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How to help the Absolute Beginner?

Discussion in 'Scripting' started by Tobias J., Apr 18, 2012.

  1. Tobias J.

    Tobias J.

    Joined:
    Feb 21, 2012
    Posts:
    423
    Hello,

    I haven't been here that long, but I have noticed that we get a large number of... uhm, less-than-competent questions. Many newcomers pose questions that are so simple or uninformed that it's clear they should start somewhere else entirely.

    Usually, these newcomers do get some form of answer - but it's also very brief and curt, often condescending too. I think this lack of proper answers can easily lead to the newcomer turning into a 'new-leaver', which is a shame for all of us. We all stand to gain if the community is large and active.

    Now, how do we answer all these less-than-competent questions from the newcomers, without spending all our time doing so? How do we make them see that we really do want to help, if they show they are ready to be helped?

    I'm thinking that some 'Standard Reply' is the answer. If such a standard reply is sufficiently polite and helpful, I think most would prefer such an answer over no answer at all (which many do experience).

    So, I am contemplating setting up a wiki page with such an answer, or maybe simply a post here on the forum. So once you think you have a newcomer that should have done his most basic homework before posting, you could simply link to that and still feel you have done right by the newcomer.

    Something like this is what I have in mind:

    ----

    Hello, and welcome to Unity3D :)

    You have been directed here, because someone thinks you either:

    a) Have not done your homework before asking your question, or
    b) Are looking for answers in the wrong place, or
    c) Are trying to run before you can walk – that is, asking advanced questions but lacking the basic knowledge to really benefit from any answers.
    This someone could be wrong, certainly. But then you have to ask yourself: Why did they think you would benefit from reading this?
    I hope that by reading the rest of this text, and then reading your question again, you will have your answer. If not, you should feel free to ask why.

    Take a deep breath, get a cup of coffee and prepare yourself that it may take a while before you have an answer to the question that brought you here.
    I can guarantee you, however, that if you go over all the information provided here, you will need to ask fewer questions - and when you do have to ask one, it'll receive much better answers than the one that brought you here!

    Relaxed? Coffee at the ready? Excellent! Here we go:

    The Absolute Beginner's Guide to Unity

    Don't be ashamed if you don't know much yet. Every single person here didn't know much when they started out.

    Now, that's actually the most important thing to learn before you can advance to Nearly-Completely Beginner: That somebody had this problem before you did.
    Quite a few people in fact, and chances are your question has already been answered! Not half-bad huh?

    To locate the elusive answer, here's a list of the things you should do before posting: Read this!
    Read the text below the list as well! It holds invaluable information if you want to ask a question.

    This is an excellent place to do your searching


    Still nothing, after all this time?

    That surely sucks, but you still shouldn't post a question. You have to make sure you can't...

    Help Yourself

    Many new developers come here, thinking they can make a great game in a few weeks. Let me tell you right from the start: If your game could be made in two weeks, it would have been made already.
    To make a new game, you have to use scripts that isn't part of a tutorial – or rather, you must have the skill to make simple changes to those scripts.
    You absolutely must have a basic knowledge of programming. If you do not, your questions will reflect your incompetence and you will have a very hard time getting answers to your questions.

    If you feel that you don't really know how to code, these links will help you:

    Coding in general (C#):
    Microsoft's beginner topics.
    A thorough course.

    Now that you have a basic knowledge of programming, you still need a basic knowledge of Unity3D – the environment in which your code will run:

    Coding for Unity:
    Script Reference. Go through every single subsection.

    Here are some other programming goodies, and I think this deserves special mention.
    Take a gander at all those links on the left side. I bet at least a handful of them will be useful to you!

    Here is the FAQ for the forum you posted on. You should read all the links and both posts - it might even have the answer to your specific question!

    Tutorials from the Unity Team. I highly recommend the 3D Platform Game tutorial.

    BurgZerg video tutorials.

    TornadoTwins video tutorials.

    Walker Boys video tutorials.

    Now, if you've looked over all those tutorials, and you still don't have your answer, then it's time to learn...

    How To Ask for Help

    Most people here are busy with their own projects, and when they decide to spend a few minutes answering a question, they have many questions to chose from.
    If you want these busy people to pick your question, you must put some effort into your question. Always keep in mind: The better the quality of the question, the better the quality of the answer.

    Here is a list of the top reasons why some questions never receive an answer:
    • Your question has been answered many times before.
      If you have come up with a good title for your question (see below), doing a search on that will probably give you many good results.
    • Your code is hard to read:
      Use [ code ] [ /code ] around your code, and use the 'Preview Post' button to make sure it's nice and pretty. It really is important.
    • Your question is not understood:
      Take care to formulate your question in the best English you possibly can, check your spelling and don't use words you wouldn't find in a newspaper. Take the advice of the links just below here.

    In its simplest form, a good question describes how it should work, and then describes how it does work (what unexpected things happened?).

    If you can do the above well, I'd say you're home free. Ask and Ye shall Receive!

    If you think that's kinda vague, you'd be right. Here's a few select subjects which will help you ask great questions!

    Why should I care?
    A good title.
    A good description.
    Asking about code.
    Be Polite.
    Follow up!!!

    A very important quote from that last link:
    "Last, and not least, this sort of followup helps everybody who assisted feel a satisfying sense of closure about the problem. If you are not a techie or hacker yourself, trust us that this feeling is very important to the gurus and experts you tapped for help. Problem narratives that trail off into unresolved nothingness are frustrating things; hackers itch to see them resolved. The goodwill that scratching that itch earns you will be very, very helpful to you next time you need to pose a question."

    You have probably noticed that these links are all from the same web page. I have listed the bare essentials for you, but you would do yourself a favour by reading it all.

    Before leaving you, I should warn you that most of the people who frequent this forum can tell if you have followed these links (and read them!).

    On the plus side, they can tell if you followed these links (and read them!) :)
    If you have done your part to learn, look and ask a good question, I promise you that someone will recognise that and find the time to answer your question.

    I wish you all the best in your endeavours, and hope this text has set you on the path to one day answering questions yourself. :D

    ---

    I would like to hear from people both new and old to unity.

    How would you feel if someone posted a link to this, in response to your question?
    If you wouldn't like it, how should it be changed before you would like it?

    I would like to keep it fairly short and to the point, but if you have any suggestions for changes or additions, I would very much like to hear them!

