How to help the Absolute Beginner?

First, let's define what we mean by a "beginner". A "beginner" is someone who has little to no knowledge of a particular discipline and has not yet reached a comfortable level of competency in it. Now, in order to "begin" something, you must have completed its pre-requisites, otherwise you're not beginning it at all. For example, I can't call myself a beginner in Calculus until I have completed Algebra. In other words, until I complete my studies in Algebra, I have no voice in any discussion pertaining to Calculus, since I have nothing to contribute and nothing to gain since I don't have the tools to understand what is being said.

Are we all in agreement here?

Ok, so now we get to Unity. Unity is a freely available game development tool, which means any joe schmoe and his grandmother can download it (and apparantly have). The Olympics, with its high barrier to entry, limits its contestents to only a few cream of the crop, people at the peak of their discipline. Unity, with its low barrier to entry, has no such limits, and when you place no limits on something, it's in our nature as curious (and selfish) people to take what we can when we can. This, in and of itself, is not a problem, because this means joe and his grandmother can learn Unity and become experts at it and in doing so enrich the Unity community. Now Unity decides to provide a forum where Unity users can help each other, where beginners to Unity can become more proficient at their craft, and where the community can post to a knowledge base of questions and answers that is constantly growing and provides a wealth of valuable information. The expectation is that beginners to Unity will be able to post their questions, and Unity users who know the answer can provide an answer, and by doing so provide a resource that becomes invaluable to others with similar questions.

Now Unity requires two pre-requisites before you can call yourself a Unity beginner : 1) basic programming and 2) basic 3D game-engine knowledge. Without these 2 pre-requisites, you cannot call yourself a Unity beginner. You are either a programming beginner, a game-development beginner, or a combination of both, but in no way are you a Unity beginner any more than I am a Calculus beginner if I don't know Algebra.

Agreed?

Now joe has some programming experience because he taught himself programming by reading books, and though it took months of studying and hands on experience, he became proficient enough to be able to understand most other programming languages he's never seen before, and thus is able to understand Unity's programming language. Upon using Unity for the first time he realizes he doesn't understand what's going on, there's this shader thing and a mesh and a skinnedmeshrenderer and vertices and tranforms, it's all a big mess in his mind. So he realizes that he needs to brush up on these concepts first, so he takes a week to read a book on game development concepts on his train ride to and from work and starts to understand what a shader does, how materials and renderers and meshes relate to it, and is now ready to try his hand at Unity. He has completed the Unity prereqs and can now consider himself a Unity beginner and can now add his voice competently to the Unity community and by doing so enrich it even more. The quality of the Unity knowledge base is very high, because only competent Unity users of all levels (beginners to experts) contribute to it.

Do we all agree so far?

Grandma, on the other hand, has no programming experience and no game development knowledge whatsoever; she can't tell a curly brace from a cd-rom. She thinks games are fun, you can make money from games (just look at the appstore!), Unity is free to download, what the heck, time to make millions! She starts Unity up and is immediately overwhelmed; she has no idea what's going on, no idea what that little box with red, green, blue arrows sticking out of it is, but she wants to make a game, and people have told her that with Unity *anybody* can make a game and make millions on the app store. Seeing that Unity has such a wonderful community of people who help each other out, she posts a request for help : "Can someone help me put together a worm game, sort of like that Snake game? Pretty please, with sugar on top?"

The Unity community now has a big problem, a *very* big problem. All of a sudden, the Unity forums that has been a quality forum for Unity users has been infiltrated by someone who hasn't completed the pre-requisites necessary to be a Unity user, someone who can not add any value to the community but rather has already polluted the knowledge base with a crappy post that will remain there for all time. Grandma has no business being there, but she figures that with enough cries for help some helpful soul will help her out. She gets impatient when someone hasn't answered in 5 minutes, so she sends out another post, and another, until some poor sap comes along and out of the goodness of his heart gives grandma the "help" she needed. This exchange sticks out like a sore thumb on the forums, much like kindergarten math would stick out sorely in a forum dedicated to solving the calculus. Grandma now has the head of her worm and needs it to respond to up, down, left, and right keys, so she posts again for help on doing this, and someone eventually helps her out and the cycle continues ad-nauseum. In the meantime, the quality of the knowledgebase is deteriorating and Unity users now have to wade knee-deep through a pile of dung before reaching some quality posts. When you consider that there are 100,000+ grandmas out there, you can see what's going to happen. Unity users who used to contribute quality posts see the amount of "spam" in their forums and start frequenting/contributing to the forums less and less, until they decide it's not a worthwhile resource anymore and stop going alltogether.

Do we agree that grandma has no business being on these forums, any more than a kindergartner trying his hand at 1 + 2 has any business in a Calculus forum?

So, going back to the question "How to help the Absolute Beginner". We know that by allowing bad posts into the community we are allowing the pollution of our knowledge base. However, since there is no policy in place to prevent this, we are somewhat helpless. We do know, however, that by *answering* these posts we are *empowering* these users (that is, we are rewarding their laziness and in doing so give them more incentive to continue being lazy). Armed with this knowledge we *can*, as responsible community members, institute an unwritten policy of simply ignoring these posts, no matter how many times they cry for help. If nobody responds, they will eventually realize that there's no help for them here, and they will be unable to get anything done, and they will be forced to either 1) give up using Unity and look for another get-rich-quick scheme or 2) learn the pre-requisite programming and game-development concepts elsewhere, in other courses or forums that are suited to what they need, for example a c# forum, or a game-dev forum.

I can stand in front of my house every day and hand out 1 gold piece to everyone that passes by; what do you think will happen? The next day I will have a crowd of people, and the day after an army. It's human nature to take take take, and if I set up an expectation that I will give them a gold piece if they simply ask for it, then they will pitch a tent in front of my house and others will follow and I end up with an army in front of my house. This is basic animal/human psychology, something nobody can deny. Now what happens when I *stop* showing up in front of my house? Well, after one day of me going missing a few people will leave, after two days more people, after three days people are starting to starve and eventually everyone will go back to what they were doing before.

