balance the quality of the tutorial vs the infraction vs the number of same types of tuts vs many other factors vs the ability/availability of the user who made it.


This is a first pass; it is time consuming but we'll try to make sure we don't loose anything of value

Old tuts all fail but we will catch them later if the user did not fix it himself (which would help us a lot if he did) after the 30 day grace period is ended. I've sent some good tuts in the rejected forum I plan to personally save from annihilation.

[Nocturne]

Old tuts all fail but we will catch them later if the user did not fix it himself (which would help us a lot if he did) after the 30 day grace period is ended. I've sent some good tuts in the rejected forum I plan to personally save from annihilation.

As have I! I have a collection of about a dozen or so links that I have rejectd due to poor formatting or other minor errors, but that I think actually offer something to the community. These old tutorials are not obsolete as they teach basic trig/math or some other concepth that is rarely covered. If the use is no longer with us (not dead, just moved on!), or they don't fix it then I will probably go and re-format them myself. BUT new tutorials from active members will not be getting this treatment after we ahve finished the main body of re-organisation. That is the whole point of these changes, for the community to better itself without mod/admin intervention!

[Nocturne]

Just to let everyone know that after a marathon session by Icuurd12b42 the last of the Tutorials has been checked and moved. If you have submitted a tutorial and it has been rejected, then now is your only oppotunity to fix it up and have it re-accepted as within a month ALL rejected tutorials will be getting deleted PERMANENTLY. If you fix up your tutorial and want it to be checked then just report it and in the dialogue put "Tutorial Fixed" and one of the mods will revise what you have done and either move it or give you further feedback on what still needs doing.

For those wishing to submit new tutorials, they should be posted in the main forum as usual, and then they will be revised and moved by one of the staff within a day or so.

On behalf of Icuurd12b42 and myself, thank you all for being patient meanwhile we worked on this and you will be glad to know that there will be no more 5 year old tutorials bumped to the top of the new content list!!!

[Desert Dog]

Cheers, great work guys!!

[TheMusicDork]

will (can) there be a tutorial request forum?

Also, great job cleaning up the current tutorials section.
Thanks,
TMD

[icuurd12b42]

will (can) there be a tutorial request forum?

Also, great job cleaning up the current tutorials section.
Thanks,
TMD

It's an idea that crossed my mind....

[chance]

Nocturne and icuurd (and others) have done a great job re-sorting the pile.

Not unlike the Fifth Labor of Hercules: cleaning the Augean stables. And I mean that in the most literal sense.

[wakeskater_X]

Uh... so we can't post tutorials right now?

Aw I just made my first tutorial and wanted to post it... but it says I can't in the regular thread is it currently locked for reorganization? Or am i flagged wrong or something?

I just made an intermediate Radar tutorial D: Since I haven't seen any before.

[Nocturne]

Tutorials can be posted (and are okay'd every day) in the main forum, and then a moderator will check it and move it to one of the appropriate three subforums (Staff Pick, T&E,Rejected)... So go ahead and post and I'll review it ASAP!

[wakeskater_X]

Gotcha, didn't realize i could post in the main area, didn't see that post button way at the bottom