    Also, I'm having problems viewing the TornadoTwins' tutorials. I've included them here so far, with the assumption that I'm the exception.to the rule. I have QuickTime installed, but can't run them in either Chrome or IE. Do you have any problems with them? If you did, and fixed it, how did you go about it?

    I would like a few more tutorials/links. If you have any that would fit the theme here, please post them.
     
    Last edited: Apr 22, 2012
    JesperGreen likes this.
  2. BeerHuntor

    BeerHuntor

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    The only TT tutorial worth watching, unless you have £50+ to spend at the drop of the hat is the worm game one. And that can be found in a playlist on their YouTube channel.
     
  3. diablo

    diablo

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    Posts:
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    The vast vast vast vast vast majority of people (did I mention vast?) don't bother to read a FAQ before or after posting. They didn't bother to do due diligence before, and they sure as heck aren't going to do it after when it's so much easier to keep posting until someone gives in. Nice idea in an ideological world where people follow rules, but reality deals this a mighty crushing blow. I think some automated darwinian system of sorting out the good from the bad is desperately needed, maybe something like a voting system, because there's simply no way in the world a moderator will be able to (or willing to) do this.
     
  4. Steven

    Steven

    Joined:
    Dec 23, 2009
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    43
    Tobias J. - I am your target audience. I have in the last two weeks decided to give Unity3d a solid run. I just wanted to say that I appreciate your effort, and will be investigating the links you have provided and will follow your advice regarding them.

    I have found the unity3d website to be a rats nest of links, with pages that I can never get back to. I have gone over the basic UI and scripting tutorials that I found on the main site via a google search. There seems to be a void between the basic scripting tutorial and the lertz tutorial. I do recall, back when I first registered this user name some tutorials on the forums, which I was searching for when I found this thread.

    I will also ease Diablos fears haha, I do not intend to interact with the community beyond this post, at least until I have a decent chance of comprehending any options/answers that I might recieve.
     
    JesperGreen likes this.
  5. virror

    virror

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    Very good, but you should fix the text on the webpage, i get a lot of strange characters and stuff, makes it hard to read.
     
  6. exiguous

    exiguous

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    i also considered writing such a "guide" some time ago albeit in a not so polite manner. every "newbie" seems to think his status as newbie qualifies him for a very special treatment and allows him to request others to do the whole work for him and provide him with a ready and perfectly fitting solution. i have never seen such a helplesness before like i see all day in these forums. beeing new to unity does not disallow you to read, research and try around. if you have specific questions there are lots people willing to help. but "i need a complete example" is kind of lazy and just tell others that you lack the patience, the willpower and the capability to solve a problem/task on your own.

    you must also consider that the forums are full of post from people having 10 or 20 posts and asking something and are never seen again. so many people starting with unity also stop working with it (reasons are not relevant here). so at least i'm sad when i help someone and its useless. there seem to be a very high correlation between people requesting this kind of help and people stop using unity (or at least the forums and dont give back the help they got to others).

    its not the competence level i'm sad about. its the demonstration of all the things you mention. some people post bad formatted code without proper description and expect to get a complete solution within minutes. lets call it the social competence which lacks in these posts.

    its difficult to decide where the basic knowledge (gained from tutorials, books, forums etc) ends and the "expert" knowledge (gained from experience) begins. but the forums should definitely not be the place to ask the very basics. tutorials are done for exactly that.

    thats what help is about. enabling someone to help him/herself and not doing all the work for him/her. what i sense often is the expectation for a complete solution to a very vague and extensive question. i prefer giving a short answer with a suggestion or a link which should enable the person to find a solution for him/herself with a bit of effort. that doesnt seem to be enough and they ask and ask until someone provides code which only needs copy and pasted. i find this very contra productive as the trying is what makes the newbies learn. sure it takes a long time and you wont get it right from start but trial and error is a good way to learn. when you learn how it doesnt work or what pros and cons the different approaches have. and when they dont learn it now they ask the next question tomorrow and spam the forums with stuff they could have already learned. so the forum degenrates to a kind of shortcut for the lazy ones in my opinion.

    what i also worry about (and what is a representation of the issue above) is that non unity specific questions are asked. terrain generation, ai concepts etc are not bind to a certain language or api they are simply algorithms which can be applied everywhere. so people can use non-unity specific tutorials for this to know how it works. they only should ask when having problems appliying this to unity api (fe mesh generation). this way the question (and answer) would be more specific, the asker would show his/her own effort, the time of the answering people is not wasted repeating what can be found in thousand places already and the qualtiy of questions and answers would be improved imo.

    3 points:
    - someone who leaves because of this does not have enough willpower to achieve what he/she wants and would drop game development sooner or later anyway.
    - many new people asking leave anyway because they dont like it or whatever. look through the forums and search for people with a hand full of posts beeing not active for years.
    - such "lazy" people would not contribute to the community anyway when they get what they want (leechers).

    i have pretty much resigned and lost my belief in the forum and the community and thus almost stopped my attempts to help due to these reasons. i have esteem for people like eric, dreamora and bigmisterb which still help and often have a very profound and correct answer. but i dont see that these few people can stem the flood of these questions. and other people willing and able to help are driven off by ignorant posts and even personal insults.
    i see your good will to improve these issues but i think what you mention is pretty much naturally and when people refuse to do this without your post they also wont do it with your post. this may be because they want to get as much as possible with as few as possible own effort. dont searching the internet before typing a question is an expression of lazyness and not a lack of knowledge. they dont see that noone here wants to repeat extra for them what is writen somewhere else thousands of times.

    what also annyos me is the lack of feedback. many people are answering a question and give good hints and the op doesnt even say thanks or tell wether it worked or not.

    my suggestions to new people:
    you have to code in unity alot. if you cant code yet learn it first. for c# read http://www.robmiles.com/c-yellow-book/Rob Miles CSharp Yellow Book 2011.pdf
    you have to know the unity api so look through it and see what it provides you with http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/ScriptReference/GameObject.html
    dont start with your dream project (especially no mmo). take the time to do some tutorials.
    read the forums frequently and answer the questions for yourself or think about how you would aproach the problem. and read the solutions of the profis they often yield valuable hints.
    have a file and collect links, hints from the profis etc all what you think could help you. sort it in topics to have an easy and quick reference. you waste time finding something you have read somewhere 3 months ago.
    start with 2 or 3 small test projects like tetris, pong, 3 wins etc. then do prototype for the game you want to accomplish (fps, strategy, rpg) and try out the important concepts there without any graphical sugar. try quests, ai, movement etc. you can reuse, adapt and improve the scripts later.
    if you want to add a new complex system to your game make it in a new empty project as long as it is relative separated from the rest. there you can try and debug it without clutter. and also you have to think how you include it in your project later which could lead to a better interface.
    when you have a question search the internet. when you are unwilling or unable to find out easy things you are not able to finish the simplest asteroids, pong or tetris clone. game development is not only the "good ideas" (actually its the smallest part) but its the effort you make into making this ideas real in a good game. without effort you cannot succeed.
    thoroughly try to find a solution for yourself first. when you put every single problem into the forum you hardly learn a small fraction of the things you would learn when you would try to achieve things by yourself first.