This is what needs to be done with these type of people on the Unity forums. We need to ignore them, and if we see someone helping them in our forums, we need to remind them that the forum is not meant for these type of posts and to make the person "helping" aware that they are not helping at all; that the reverse is happening, they are actually contributing to polluting our knowledge base. Are they technically "helping" the user? Yes, I guess you can call it that from a naive perspective, but they are also screwing the community at the same time. For the most part, making both the user and the "helper" aware that their posts have no place on the forums should suffice, and the well-intention users and helpers will understand and not do it again; the well-intentioned user will go and learn the pre-reqs to Unity, and the "helper" will realize that "helping" is actually having a negative impact on our Unity community. The lazy user, on the other hand, will post their outrage, but as long as we ignore their posts, they will finish venting and move on. The "helper" who take issue with this and say that it's their "right" to help whoever they want and that nobody should be telling them what to do is simply trolling... they are trolling because even though we made them aware that by assisting these type of users who don't belong on the forum they are empowering them and polluting our community, they continue to do so, and unfortunately we can do nothing about these people. In the end, all we have the power to do is ignore these type of posts, spread awareness to these people and their "helpers", and hope that the "helpers" have common sense, or at least if they still want to help these types of people that they take it OUTSIDE the forums so they don't further pollute the community.

Ultimately, it boils down to :

1) Not feeding these type of users with answers.
2) If someone posts answers to their questions, make both of them realize this is not the forum for these type of posts and explain to the good-hearted helper that they are actually negatively impacting the community by polluting it with these type of posts and that the best policy is to abstain from helping them *or* if they must, by taking it OUTSIDE the forums.
3) If people feel the need to answer something, then maybe some static link containing :

a) online courses (free or paid) and books to programming 101
b) online courses (free or paid) and books to game development
c) a paragraph explaining that a and b are *Essential* to using Unity and that they need to be competent in them before posting to the Unity forums.

 

Sorry but I am amazed by this paragraph in which Diablo considers the best method in dealing with this "problem"

So bullying essentially? That is what your suggesting here!

Let me point out some of your comments here.

Seriously?? dude, I believe you mentioned that you had a wife, so i assume you are at of an age, to overcome this playground nonsense. Grow Up!

 

Beerhuntor, your reply, just like your posts, have contributed *nothing* to this forum. Why don't you quote the specific statements you have issue with and reply with your agument and reasoning as to why they're wrong. What *exactly* do you disagree with, *why* do you disagree with it, and *prove* it or provide some evidence backing up your claims or at least undermining mine. Otherwise, your pedestrian "grow up" reply marks you as someone that shouldn't be taken seriously.

 

Diablo, If I have to explain to you why these statements are wrong. Then I'm sorry, but im not going to waste my time actually telling you. Because they are completely obvious.

Once again, This is the last of me in this thread. I just needed to point something out, which obviously has flown straight over your head. I hope someone with some authority see's this thread and what it has turned out to be, and i am sorry for Tobias, who has just tried to make somewhere for others to point too when dealing with a beginner, but members of this community such as yourself, have turned it into no more than a vengeance thread to get people to do it YOUR way or no way.

Im sorry but I wont tolerate this from anyone, no less someone who is old enough to know better, I have made admin aware of this thread, and im sure they will deal with it as they see fit.

Once again Tobias, I apologize for the rudeness of some people in this forum, and turning your thread into something it was not designed to be.

 

No need to apologize, Tobias agrees that something has to be done about the "beginner" issue, we just haven't agreed on how to go about it. I posted my opinion, and its up to others to state theirs, and we go over the merits of each and every one until we arrive at some concensus. If you feel I'm wrong, please feel free to disagree, but do so in a constructive manner so that everyone can understand precisely where we disagree, why you disagree, evidence or theory supporting your argument, and perhaps some alternative. You don't have to do it to me if you think it's so obvious and I'm a lost case; do it for others reading this thread. What do you stand for? From your stance it would seem that you are arguing for the right to pollute our knowledge base, and that you feel you don't need to work your way up like everyone else by learning programming and game development basics first before posting here.

 

I think I can, since it depends on the context. Compiler errors in general and basic programming questions simply doesn't belong there.

If you now start teaching people how to learn programming (which is a hilarious thing to do, as you should already have some basic knowledge of programming before going to program your own game), then you could also start teaching people on how to model with all kind of modeling software, which is a hilarious thing to do, because there are already 100s of great communities out there (for all kind of skill level, some for beginners, some for intermediates, some for professionals).

For example in the CG/3D Artist scene there are a few big forums, where highly skilled members meet, do competitions or show of their work, which is very high quality. What makes this forum better than some general 3D Modeling forums is, that you are surrounded by professionals and if you look for a more difficult problem to solve, that's the place where you most likely get the answer, while in a forum which is mainly populated by beginners your chances of getting the answer will be much lower.

That's something that unity needs too and the best place for this is the official forums and UA, as there are enough C# forums for beginners out there to ask basic stuff.

So, questions which don't relate to Unity3D or game development with Unity3d, are not appropriate there. Compiler errors or teaching people variable scope or value vs reference things is not a part of Unity.

@1)
That's quite simple. Each question which relates to Unity and game development is worthy, which fulfills following conditions

a) he/she took 10 seconds more time to add [ CODE ] [ / CODE ] tags to format his code correctly. Any one doesn't take this 10 seconds worth of work, is just lazy and didn't put any effort into making his problem clear

b) the question doesn't ask something thats very common (or could be googled in 10 seconds, or simply by reading the docs to the class in question), stuff like: "How do I move a gameobject". This is such a basic question, that was a simple "unity3d move object" will return dozen of results and is also very well documented in the Transform documentation/Script Reference

c) the user is showing willingness to learn. There are some individuals, namely Renman3000 and Gamezdude. Later one came here to ask about Tutorials that teach him everything, with the most hilarious reason I've ever read: "I get frustrated from doing research". He just didn't understand that there is not a Tutorial for everything. Most of the problems you encounter in game development must be solved individually, Tutorials are only there for showing certain solutions or helping you to learn it

Several people told him, that he should quit game development and programming, if his frustration level is that low. Game development (and programming in general) means: Doing much research. As you begin, 90% of your time will be researching, reading the docs (which is also some kind of research), get frustrated when things not work or spend DAYS OR WEEKS looking through google to find a solution to your problem.

As for Renman3000, whose posts drive me really mad.... This guy has 1800 posts, yet he still doesn't understand the most basics of programming, like this one, where he still don't know that Arrays are zero index (Reminder: Know this is the ABSOLUTE BASIC KNOWLEDGE.
What this guys does is simply copy and pasting code from some wikis or other posts/sources, puts them in his script, changes maybe one line, hoping that it will work. When it doesn't he copies it into a new thread and expect other people to fix it for him, in a copy and paste ready format. That's hilarious.

People who can't or don't want this, can't become game developers/programmers. There is just no point. It's part of a job. Such people just don't have talent to become programmer. That's fine, there are other things you can do in game development (sound, 2d/3d arts, game design), you just have to substitute lack of your skill with someone else. I can do programming, but I totally suck and have no talent in 2D Arts or textures. I can't even draw simple sketches. And I don't try to learn something I will never be good at, I just have no talent for arts. That's it.

@2)
Well, depending on the case. If it's a newly registered poster, I'd either ignore it or give him a more or less friendly advice (i.e. to format his 2 page long code, because no one else is going to read 2 screen pages of unformatted code).

In cases of Renman3000 Gamezdude, I'll point them to the reality, and that certain things are simply prerequisites and that copy pasting code is not programming and won't get them far, or (in Gamezdude's case) point them that programming and especially game development is hard work, which is often frustrated when certain problems appear and that's a part of the job and if he can't handle it to use google to obtain information, he may be better looking for a partner who does the programming and he does the rest.

As for Renman3000, I simply ignore every post/thread I see him as OP. Simple as that. Reading his posts would just drive me insane. Sounds harsh, but that's the truth. There is no need to "treat them with kid gloves".

1) Bring basic knowledge of programming, before starting to programming a game (if they are 3d artist, they should first learn it or look for a partner to do the scripting work for them). This way they won't only do a favor to people who are willing to help them, but it's good for them too as it makes things much easier
2) Clearly state what's wrong, format their post correctly so readers don't get headache reading their post and especially their code.
3) Do not expecting copy paste ready answers. I often post code which is meant as example and rarely directly relates to the code their pasted. I expect that they are able to use the posted example and implement it in their code
4) Someone who asks a questions, should not ask for code in specific language, unless said thing is only possible there (i.e. C# events) and they should be flexible enough to convert C# to UnityScript and vice versa. I exclusively post examples in C#, since it's the language I'm proficient with and since 95% of the stuff can easily be converted to UnityScript (and cause I mostly write the examples w/o testing it before, it wouldn't be very helpful doing it with UnityScript sytanx)
5) Do not ask to many questions at once. I hate threads, where the OP asks 10 Questions at once, this kind of leads to off-topic. Sum up max 1-3 questions per thread

 

are you aware that with this attitude you may impact the "veteran" user base? i dont know if you like the impact and if it is positive for the community.

i also like to think about problems i dont really have as some kind of distraction from my own. and to gain experience by doing so. also i like a fruitfull discussion.
my main reason is that i'm aware i dont know anything and i cant. so i may be in need of help, discussion or feedback sometime. so it would be good to show a little helping attitude to the "better" people and take away some (nasty?) work of them. essentially you have always a flow of knowledge from top of the pyramid like structure (the profis, veterans, gurus) towards the base (the total noobs) with some interemediate (standard?) users inbetween. people like eric probably know almost every aspect of unity and programming and game development and can hardly profit from something people "below" tell them. so they give way more than they recive. on the other hand the noobs have nothing to contribute as they lack knowldge and they only recive. the people inbetween learn from above and also help to stem the flood of beginner questions but are usually the broad and active user base.

the bigger isnt better and this also applies to a community. continously collecting people trying out unity only to increase their amount will lower the mean when you dont add to the top. and many users aproaching the "olymp" are pissed off by the degraded mean. with the suggestions the base of the pyramid would be cut and the mean would increase and in my opinion this is no loss. effort, self discipline and durability are essential for programming and game development. and someone who is not able to do the first steps (which are the hardest) will still not suceed later when you lift him above this barrier. as the required properties are still missed even when he learns a bit about unity or programming. who shows these attributes by showing a basic knowledge is probably a valid candiate for a community. this has nothing to do with egoism, elitism or arrogance but simply with the purpose of a community. community means exchange and you cant get anything from someone who knows nothing in that topic. and when its doubtfull that he will ever come in that position to help others why care about?
so concentrating on the "valuable" members of a community is important. the leechers are not only a nuisance they are a danger. when more of them enter than "good" people grow from them this leads to deterioration. i see nothing bad in caring about quality of a community.

i get angry by the waste of time. its not only my time which is wasted when i read it. probably hundreds of people read each thread and all their time is wasted. time of someone searching the forum for a topic and get 95% rubbish results is wasted. so the time overhead created by single of these questions may be dozens of hours aggregated over the community and years. and now compare it to the 3 minutes required by a google search for the op. unfortunately you cant know if a thread is rubbish or not from the main page. thats why i find a rating system so much important. those threads are excluded from search and display and save lots of time for those in real need. not for the lazy or incompetent ones which dont deserve to be boosted for nothing (especially no own effort).

but i have spent/wasted time already reading it. and many others will do so. so i cant get it back.

what would me allow to be upset in your opinion? is it expected too much to request a certain level of commitment, politeness and effort? many of these mentioned threads dont say what the error is when they get a compile error. so they expect that everyone reading this puts this code in a sourcefile and looks what the compiler says. it would be seconds for them to include this information.

so i see you get the point and you also think its a waste of time. so why make the effort to post your link and let them ignore it. do you really think this will lead someone to study the topic on his own and prevent him from adding more of such threads? do you think such people read the stickies? i cant imagine that. your helpthread will only be cosmetics to a serious problem which doesnt cover the problem very well.