    for the improvement of the forum i also would suggest some kind of rating system where you can people who insult others rate downwards and people who help others rate upwards. people with a bad rating should not be helped. then it must only be ensured that there are no multi accounts for the same person to avoid creating a new account when the old is "burned" with a bad reputation. the new people come with certain expectations to the community. so why should the community dont have expectations to them (and all members)?
     
    Last edited: Apr 18, 2012
  7. Zethariel1

    Zethariel1

    Joined:
    Mar 21, 2012
    Posts:
    439
    Perhaps adding a mandatory page to read during the posting of a first post in the Scripting section? As in, when a poster with no posts in the Scripts section tries to post, he is redirected to a welcoming page full of links and with a hearty welcome, such as Tobias J. proposed? with that in place, I guess those that ask simple question could be justly called just lazy, as they were given an in-the-face helping hand.

    My idea is probably unfeasible from the moderator's/admin's point of view, as coding that would require some dabbling. Still, as an idea, it isn't half-bad.
     
  8. Tobias J.

    Tobias J.

    Joined:
    Feb 21, 2012
    Posts:
    423
    Thanks for all the commnets. Please keep them coming!

    I have to leave for my mother's birthday celebration, but I'll return with a vengeance. Well, probably just with a piece of cake ;-)

    PS/Edit:
    @Virror: I assume the weird characters you mentioned are on the http://www.catb.org site?
    I have no control over that, but I guess I could just put the text in the guide itself, and credit the site. I tend to think it'll get a bit long though. hm. Maybe I can find another site with the same content, but without the weird chars.
     
    Last edited: Apr 18, 2012
  9. diablo

    diablo

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    People will skip the mandatory page, just like people skip the "EULA" when installing a new program on their computer. For example, I don't know a single person that bothers to read Apple's "EULA" every time there's an update on the iTunes store. If anything, it's the truly anal and diligent people that will read it, and these are not the people we're targetting lol.

    Some sort of community assisted voting scheme is needed, maybe something like slashdot. I agree with Tobias that something is *desperately* needed, but I'm pretty sure a FAQ isn't going to do it.
     
  10. exiguous

    exiguous

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  11. Tseng

    Tseng

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    There are way to "fix" that. Simply ignore such posts. Just ignore such posts. Or point the people out. Whenever I see a post with a code wall of text which is unformatted I either ignore it (when most of the post is code w/o real questions) or point them out to format the code.

    Formating code is so easy, I don't get it why people are incapable of using it. I also ignore posts from some other learn resistant users here (there are at least two and I think you all know who they are). They were told several times to learn and understand the very basics of programming before continue to working with Unity, yet they refused to do it.

    So the only option is to ignore them, until they stop posting. Sounds harsh, but there is just no way than to ban them :p


    And actually there is Unity Answers for small for more general questions, where a discussion is not necessary.

    For example if someone wants to implement something, like an AI and asks for pro and cons, this is better fit in a forum, cause people can post suggestions and talk about the pro and cons of the solutions other users. This is not very what fits in Unity Answers, because you have one question and each user posts one answer and they either up or down vote the posts and the question starter marks the best answer as the right one.


    I don't think that of being an big issue. Most in forums like this just come when they have a very specific problem and are able to solve the rest themselves. The other ones are the people who think that Unity will allow them to make the next multimillion game with barely an effort until they realize, that making games is a lengthly process and requires more than "click-and-play" to make a game.

    Basic knowledge can be separated in two categories
    a) basic programming knowledge. You must know the difference between value and reference types, inheritance, variables, implementations, stuff like virtual methods and overriding them (actually part of inheritance), maybe even abstract classes and interfaces and basic logics (if/do/while/for loops), built-in array and that arrays are zero-indexed.

    This knowledge is mostly easily transferable to other programming languages
    b) Basic knowledge of game developing (knowing what an vector or transform are, what they represent) and the API
    i.e.
    .NET: Knowing what lists and dictionaries are, how to make events
    Unity: Knowing basic classes, like Transform and how to move/rotate it or the Mathf class, knowing how to add and retrieve components from a GameObject

    That's basic knowledge. Someone who starts with Unity development should at least bring this basic knowledge before starting to make anything. a) can be learned from several books (i.e. C# books if you work with C#) or online tutorials, b) can be learned from tutorials, books or MSDN documentation while the Unity Part can be learned from the examples and documentation already available.

    Only then, "newcomers" should start making anything with Unity and start it slow by experimenting a bit (i.e. prototyping or doing some very simple game) until they get a feeling for the Unity API and know most of it's classes.

    Mhh I disagree. Imho it's ok talking about AI concepts or which AI system may suit bests to the thing one tries to accomplish (i.e. simple AI follow scripts, FSM or Fuzzy logic).

    But basic questions should be moved to Unity Answers, like "Got this and that error in my code". And Unity Answers also allows to up/down vote good/bad answers and mark the one which is the right one for the OP.


    That's one point most of this simple questions should be on Unity Answers. You can get "feedback" by either the op or other people reading it, by up voting and giving +karma. It's also very easy to see which people accept (or don't accept at all) certain answers and consider ignoring their questions.

    Also Unity Answer is supposed to be partly community moderated (though I think that the requirements are quite to high for a small community as Unity is). With high enough karma you can edit posts of other peoples, vote for closing it (if unrelated, off topic or duplicates) or retag it.

    Look there http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/index.html

    It's based on the idea of stackexchange (it was using stackexchange script before they had to change it to qtoa due to some changed licensing in the stackexchange one) and it works successfully in other areas and is very popular. The problem is, that the Unity community is a bit small, so the it lacks the critical mass of people who help answering the questions there (though its better than 1-2 years ago due to higher exposure with the release of Unity free licenses).