I agree. as i told not the quantity makes a good community but the quality.

good explanation of the problem. do you really want to attract the "grandmas" out there or the kiddies who only leech or do you want to attract mature and serious people with experience, knowledge and the will to help? there is no problem to say "come back when you have learned the basics" and those who do will probably be happy about the quality of the forum and those who dont will not be missed.

 

I don't normally say this, but it seems to be happening a lot lately, so: the report button is for things that directly violate the forum guidelines, such as spam, completely off-topic posts, or illegal behavior. You can also use it for things that need moderator action, like if you posted in the wrong category and want a thread moved/deleted. But asking moderators to get involved just because you're arguing with someone isn't going to happen. Unless it gets wildly out of control and ends up with death threats or something.

By the way, here is a "beginner thread" that I thought went well. It was a clearly-written and understandable question, and I posted a few lines of code to show the syntax. The poster didn't need me to write out every single line and was able to figure out the rest without any further help, although I would have provided more if necessary, since the post showed signs of thoughtfulness.

--Eric

 

I have been using unity for a few years now and I have made some web versions of my games available. However, even with playing around with Unity a crap ton in my free time, I still would call myself a beginner.

I originally started reading the forums today because I have a simple question about a new project I am starting (a 2D side scroll-er). In this game I want to have a latter that the player can climb. So I started doing a paper drill, thinking about how the latter-player interaction should work. I know that I want to press button1 (the action button) and have the player get on the latter and then get off by pressing button2 (the jump button). So I thought, ok, so the action button fires an event and then the latter, listening for that event, checks to see if the player is close. If he is then he sends some kind of message back to the player that says, get on the latter. Then I thought maybe I should not go down that road at all, maybe I should use the OnTriggerStay, OnTriggerLeave, and then check to see if the user hits the action button there. Anyway, I'm not totally done thinking it through.

My question is: Is this an appropriate type of question to ask? Where I'm just asking for some guidance, not code or anything? Just a reply that would be something like "If it were me, I'd implement it like this... " or "Yeah you could use OnTrigger, but you know what works really great for this type of problem...."

By the way I think that most of your true problem people are probably quick to give up anyway. But then I have only 50 some posts not +500 some of you are up too

 

Hi earthcrosser,

As it is, you can post anything you want as is evident on the forums, but I take it you meant in the current thread's context. I don't think there's any restriction per say on the type of questions asked, since one person could ask for help on a particular api call they don't understand, someone else may ask about how best to optimize some piece of code, others may ask about what the best approach is to a certain AI problem, or if behaviour trees are better than finite state machines. I'd say pretty much anything goes; as long as the questions don't betray a lack of the basics necessary to be able to interact with others on the Unity forums as a peer, then we keep the quality level high.

 

HI Diablo
just read this threat aboutladders. Too funny I think this is exactly the kind of problem you are talking about. The OP gets some really good responses but seems to not really want to have to struggle at all I didn't read it all, but I hope I don't sound like that!

 

LOL, yes, this is but one of *many* threads that litter the forum and shouldn't be here.

 

First, let me be clear (again) about why I started the thread.

I found that the forum had a problem with people asking stupid and/or irrelevant questions. With the current amount of moderation and tools available to us, we can't prevent the stupid questions from appearing. They are going to keep popping up no matter what we do.

More moderators or mechanisms such a votes/karma might prevent the stupid questions from cluttering up the forum (though it won't prevent them popping up in the first place either), but presently there is no solution for the problem. So, since we can't actually solve the problem itself, I asked myself if there might be ways in which we can limit the impact of the problem.

What I came up with, was a form of standard answer to these stupid questions. It's the same idea as Diablo mentions here:

... and it's what Tseng talks about here:

The idea is to be able to provide the person with the stupid question with a single link that explains what he's doing wrong. Since people could be asking stupid questions for any number of reasons, it's not exactly obvious how such a text should be constructed.

This is why I asked for opinions on the text I presented in the OP, and why I later asked what 5 things are the most important to know for a newcomer.
Thanks to those who commented on this, and to KelsoMRK and Tseng for listing the 5 things. I would like many more opinions on these items!

Another way to ask might be: Thinking back on the time when you first downloaded Unity, what 5 things do you wish you had known at the time?

I think my personal list looks something like this:
1. Aware of the wiki and all the goodies found there.
2. How prefabs influence the way you code the game (code architecture).
3. Aware of Unity Answers. Took a few days before I found my way there.
4. As an extension of 3, how to communicate with other scripts.
5. dammit. Harder than you'd think. Can't think of anything right now.

---

Ok then, in the hopes that this clears up my motivation for the thread (and that more will comment on it!), I will shortly touch on the new topic. It's alright by me that the discussion has taken a turn (I haven't contacted Eric), seeing as it's both related and interesting too.

First, I agree that stupid questions is a problem. People waste time reading them and they clutter up the search results.

I don't agree they necessarily scare the experts away, nor that good questions are less likely to be answered.

Every expert was at some point a beginner, but not all beginners turn into experts. Very, very few beginners who turn into experts do so in a vacuum - they got help in one form or another. Their questions were answered and their path to expertise was corrected when necessary.

I posit that the more beginners are helped, and the better the quality of the help, the more of them will turn into experts.
I see the above as an indisputable facts, and don't think anyone could reasonably disagree.

Where we start to go wrong of each other, is in a) defining who are willing to become experts, and b) how to deal with those that help the 'perpetual beginner'. We seem to agree on the point of how to handle the 'perpetual beginner' himself - namely by ignoring him.

In regards of a) - telling the two types of beginners apart - the major stumbling block is that we will often have different definitions of who belongs in which category. If everyone agreed on this we would not be having this discussion, because we would all agree on which posts deserve an answer and which do not.
As it happens, some people have more faith in the beginners than others, which means they'll answer questions which others don't think should be answered.

In my view, this could all end here. If you think that some question did not deserve an answer - that it wasn't worth your time - then simply shrug and move along until you find something worthy of your time.

The argument presented at this point, as I understand it, is that this wont cut it, because now the 'perpetual beginner' will soon encounter another problem, post it, and waste your time by 'forcing' you to read another stupid question.
As a solution to this, some members of the forum would have us admonish the guy who have more faith in the beginner (i.e whoever answered the question) than themselves, thinking that the result will be:

- The expert (guy who posted answer) will suddenly change his criteria for who to help or not.
- The perpetual beginner will stop posting stupid questions.

I don't think this will be the result, at least not for the reasons presented. The faith of the expert in the beginner (or his nativity, as you would have it), will not change simply because he's told by someone else that the beginner isn't deserving of help. I posit that most people make up their own mind about that, and have already done so before they answered (duh), Rather than making the expert 'see the light', such an admonishment will only discourage the expert generally from helping out - he will feel unappreciated and his interest in answering questions in general will drop.

Now assuming the admonishment works, and the perpetual beginner can't get his answers, he certainly will stop asking questions after a while. But not because he has seen the light and has gone elsewhere to get his answers. No, most likely he has quit his endeavors completely and will never return. The result is that we have one less candidate for expertise. Maybe he would never have gained expertise, maybe he would have - but now we'll never know, and I think that's a loss for the forum and Unity in general.

In stead of setting up more or less arbitrary rules about who deserves an answer, I propose that we leave that up to each 'expert' to decide for himself.
To me, it's utterly laughable to approach the unavoidable problem of having to spend time reading stupid questions, by spending time on telling people they shouldn't have answered that stupid question. I find it highly illogical and nonconstructive, and I think it probably stems from some petty form of envy ("why should he have it served on a silver platter when I had to fight tooth and nail for it?").

hehe. Not so short after all, but here we are .

 

That's actually exactly what Unity Answers/StackOverflow/StackExchange communities does.

Unity Answers actually has a moderation queue... at least for new posts, dunno if users with higher karma/more questions/answers land in the moderation queue. New posts (or when a persons starts many questions/answers within a short time, like that monosapiens guy a few days ago) will be in the moderation queue until a moderator (or someone with high enough karma (>=1000 Karma)) checks it and hit the publish button. Before that happens the question is not visible in Unity Answers.

With a certain karma users can edit tags (i.e. if a new user didn't chose any tags or had a bad choice of tags) and correct it. With >2000 Karma you can edit other peoples posts, fix typos (instead of writing a comment and hope the author comes back) or fix wrong/confusing questions/topics. This in turn makes the questions better understandable and may attract one or another person to look in and post an answer. It's moderated by the community.

Also duplicated questions could be closed and a linked to already previously answered questions or even deleted completely if they are way off. I am really not sure if you ever used stackoverflow before. When I started Android development back in 2008/2009, stackoverflow was insanely helpful when looking for a certain problem and how to solve it, to such an degree that I almost solely used it.
I also found dozen of solutions for C# related questions/problems as well as for PHP stuff and learned a tons of stuff about problems I never encountered, just because I was browsing new/unanswered C#/Android related questions and some of them were just interesting to read (and remember it's solutions) and if someone else asked, you could call back that certain problem and link there or post it as an answer.

It's not one of the most popular programming related page on the world.

 

First, I'd like to apologize if anyone took offense at the last paragraph of my last post. No-one told me they did, but I would just like to say that reading it back now, I do find the wording too strong. The opinion stands, but I'm sorry about the language I chose to convey it.

@Tseng:
It's great that there are solutions for the problem, but as long as those solutions aren't part of the forum, they're not much use to us.

One thing that's bothered my since I first found UA, is how we need to make searches in both places. Why they aren't somehow linked to produce results from both sites is beyond me. I know about the custom search engine, but I suspect I'm the exception to the rule here. Personally, I would just take the search fields out in both places, and replace it with a link to that custom search engine.

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

 

Statistics for forums and usenet and questions answers sites have already shown a proportional relationship between the average quality of the posts and the contribution/attendance frequency of members of higher levels of expertise. The more quality posts you have, the more high level enthusiasts you attract, and the higher the frequency of their contributions. As the quality of the posts go down so does the contributions and attendance by the high level contributors. There are still usenet groups out there that were once very popular and are now ghost towns that only have spam for posts; the members went elsewhere. This is actually nothing new, as we see it all the time in the real world, and it's most visible in the Real Estate market. Take a good neighbourhood, have a handful of families move in who neglect to care for their property, and you immediately lower the real estate prices, which attracts more buyers who are also likely to neglect their properties, and you drive away owners likely to take care of their homes, ending up with a drastically lower quality neighbourhood with trash littering the streets. It happens all over the world, and the internet is no exception. So you can disagree, but you'll be disagreeing with plenty of evidence

Agreed! The only thing I would add to this is that I shouldn't expect help from a Calculus forum if I'm beginning Algebra, and it would be ridiculous of me to pollute the Calculus forums with Algebra questions. Do we all agree that the Unity forums are for *Unity* beginners, not programming beginners?

I like using the Calculus example because it's a simple analogy, so I'll use it again.

I think anyone with basic knowledge of the Calculus can tell right aware whether or not someone is asking them a Calculus question or not. If they are unable to tell the difference, then it's most likely because that person doesn't really know Calculus. Therefore, if I'm on the Calculus forum, and I see another user helping people across several threads on solving simple addition problems, then I think it's up to his/her peers in the community to ask him to take this outside the forums, because addition problems do NOT belong on the Calculus forums. Now, if that person says that he thinks the addition problem SHOULD be on the Calculus forum and that he has the right to help these people, then the community is in bigger trouble than before, because not only does it have people posting addition questions on their forums, but their own community members are contributing to the problem by adding fuel to the fire.