    Also it's very easy to create an account there. If you have a google, yahoo, OpenID, MyOpenID, Blogger or Wordpress account you can simply just sign in with it and create an account with two clicks instead of going through the normal registration process of the forum.

    However, Unity Answers need to be promoted more and "to simple" questions be discouraged on the forums and keep discussions (where you want to hear feedback, pro/con discussions or design flaws) in the forum and concrete questions on Unity Answers.
     
  12. diablo

    diablo

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    Nahh... again, this is in an ideal society. In reality, you will ignore them, but others with good intentions but don't see the big picture will respond to their posts and empower their laziness. That's why we need a voting system of some sort, that way messages can be downvoted and after enough of these they'll be hidden and hard to find and therefore harder to answer.
     
  13. BeerHuntor

    BeerHuntor

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    So what your getting at is every one should have your attitude and think F*** them. And not actually help people who don't meet your standards?

    Why don't you go to the extreme and stop the forum taking on new members, solves all your problems in one!
     
  14. diablo

    diablo

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    What else would you do to people who post questions on how to learn to drive a car on a Honda forum, or a Mazda forum? A car manufacturer's forum is for questions relating to the car itself, not on how to drive it. If you're posting "Help me, show me how to drive" questions on a car forum, then you need more help than you know.
     
  15. BeerHuntor

    BeerHuntor

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    That maybe so, But your argument I would agree is suited to the "Unity Section" of the forum. The "Scripting" section is for exactly what it says. Help with scripting. More so help with UnityScript which, has been mentioned on many other tutorials, is not the same as JavaScript. So going to google and searching JavaScript, will not help you write UnityScript.

    Now if the "Honda Forum" had a "Driving Section" then yes it would be OK to post such question there.
     
  16. diablo

    diablo

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    Yes, but "Scripting" means "Unity Scripting", and unfortunately people take that to mean "Teach me Scripting". There's a difference between people asking for help with a problem directly related to a Unity Scripting API, and people asking for help on basic programming that just so *happens* to involve Unity Scripting. It's like me going to a Math forum on a Calculus site and posting a calculus problem where I'm having trouble with simple addition and multiplication, and when people complain that I shouldn't be posting my problem there and I'm not ready for it, I retort "Well, this is a calculus problem, and this is a Math question, and the forum name is Math, so my question is valid!" I don't think people there will be happy to help me solve a calculus problem when I obviously don't know simple addition and multiplication, which is similar to what's happened here in the Unity forums. I am all for helping people who need help, but some of the "help" does not belong here *at all*.
     
  17. Tseng

    Tseng

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    Technically Unity is a forum about making games, not about learning programming.

    So when you decide to make a game, you should at least have basic understanding of programming, before you start with. Or have someone who does the programming for you. If you are an 3d artist you probably don't know much about programming, so it would be logical to look for someone who is experienced in programming to work with.

    So some questions like "hot to declare a variable" "what is a static variable" really don't belnog there and actually can be found out by a 10 second Google search. In contrast, posting this question to a forum takes longer than 10 second search and waiting for an answer takes even longer.

    Also, game programming is much about doing research and sometimes about being creative. When I have a certain problem, the first thing I do is a Google search, i.e. when you look for AI you just type in "game AI development" or "game AI programming" into Google and it gives you plenty of results. One you have a better idea what kind of AI there are, you can be more specific, like Google for "C# FSM Finite State Machine" and you get many resources about that specific AI pattern.

    In 90% of the cases this is much faster than asking a question and waiting for a reply or be angry because no one had a solution for you.

    Last but not least, getting answers in a community driven system like a forum is a privilege, not a right. You have no right to get an answer, so the users are not obligated to answer you. But they can if they have the time and the knowledge to help you.

    This is different from Unity support (support@unity.com). When you paid for Unity and contact the support, then you have the right for support and getting helped, because they are offering the product and you have paid for it.
     
  18. BeerHuntor

    BeerHuntor

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    Then you post a link referring to where they can fix there problem? Its not that hard to do. After all im sure most people around here, know where all the tutorials are, and since they were in that position before, can guide them along the same path, instead of a "im not helping cos its easy attitude". which ALOT of people seem to have on this forum.
     
  19. BeerHuntor

    BeerHuntor

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    yes I agree and a simple reply with something similar to this http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+to+declare+a+variable+javascript WIll go a lot further than the replies from some people on here with there egotistical attitude.

    I'm sorry but if you can't be bothered to do that ^^

    Then I don't see the need to reply at all imho
     
  20. diablo

    diablo

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    Well, it depends on who we're replying to... if it's someone lazy who expects things to be handed to them, then downvote their question so that it doesn't litter the forums; if it's someone that genuinely has a valid question, we help them. What exactly about this system do you have a problem with?
     
  21. exiguous

    exiguous

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    what do you think why they doesnt meet the standards? if i want something for free what is really important to me the least thing i can do is to be polite and give as much information to make it any possible helper as easy and convenient as possible to help. the appearance of some people in the forum sounds more like a king expecting their slaves to hurry for an answer and completing their work for the king. do you want to help such people? does they improve the community in any way? does it help to ignore them and let them run around and tell everyone the unity community is impolite and does not help? or does it help to show them their "error" and suggest a better way? probably not for everyone but in some cases it could. thats the only chance i see.

    and what happens to those who have infiltrated the forum already and are learn resistant? sarcasm is no solution to the problem. dont you think this is a problem? whats your intention to help such people? shall they continue to do so?

    it should be really easy to formulate some general rules for the creation of a thread and implement a counting system. when 3 people or a percentage of the viewers think the thread (first post + title) is inappropriate it is closed or escalated to a moderator or something and the op recives a pm with the link to the rules site.
    also posts need to be able to be reported and once a person recives a certain amount of them the account is (temporarily) banned or escalated to an moderator.
    and when the number of warnings is shown beside the avatar this gives people willing to help a hint about whom they are going to help and reconsider their decision.
    i consider this beeing a method of hygiene for the forums.
    this would support the moderators in their work.

    there are always social rules and albeit they may differ in the parts of the world some are important everywhere. i guess noone is happy to be insulted. internet is no law free room why should it be a standards free room?

    edit:
    and posting a google link does help them more? the problem is not the answer is easy or i have stumbeled across it in my learnign process. the problem is that this behavior shows the lazy attitude. these people want other spent their valuable time for typing what can be found in thousands of places already. when they are unable or unwilling to find an answer for themselfes what happens when they have a real problem? sure then there are people to help because it cant be found easily. but will they show effort, own research and work there? or will they just say: this is my problem provide me a complete solution?
     
    Last edited: Apr 18, 2012
  22. Tseng

    Tseng

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    Truth is, most people who are proficient with programming, didn't learned it from one or two tutorials. They maybe started with a book (which is something most "newcomers" to Unity refuse to do, because they don't want to have 3-8 weeks into learning a language, they want to make a game w/o any knowledge of programming, which is not very realistic), some Blog post or tutorial they found in Google or by reading the docs (MSDN has a very good documentation on the .NET framework with 1000s of C#, VB.NET, etc. examples).

    Most people never bookmark the tutorials, because you read them once or twice and you understand it. If you ever in need for it, they just Google and find another one (or the same one if it was a popular one). I can assure you, as a programmer 80% of the time you need to solve something or learn something new you will be looking through Google. It's a "part of the job" to do such research, read white papers and learn new patterns. MVC was yesterday, MVVM is today. The world of programming is constantly changing and you will have to do constantly research to stay updated.

    @lmgtfy: Well, lmgfty is one of my favorites and I occasionally use it alongside with RTFM + Link to the docs. But that's still something that most people could have avoid if they'd be more familiar with the documentation and the API itself, instead of having other people do the work.

    It can happen that you forget it once or did oversee that. But there is that other guy, who was looking for the attribute on how to hide a variable in inspector. He could have just done a "unity3d attributes" search on google and the 1. (in words: first) result would have be a direct link to Unity3d Runtime Attributes.

    edit:
    Just for clarification: That guy was told several times to learn the basic about programming. They key to the above is to know that @Something (UnityScript) or [Something] in front of a method, class or member declaration is called Attribute.

    Knowing this, is basic programming knowledge. Of course if you don't know the basics, you also don't know what to Google for which remarks why it's important to know basics of programming before deciding to develop something as complex as a game
    /edit:

    The power of utilizing Google would make a good chunk of 40-50% questions/threads obsolete, making the more complex problems more visible.

    Just as an example: A unity Thread overview page can display 40 threads per page. Typically there are 20-30 questions which could be answered by a Google Search which lasts less than 5 minutes (if it's unity related) or by learning the programming basics (semantics, how to read and understand compiler errors and warnings) before starting the development. This are 50-75% of the threads visible on the first page.

    The real important (and complex questions) drown down in a sea of "noob questions" and that's something very bad, because the people with serious problem will less likely get an answer in this sea of noob questions and get pushed back on page 2 or 3 very quickly.

    Maybe it would make sense to create subforums, like "Beginner Scripting" and "Advanced/Intermediate Scripting" and have a merciless mod enforcing it by moving all noob questions from the advnaced/intermediate one into the beginners subforum
     
    Last edited: Apr 18, 2012
  23. diablo

    diablo

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    I still don't think that a mod can do this, nor would I wish this job upon one. Also, subdividing the level of difficulty is a tricky thing... how will people know what's beginner/intermediate/advanced? Also, that system will not prevent lazy people from simply crossposting, or simply posting on the higher levels so that they can be sure to get an answer. This is why I'm more in favor of a community driven upvote/downvote system. Perhaps if Unity was really interested in solving this problem we can get some of our minds together towards really thinking about the issue and coming up with a solution that works. Until that day comes, all we can do is preach awareness.
     
  24. Tseng

    Tseng

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    In case you repeatedly ignored (or just quickly read over) my wall of text's:

    Unity Answers: click me
     
    Last edited: Apr 18, 2012
  25. diablo

    diablo

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    Agreed!! This is exactly what I'm talking about, programming can take weeks or months to learn, and to be good at it may take years, but no! people expect to simply download Unity, hop on the unity forums and post their nonsense expecting people to help them mock their game together. The problem is that some people with good intentions "feed" these people with help they don't deserve, and the forum quickly degrades into a big noob infested pile of useless threads. Pick up a book, take a few weeks to learn to program, then pick up another book or read the Unity API, learn the basic concepts there. Then, and *only* then, are you qualified to post here.
     
  26. BeerHuntor

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    So by posting a link to a lmgtfy or any link as a matter of fact, is not better and more productive than writing walls of text that aint even related to the topic in question, and just mearly degrade the OP by saying "how such a noob question has already been asked million times before and you should GTFO and learn to code" ???

    In that time that you have posted that wall of text that does not even relate to the OP, you could of answered the thing for him, or provided a link, that would help a damn site more than your wall of text telling how much of a stupid question ever could.

    You go about how people would go and say "oh the unity forums are rubbish and everyone is ignorant and does not want to help" But what do you think will be the answer to the above?

    Is it ignorant? Yes... maybe disrespectful and arrogant too.
    Are you showing you want to help.? ... Absolutely not.

    So in essence by doing what I have suggested above, that unfortunately 90% of such threads allude to. You are causing the very thing that you do not want.

    All i am saying is, if you cant be bothered to post a link or point them in the right direction, then don't comment on the topic at all.
     
  27. diablo

    diablo

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    I didn't ignore you at all, and I agree with you 100%, just not on the implementation. Unity Answers is another fiasco, and we need to come up with a better type of community voting system. If Unity's interested (and if anyone from Unity is reading this) I would love to be part of a process or roundtable discussion on improving these forums, as Tseng is suggesting.
     
  28. diablo

    diablo

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    And what we're saying is, if you can't be bothered to spend several weeks or months to learn programming and some basic game development concepts *before* posting, then we would like to weed your posts from the forums.
     
  29. BeerHuntor

    BeerHuntor

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    But your not just saying that are you?

    Your spamming up peoples threads with your "preaching" and making people feel uncomfortable. If it was just as you were saying, we would not have an issue here, as such threads would be ignored and/or answered by other people with regards to the topic at hand.

    And tbh, if such threads were left alone from your preaching, they would either be answered, and or left to die. Your preaching only bumps them up to the top of the ladder for others to jump on the same bandwagon..

    Effectively you are fueling your own fire. And considering scripting is mostly logic, you failing to see this logic surprises me.
     
  30. Tseng

    Tseng

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    Let's be honest here, a lmgtfy isn't meant to be "helpful", it's actually a way of mocking the laziness of the op a sarcastic way (since you could directly link him a SERP (Search Engine Result Page), instead of linking him to a flash animation which mocks him).

    It's as productive as posting: "Google is your friend" or "Google it" or telling him that he's to "stupid to use Google". So how is this less disrespectful than an lmgtfy link?
     