I agree that some people can have the mentality "I had to work hard to get where I'm at, so they should work hard too", and I find that selfish as well. This is certainly not my view, so please don't misconstrue my arguments as such. If you're a genius and can learn in 1 week something that might take me 10 years, I would be amazed and partner up with you, not treat you like a bum because you didn't put in 10 years of your life like I did. This is really about those who sign up for a job they're not qualified for and are constantly asking their co-workers to help them do their work because they don't know how to. They are not qualified for the job, have no business being in that job, and the co-workers should not be rewarding this person by doing his job for him.

Agree, Disagree?

 

We agree that some posts do not belong here.
Where we differ is in what those posts are, and how those who post helpful replies to these posts are dealt with (indeed, if they need dealing with at all).

Please provide the evidence. I have never seen it.

Yes, but as you say, an Algebra beginner is just an uber-Calculus beginner.
In other words, if you're a beginner at Algebra, you're also a beginner at Calculus.

It necessary follows that a beginner at coding is also a beginner at Unity.

I agree that such a beginner should probably try to find his answers elsewhere. I do not, however, have any problems with that beginner actually getting his answer here. I do not see that as a problem.

The problem being that the experts will flee in hordes? I trust your evidence will back this up.

This isn't an apt analogy.
We're dealing with enthusiast hobbyists, asking questions of other hobbyists. Those asking questions have never claimed they could 'do the job', and those answering the questions are in no way reliant on them to do their fair share of the workload (since they're not working on the same projects).

 

I have already given real-life evidence in the form of Real Estate values; this type of problem extends to the internet as well. Do you disagree with the Real Estate analogy? If so, what are your arguments against it? Are you arguing against the basic tenet that as the quality of your surroundings go down (whether in the real world, virtual, internet, etc...), the quality of those attracted to such environments go down?

As for statistics, google is your friend; for example, look up statistics for StackEchange, or on Real Estate.

Whoa whoa whoa!!! And this is where the real problem lies, which is a result of a logical fallacy. This is tantamount to me saying that I'm a beginner marathoner because I am learning to walk, which leads to running, which leads to marathon running. Or I'm a beginner rocket scientist because I am learning my numbers, which leads through a whole slew of number related courses in elementary, college and graduate school eventually culminating in rocket math.

As for a beginner to Algebra being a beginner to Calculus, someone using Algebra is not thinking in terms of Calculus, nor do they have the tools yet to understand it or use it in any way, nor are they utilizing *any* Calculus anywhere. You are most definitely *not* doing any beginner calculus in Algebra 101.

Then you are ok with the Unity forums containing questions on how to spell words (because words are used in Unity), how to add numbers (because numbers are used in Unity), how to learn english (because english is used in Unity), etc???

Can anyone else chime in here on this particular topic? I think it's probably the most important topic by far, and is key to resolving how best to keep quality high in our forums.

 

After reading this thread (and having only frequented this forum for about a week now), I can relate to the overall issue of majority low quality of information that resides readily available on the front page. I actually posted on this particular thread because UA's doesn't seem to answer a moderately advanced questions as aptly as basic ones. I've been having a few question find a qualifying answer after a few weeks, though I felt the answer was a simple one that could have been reached much faster if it had been read by the right person.. Albeit, I'm not expecting UA to answer every single question, nor answer every single question in under an hour. However, it does seem like the potential ability of the posters who frequent there are limited by the sheer mass of "no programming knowledge" type questions.

Which brought me here, hoping for a simple solution that wasn't quite basic. Amass the beginner posts that filled the first page, there are some qualitative threads. There is a good bit of "learning about programming" that is incrementally difficult without having someone point out a simple syntax or logic error. To improve dynamically faster, someone learning such a different medium (to approach a programming solution requires a complete different concept that becomes natural with experience) needs a simple pointed direction. Admittedly, some posts present don't have that will to learn. But there are quite a few out there that probably don't post, but look for existing solutions.

As Unity is free and anyone and their grandmother can download it, I doubt there will be a viable solution to stop the number of "low quality" posts. It would probably be better to direct them. I saw that someone suggested a few forum sections for programming. I'm not sure why this doesn't exist already?

I've seen a multitude of development forums with sections for different levels. It would be a good idea to direct new "going to learn programming for the first time" people to a programming section for beginners. Even with a sticky for an "absolute guide to programming" wouldn't stop the flow of the obvious "NOT USED GOOGLE" posts. However, at least these posts would be directed into another section.

I seriously doubt there would be enough forum users to support both an intermediate and advanced section(in addition to a begginer section), so an additional section to cover "anything not beginner" probably work. In an ideal situation, and advanced/intermediate question could be placed on that section and have more hope for the light of day because there wouldn't be a multitude of other questions to flood it. And while waiting for an answer, said user who has experience would probably browse the beginner development/advanced development to answer questions.

However since this is not an ideal world, the beginner questions would indeed make it into the advanced section. So a solution to that might be that the section only becomes available after a number of posts (preferably a 3 digit one). That would effectively keep out those just signing up to ask someone to "write them a script". However, even this would cut out advanced users who don't post often. Another solution might be a dynamically generated programming question (wouldn't be that difficult to make something simple pop up) that would have to be answer to access the advanced section of the forum. As a onetime question for access, that would effectively lock out anyone who had no idea about programming.

My two cents. Anyway.

I don't think the concern should be with eliminating these posts, but more so directing them so that they don't bog down the developer's experience of the forum use.

The next issue would be the intermediate to advanced users who effectively post ill suited responses that typically explain why the OP is "stupid" and should GTFO and learn programming and come back. As well as those same users posting on topics with the same non working suggestion, effectively flooding a thread with - no other word for it - spam.