  31. BeerHuntor

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    I used a lmgtfy link as an example, and if you actually read my post where i stated such example, you would find I also said any link as a matter of fact..

    And a lmgtfy link is ALOT less respectful than a wall of text slating and hating on the OP. ALOT less, and I think anybody who has any compassion for anything would see so. Im not saying its the best choice, But i would rather see a lmftfy link in my threads than a hate message. Wouldn't you?
     
  32. diablo

    diablo

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    By posting to the offending threads, you can help people understand that they need to go back to the basics, that programming is hard work and that they need to take time off to learn it before posting here. The hardworking people will say "ok, thanks for the link to the free course" and disappear for a few weeks/months until they have the basics down. The lazy people will be outraged and basically say what you've been saying, which is leave me alone and let me post my nonsense.

    So no, if such threads are left alone, they will not die, and the mere presence of them breeds more threads of the like.

    And no, I'm not fueling my own fire, by making people aware of the problem more people will be less inclined to contribute to the problem, which will result in slightly less nonsense until we figure out a better system; my logic is safe, thank you.
     
  33. BeerHuntor

    BeerHuntor

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    Are you insinuating that I am not hard working?

    As for someone who does not know me, and has only spoken to me through a virtual medium, I can't honestly see where you have the right to make such accusations regarding my character.

    This is the last of me in this thread. It is obvious that some people would rather be more unproductive than be productive around here, and in turn cause the community to deteriorate. But be my guest. I have tried to get you to see sense, but it is clear that you cant.
     
  34. diablo

    diablo

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    I don't want to judge you any more than I want to make you feel bad in any way, I just want to help you and make this community a better place. Unfortunately, the truth can hurt, and the truth is that some people are not ready to post to this forum yet, and you're taking issue at this. By telling you that you need to go back to the basics and take some time to learn some basic programming, I'm helping you in the long run. Tell me, who is really trying to help you, the guy who gives you a fish every day for the rest of your life, or the guy who tries to motivate you to learn to fish so you can never go hungry again? My love is tough love man, so don't take it personally or as a slight on you; it's for your own good and for our community's good.
     
  35. exiguous

    exiguous

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    but when i do what you suggest the op is already formulating the next questing to spam the forums. when he gets 1 to 10 of those "google it" posts (number depends on level of learning resistance) he may really consider it as an option and if things go well make a habit out of it which will help him alot in the future. so he may turn into a valuable member of the forum instead of a leecher by simply doing what everyone doing a game must constantly do: effort.

    my help is bound to the mentioned criteria. if they are not fullfilled i dont help. and i even stopped to post "google it" because i could find better use of my time. its a downwards spiral that i dont read most threads because of this rubbish.

    you are free to do this. but arent i free to suggest a way wich is more accepted?

    normally only one user suggests such a ruthless method (googling, oh no). and then the thread dies. if noone would answer this the op would repeat to bump his thread because he thinks it has not been recognized, not that noone wants to answer because of the mentioned issues.
     
  36. Zethariel1

    Zethariel1

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    In all honesty, I'm against such voting systems where the self-righteous have control over who gets to post and which thread floats. As you can see, even the "retarded" threads get some attention and replies, although according to your logics, they should die or be full of OP bumps, which would flag the thread for moderation. I like helping out in any form -- be it supplying a ready solution or pointing in the right direction should my knowledge be not enough. It is fun to crack a solution with little information provided.

    Voting systems are good fodder for personal bias and trolling, amongst other things (since it seems that the forum doesn't have an age floor limit, people who are immature aren't stopped from voting). People check out the site regularly, and new threads are marked -- skimming through them takes maybe 10 minutes. If you can't be bothered to spend that much time, and want only the juicy ones, there is even less logic in spending another few minutes pointing out other people's incompetence.

    Think about teachers. Is a teacher who sports "tough love" through "teach it yourself", "go back to the basics" or "come back when you know something" a desirable character? No, and that is why education as it is now is sucky (as it promotes self-learning as the only way of getting anywhere -- you either have an affinity for the subject to start with or you grow to loathe it). We remember teachers that inspire us, are helpfull and patient. Some individuals need more winding up in order to take off themselves (My mother is a teacher, maybe not the ideal one, but she managed to change a few dumb-nuts into calculus maniacs). Others will never take off and eventaully get bored/change their hobbies.

    So, while it is fun and emporewing to show people where they belong, it takes strengh of character to deny oneself such pleasure and walk away or be helpfull.
     
  37. Tseng

    Tseng

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    I disagree with most of it, but such a voting system doesn't belong to a forum, that's where I agree. But Unity Answers and StackExchange work with that system and this model proved successful.

    I assume you have never used StackExchange before, right? In my previous work I often used StackExchange exclusively to either look for a solution of a problem as well or reply to others, as well as occasionally asking a question myself. The system works and most of the Questions/Answers there have a high quality.

    One of the reasons for this is: It's community moderated, similar to Wiki. Bad, off-topic, unreleated or double Questions get closed + linked to similar questions. You can earn "Karma" there, when other people vote up your questions/answers and with high enough Karma you get additional privileges, like editing tags, or ability to vote certain questions to be closed. When enough vote for it (or someone with very high karma) the question get closed and it won't appear anymore in "Unanswered Questions" anymore.

    This way users willing to help can see the unanswered questions and not have the answered or unrelated come in the way. StackExchange is extremely helpful and may professional (as well as beginners) programmers post their.

    The difference is, StackExchange has much more members, especially ones with high Karma who are actively involved with it and hence ensuring that it always keeps a high level of quality and usefulness and it is also very broad platform (All kind of programming questions can be posted there, ruby, PHP, C#, C++ etc.). Questions which are not programming related get closed quickly.

    For Physic Questions, you use Physic StackExchange, Database Administration, Unix Linux.

    The main advantage is that each of this "sub-platforms" have highly specialized people for that one area and you will get (mostly) more professional answers there, than asking "how to setup a linux server" in a forum about programming or web development.

    And Unity needs such a platform which is only focused on Unity (and game development) related stuff, not about teaching people how to program. That's what other platforms can do better. That's what decides about the quality of answers.

    When you have many posts with "low quality" questions, people may stop answering it or oversee the real important questions and the level of competence of such a platform/forum lowers and it becomes less useful.
     
  38. diablo

    diablo

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    You're still free to do so, but under such a system it will be harder for the rest of us to find, so it's a win/win.