There are going to be times where learning developers ask stupid questions. Its not always because they aren't trying, so I don't think the focus should to "figure out a way to stop stupid posts". Rather a push towards a receptive community who post quality responses. And if the OP doesn't want to figure it out, then there should effectively be no response.

I had a recent post like that: some guy wanted help with his snake game, so I gave him a thorough break down on the logic of it and let him work through the solution. When it got to the point of him asking what "this" was in " this.transform.position" I felt it was going a bit more towards me writing the code, so I just stopped responding. Even though a lot of the original posts here are of simple solutions, quality responses can still be given.

As for my list:
1. tutorials for learning syntax using unity's interface
2. some example projects (there aren't many c# -- since I've last looked)
3. tutorials for learning syntax using unity's api
4. more advance projects
5. tutorials for learning syntax using unity's api

Of course, thats a newbie with a programming background.

 

No, I agree that people will move away if they think the neighborhood (or forum) stinks.

However, I don't agree that expects will think this forums stinks, because stupid questions are answered here.

It's your job to support your own arguments. You cannot expect me to support your case for you.

You claimed there is plenty of evidence that:
"Statistics for forums and usenet and questions answers sites have already shown a proportional relationship between the average quality of the posts and the contribution/attendance frequency of members of higher levels of expertise."

You cannot expect me to take that as gospel, simply because you say that this is how it is - especially when you claim to have evidence of it.

No fallacy here. You are debating semantics.

Yes, that's what I'm saying.
Whether you call the toddler a 'complete spastic', 'ignorant marathoner' or 'beginner marathoner' is besides the point.

The point is that one stage or level of 'beginner-hood' follows the other. I stand by my claim that a beginner at coding must necessarily be a beginner at Unity as well.

I agree that the teacher in the Calculus class is within his rights to tell the beginner Algebra student to go find the right classroom.
I don't agree that:
a) The beginner Algebra student shouldn't be allowed to stumble into the Calculus class (to find out he's i the wrong place).
b) That the students in the calculus class will have a worse education because of it (since both teacher and students in that class can and will ignore the algebra student).

Further, I posit that if the teacher does not ignore the guy who stumbled into the wrong classroom, it's all the more likely that the student will turn up in his classroom next year, now in the right place.

If we are to remain constructive, we should try to stay as close to the real world as possible. People are not asking these questions. They are asking questions which are, deny it if you dare, closely related to Unity.

Very well put, I think. I'm in complete agreement with this, and your post in general.

Thanks for your list as well!
(keep them coming - you don't have to come up with new things!)

 

I see... so you don't believe that experts take stupid questions that don't belong on this forum into consideration when they judge the quality of this forum? Why not? What makes you say this? I certainly take stupid questions into my determination of the quality of this forum.

Yet if I post some numbers you will believe those numbers? There's no better proof than looking it up yourself, with your own eyes! But before I decide whether it's worth digging the web and finding said proof, you have already accepted that people will move away from their neighbourhoods if it stinks, which means by extension you must *also* accept the same analogy on the internet, therefore I don't need to provide proof that experts will move away from forums when the quality on the forums deteriorate!

Well, it is a logical fallacy, and if your conclusions are all based on this fallacy and you don't want to accept it as such then there's really no sense arguing this particular point with you. edit : I don't mean this in a mean way, I simply mean that there's no sense comparing data when one set of data is based on faulty data... there's just no point.

You are right, but I don't see why you bring this point up... I don't think anyone mentioned banning people from the forums or not letting them read/study what's on the forums.

Agreed, but you're assuming a silent student. What happens when that student raises his hand and asks for help on Algebra problems in the Calculus class? What if you have 100,000 Algebra students asking for help in a Calculus classroom? Conclusion : of course the students will have a worse education with all these interruptions!

Tell me, what should a Calculus teacher in a Calculus classroom filled with Calculus students do with an Algebra student when he's trying to teach Calculus?

Here's an idea... I posit that an Algebra student belongs in an Algreba class! Isn't that a great, novel idea?

I know you have a good heart and you want to help, and I think everyone can see that you want things to improve, but there's a time and place for the right help. Alcoholics go to Alcoholics Anonymous classes, cancer patients go to hospitals with cancer specializations, etc... Trying to morph this into a "one size fits all" community will deteriorate the quality of this community *severely*.

 

I judge the quality of the forum by the answers, not the questions.

Would I prefer a forum with only intelligent questions and answers? Certainly!

As it happens, we can't influence the amount of stupid questions. We can, however, influence the amount the stupid answers.

Certainly not. I think I made that clear enough.
I might trust a webpage you link to, though.

You have yet to provide a correlation between the number of stupid questions and the number of experts who frequent the forum. When that correlation fails, so does the analogy.
Like I said in my last post, I don't agree that experts will think this forums stinks, because stupid questions are answered here.

I have explained to you why there is no breach in logic when I claim that a code-beginner is also a Unity-beginner.
Simply claiming that I'm wrong does not create a flaw in my logic.

Please explain to me where the logic falls through. I'm always eager to learn.

Not in so many words.

You certainly have claimed that the teacher should not direct the mis-guided student to the correct classroom (i.e 'to find out he's i the wrong place' ).

You have also claimed that if the teacher still helps the mis-guided student, other teachers should spend their time telling him he was wrong to do that, rather than spend it on helping other mis-guided students.

When I keep debating with you, it's because I think you're wrong on these two counts.

Yes indeed, this would be true if a forum was exactly like a classroom. There are several crucial differences, though:

1) The teacher can ignore the student at his leisure
2) The student can ignore another student at his leisure (and does so whenever he doesn't search the forum)
3) As a result of 2), the student does not have to listen to, or be interrupted by, the lectures meant for other students.
4) The student decides when school is in. He initiates the lecture, as opposed to a real classroom, where the teacher is the active part. The student decides the topic of the lecture, not the teacher (or faculty or what have you).

It follows that the students can, if they like, take advantage of previous lectures. They may have to sift through lectures of low quality, but that's the teacher's fault.
Thus, their education is in no way hampered by the lectures aimed at other students (since they will happily ignore them).