    But this is how we are built, our subconcious is constantly evaluating and assigning a number to everything, and based on that number we filter (or vote) on what we choose to focus on and what to ignore, what we like and what we don't like, etc... Voting is democratic so the majority should prevail, and as for abuse, I think sites such as Wikipedia are great examples of how a voting system can be useful. I'm not saying any such system is perfect, but it's a step in the right direction and certainly better than what we have now.


    My wife is a teacher, and I have taught programming since I was 10 at a local community center to people of all ages, young and old, so I have some experience here. I can tell you that it's precisely because of my experience teaching people who want to learn and those that don't want to learn that I'm advocating this system. As for telling people to go back to the basics, I don't know of any college level teacher who is going to accept a student who hasn't finished high school, or a high school teacher who will accept someone who hasn't finished elementary. If someone wants to be nice and teach them from ground zero, that's fine, but they do so on their own time at their own place... besides, that's the exception and *not* the rule, and should not be an expectation on the Unity forums any more that people should expect to learn to drive on a Mazda forum, or learn their multiplication tables in a Calculus forum.

    I don't derive pleasure from this, but I do believe it's irresponsible to encourage people to be lazy and fan that flame by feeding them.
     
  39. diablo

    diablo

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    Yes, StackOverflow uses this system, so I give it a 2 thumbs up. How does QATO compare?
     
    Last edited: Apr 18, 2012
  40. exiguous

    exiguous

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    when i read the thread right (correct me if i'm wrong) you are the one who imputes other people the following properties:
    hate
    illogicalness
    egoism
    and in general a bad attitude.

    that are very much assumptions about people you only know through a virtual medium. where do you take the right from to judge other people this way? do you take these assumptions from your perception of the posts of people? and does these posts or the opinions therein meet your standards? and do you refuse further discussions because your standards and/or opinion is not met or agreed to? do you read and understand your own posts?
     
  41. diablo

    diablo

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  42. Tseng

    Tseng

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    That's basically what I've summed up in my posts before. One of the reason is that the requirements for voting to close a questions are too high and not many people have that.

    That's the reputation table required for certain privileges

    There is for example no vote for closing questions, only close questions at 5k+ reputation, which requires some serious upvoting to get. Even editing of quesiton is quite high, comparing the average score of the people on Unity Answers. Editing would already help much, to quickly format code or rephrase the topic, which would creatly improve the overview at Unity Answers.

    And you need 10k score in order to delete completely unrelated questions, posts etc. One of the most common "mistakes" on Unity Ansers is when people post a question or comment as "Answer" and there are only a few people who can change this. It just needs to be easier for the community to filter out/close duplicates/unrelated questions and keep comments seprated from answers.

    So the entry level for some of the permissions should be reconsidered, i.e. "convert answers to comments" should be available at a much lower score, edit other people posts maybe a bit to. This can be adjusted upwards later, when there are more people with high enough scores to moderate it. But at the moment there are only a few which have 5k+ score (like Eric)
     
  43. Tobias J.

    Tobias J.

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    Alrighty then. 6 hours and 2 pages later :)

    I'm happy to see the interest in the subject (which apparently isn't new, as a link showed). The topic has drifted somewhat, though.

    My intention with writing (and eventually linking to) 'The Absolute Beginner's Guide', was to help the absolute beginner - the guy who just downloaded Unity and now have some problem with it, no matter how stupid.
    I figured (and still do), that one way to help the guy is to let him know, that while his post might rid him of the symptom, his disease will persist.
    To be perfectly blunt, I'm not really interested in what we as veteran users can do to make our lives easier. I want to make the life of the absolute beginner easier, and if that leads to an easier life for the veterans that's all good and well - but that's NOT the point of such a 'tutorial' (or linking to it).

    I think an important aspect of the discussion has been left out, namely why people answer questions. Take a second or two to think about it. If you have ever answered a question here or at Unity Answers, why did you?

    Personally, I see eye to eye with Zethariel when he states:
    "I like helping out in any form -- be it supplying a ready solution or pointing in the right direction should my knowledge be not enough. It is fun to crack a solution with little information provided."

    I take great personal pleasure in knowing I helped someone out - that's why I answer questions here on the Unity forums.
    There certainly could be other perfectly valid reasons for answering them, such as prestige in the community. There are other reasons which are less valid, such as displaying your superior knowledge in order to feed your pride or over-inflated sense of self.

    So ask yourself, when you feel the need to admonish someone for asking a "stupid" question, what is it about this question that makes me angry?

    Is it because the question does not belong here? Is it because the OP could have found it by searching the forum? Is it because he could have found it by taking a 2-year programming course?

    When answering this question to yourself, keep in mind the answer you gave as to why you answer questions in the first place.

    If you earnestly think that you are here to help people out - to answer their questions - are you then really justified in being upset that the quality of the questions isn't up to your standards?
    Maybe, maybe not - but setting that aside for now - are you also justified in condemning those who do answer these below-standard questions?

    I for one will claim you aren't. You do not get to decide what questions are worthy of other people's time. You get to decide how you spend your own time, but you have no right to decide for others how they spend theirs.

    At the heart of this debate are two questions:

    1) How do you decide which questions are worthy of your time?
    2) How do you deal with those that aren't?

    Question 1 is deceptively simple: You decide for yourself. It's your choice, and no-one else should make it for you.

    Question 2 really is very simple. You simply don't do anything. If they're not worthy of your time, don't spend any on them. No, not even to tell them they're not worthy of your time. A question with no answers at all will make that point much more clearly than any amount of lmgtfy links.

    Personally, I have problems with question 1. In my world, it's by far the tougher one.
    I often find myself in some grey area where I can't really decide if this guy is lazy or just don't know how all of this works yet. I tend to give the benefit of the doubt, but all too often that turns out to be a disappointment.

    What I am looking for, is a way in which I can reply to these dubious cases in a thorough and comprehensive way, without investing hours in what eventually turns out to be an ungrateful brat. I would like to have some link I can point to when a 'make-my-game' guy turns up - but the link must assume that this guy can become, and maybe already is, something more and better. It must take into account both the willing student and the ignorant freeloader.

    In one sense, yes, the thread is about how to make our lives easier. But to be specific, it's about how we can more easily help the people who clearly are not worth of our time, and the ones who just might be.

    In closing, I would like to repeat one of the questions I posed: Why do you answer questions?
    If it really is to help people out, do you think it's fair to get upset when those people are helped - even if you didn't think they deserved that help?
     
  44. diablo

    diablo

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    My favorite quote of the day!

    Something that I find very informative on this issue is the following link, which I think explains clearly and concisely the problem of "helping" such people and the problems that occur when others help them :

    http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/18806/what-can-we-do-to-improve-the-quality-of-unityansw.html

    Read the question, comments, and some of the initial answers in this link and it's a real eye-opener. These are from people who are well established in the community and have far more experience with the pros and cons of "helping" certain types of people.
     
    Last edited: Apr 19, 2012
  45. goat

    goat

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  46. Tobias J.

    Tobias J.

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    @Diablo: I have read everything on the first and last page. Seems to have gone way off-topic somewhere under way.

    If you don't want to answer the question that's fine, but please do not pretend to argue a point by asking me to read through 6 pages of more or less unrelated text. I'm sure you can be more precise than that. And under any circumstance, the answer is a personal one - not the kind you leave to large numbers of random people to answer for you.

    @goat:
    No, it doesn't. Not for our purpose, anyways.
     
  47. Zethariel1

    Zethariel1

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    Yes, that is exactly the reason one should not get shunned for asking questions. Just yesterday (I hope BeerHuntor won't be too mad at me by putting my point across using his case) I had a private chat with BeerHuntor about his game. Together we wrote out some basic stuff in JS (which I am not good at, and he seemed pretty adept) -- we both gained from the experience, and he seems a really nice guy that is just a little bit overwhelmed by what is happenning.

    To be truthfull, not everyone has the strict mind to "get" programming (or advanced calculus for that matter) on the flow. I have the same problem with arts, I just don't get how some people can draw so well when it is so damn complicated. Some just need to grind and learn, and it is a bit more comforting to do it with some support from a community.

    Also, how you approach such a newbie is very important. Anyone can be an arrogant brat when belittled -- I assume that most people that find themselves here are cultural and well-bahaved, but will not let others stomp on their desires and dreams.

    A moderator's opinion on the subject would be also welcome (unless I overlooked one) -- as far as I can tell, if a person checks the forum daily, there is no more than a page to read through, which doesn't take that much time -- so the good questions don't drown.
     
  48. Tseng

    Tseng

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    There are plenty of reasons, one of them being that I've seen plenty of horribly written code and horrible "constructions" that one could get nightmares for days just by looking at it (and not just online in the forums, but the source of the Applications used in companies I worked at).

    Other reasons is well, just helping the people out while at the same time keep your own "knowledge fresh", i.e. if someone has a certain problem you can think about it how you'd solve it yourself, even though you never had to solve it before. This way you kind of train your brain too to solve some problems and if you are ever in need to do the same, you already have it in the back of your head.

    More importantly than that, I also read threads at the forum (and Unity answers/StackOverflow for that case), which were already "answered/solved" for the reasons of seeing what problems others hand and the way it got solved, even though I don't need it yet. This way you also learn stuff and get more ideas on how to solve problems, which in the end makes me a better programmer.

    I think this is a quote from Voltaire, some philosopher a few 100 years ago
    Which hits the point actually. And that's something, that many of the people who newly come here ignore. Instead of "getting" better, they just keep asking the same basic stuff over and over.

    Now, the Unity Forum here + Unity Answers are one of the very few places where you can go to ask Unity (and unity game development) related questions. This is an important thing to know. Now if this places get flooded with basic questions, which are placed otherwise much better (i.e. basic C# discussions in a general C# forum or at StackOverflow), this two places (Forum + UA) become less professional and the likehood of more advanced questions to be answered gets lower, making this place less valuable for advanced users, like myself.

    From people posting basic compiler errors due to missing semicolons, wrong declarations or asking how to use variables, the more advanced users "can't learn anything" from and will sooner or later leave, leaving the forums/QA full of beginners, which in the end can't answer most of the more advanced questions asked by others.

    That's not something most people like to see, because Unity in order to become successful and more wide spread needs "experts" (to use the term in one of UA answers linked by Diablo).

    It's not meant to sound like elitist, but if more complex questions can't be answered here (cause they've been drown in the mass of "how to learn programming"), where else could people be asking Unity related questions? There is no other forum which this number of users.

    It's simple, because questions about learning programming do not belong there. Game Development is "serious work", in order to make a game you need to know programming to a certain degree (basics + have some experience and understanding of it and knowledge of a few pattern) - or ask someone who is proficient with programming to join you and he does the programming you can do design/2D Arts.

    That's something most people don't respect here. Most people who come here and download Unity, want to make everything themselves, w/o any prior knowledge. This people are very likely to fail and never get a real game out, because they have no idea what programming really means. It's a work which requires much experience and learning. There is a reason why company hires programmers who have this experience and not "re-educate" their current workers to do it.

    There are 100.000+ forums and places where you could ask C# related questions, or Boo. UnityScript is an issue here (and was a very bad move from Unity to add it in the first place), as there is no references about it outside of Unity. But you still can learn things about polymorphism, compiler errors, brackets and stuff like that outside of the Unity Forums.

    The Quality of the question is important if Unity want to attract more advanced users (who get the stuff done which they start)


    Will read/write the rest, got to go now :p
     
  49. Tobias J.

    Tobias J.

    Joined:
    Feb 21, 2012
    Posts:
    423
    hm. Well, I'm not sure I agree that advanced questions are less likely to be answered, the more beginner questions there are.

    But while I do find all this to be an interesting discussion, it's not really the topic at hand. I'm looking for opinions and suggestions on what to tell those who post beginner questions - keeping in mind they can be both freeloaders and earnest students.

    What are the, say 5, most important pieces of knowledge they should have before continuing?
    All opinions valued here, please chime in!
     
  50. KelsoMRK

    KelsoMRK

    Joined:
    Jul 18, 2010
    Posts:
    5,539
    1. Unity JavaScript is not ECMAScript (Web JavaScript).
    2. Unity C# is Microsoft's C#.
    3. Unity uses Mono to compile C# scripts. Mono is a cross-platform implementation of the .NET framework. Therefore, even though .NET is not cross-platform and usually you write C# to run on .NET, you can use C# to create a cross-platform game in Unity.
    4. There is no performance gain between C# and JavaScript. Both compile to the same low-level language.
    5. The Scripting Reference is only documentation for the Unity API. It is not a full documentation of everything that is available to you. 98% of the C# examples you find on the internet will work in Unity.