Yes, if many students flood the classroom with irrelevant questions the teacher will get overwhelmed. There's really nothing to be done about that with the current state of the forum software - he has no tools other than time, to tell which students he should help. Some students will ask stupid questions, and teachers will have varying tolerances for the degree of stupidity (and their number). We agree on this.

If I understand you correctly, you claim that the source of the problem is the teachers who answer the stupid questions - that they create even more stupid questions.

My claim is that the source of the problem is stupid answers to stupid questions.

If the answer is intelligent, it can't help but limit the number of subsequent stupid questions from the given student (and from those who do not ignore other lectures). He may ask another stupid question on another topic, but even the dumbest of students will not keep asking the same question over and over again. Every intelligent answer will cause them to ask a slightly less stupid question the next time.

No it isn't. Please refrain from using sarcasm. It's never constructive.

I'm not saying the forum should try to fit all sizes into one.
I'm saying that when a misfit does arrive, we should treat him courteously and point him to some place where he does fit. I'm also saying that if someone tries to help the misfit fit in, we should not admonish him for making the attempt.

Once again, to be on the safe side, I agree that if the misfit refuses to fit in, we should stop trying to make him fit in. To complete the loop, just because I think someone refuses to fit in, doesn't mean I should impose that opinion on others.

 

As I'm new here I thought I'd post to thank you for your noob advice c:

 

Well, up to 4-5 years ago I used the Usenet for programming related questions, mainy for .NET/C# when I started and not some kind of forum, since I used it in the years before that (starting from late 90's) and the Usenet was a place not known to many of the "noobs", so the people you encountered there were some kind of enthusiasts/experts ad not complete noobs and the level of questions asked and the given answers was high and even some of the Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professionals) were there answering on the questions asked.

That's not just some active members, but experts in their area and you got really qualified answers and some nice in-depth discussions on some topics (like how garbage collection works or some deeper technical insight how the .NET runtime was doing some stuff or optimizations).

That was back in the times, before the Usenet was massively used to spread pirated software XD

One of the important thing about newsgroups (usenet) back then was, that they were highly specialized. There was newsgroups for C#, for .NET in general, for Visual Basic, Visual Basic.NET, J#, Java, PHP, HTML, games etc. all highly aimed to a certain niche and that was their strength: You would always get professional help for a certain niche. If you posted a VB question in the C# group, it would either not be approved at all (usually 1st time posters required some kind of approval of their first post(s) before they were visible for everyone else) or deleted from some moderator to keep it clean and on topic.

I dunno when exactly and why I stopped using them (as their usage was very easy, you just sent a mail to the news group, no registration required, like you have on forums now, which can be annoying), but I did. So it's a few years ago since I last used them, one of the reasons may be that newsgroups weren't very strong for questions/discussions which were older than 2-3 months, because they weren't archived that long or there was no good way to search through them and in the end, most of the problems/answers were easier to find by Google'ing for 5-10 minutes.

In the end, I think it was the spread of forums and more than that, appearance of StackOverflow/StackExchange which drastically changed it and allowed to find many and highly specialized answers in one place (using a web browser + Google).

You are probably new to this and didn't experienced the times of Usenet/Newsgroups.


Though you still avoided my question: Did you ever used StackOverfow/StackExchange for general programming related issues? (Like C#/.NET/PHP/Perl/ASP questions... not UnityScript since its a fairly unknown language)

No
A black man is human, but not every human is black. Someone who starts learning beginner, may or may not learn Calculus too. So he is not automatically an Calculus beginner, unless he decides that he wants to learn it too. In turn a Calculus beginner is likely to be an intermediate/advanced Algebra user, for the simple reasons that Algebra is a requirement for Calculus.

No. Someone who starts creating a website with PHP (which is actually a scripting language, but also supports the same OOP concepts as programming languages) is a coding beginner. But there is no evidence that he will ever be learning to work with Unity. That's only the case here on the forums, though this people to meet the minimum requirements to start working with Unity: Programming basic knowledge.

Unity3D is in way a place to learn programming, Unity3D is not a programming language. It's a tool to make games and as such a tool, programming knowledge is a prerequisite of making games and something that is not to be taught here.

Well, then look how many of the more experienced users were posting (or especially answering to this absolute beginners questions) at all

• Wozik
• draemora
• Jessy
• NPSF3000
• Eric5h5

There were a few more active when I first joined. Though they still post, it looks like they post less in the scripting sub-forum.

Fact is, people moved from Usenet to pages like StackOverflow. As I said it's one of the most successful platforms, for the main reasons that it's specialized for certain niches and is community moderated.

StackExchange/StackOverflow have their share of guidelines and rules and which dictate what should be posted there or not, if you don't like it don't join and unsuitable questions/topics are closed quickly due to the large community and it's involvement.

You are not objective again. You involve your personal opinion/preference into it. You must think from the point of view of someone who is looking for a competent solution to a complex question. Someone who never was in the Unity forum and then he sees the first 2 pages in the Scripting section being filled with noob programming questions, like "xyz error while compiling" "missing ;;" etc.

What would this person think?
a) This may be forum with experienced users where I'll surely get competent answer for my problem
b) This forum is filled with wanna-be game developers who don't even know the most basic programming stuff, how in gods name could they even understand my problem?

The user is more likely going for b) and leave the forum, which is a double loss
a) You lose a advanced user (since he had a somewhat complex problem he is experienced enough to encounter it and look for expert advice not some basics) and maybe even discard Unity as game engine he may go look for some other tool with better support
b) Without advanced users registering, the amount of "experts" won't grown which are required to answer other complex questions/problems, which again turns the the question above:

What would a new user to the forums who look for advanced problem solutions think, when he sees that there are not many expert answers?

Right, but they can be moderated. And imho it shouldn't hurt Unity too much to Hire one or two persons who moderate the forum (or Unity Answers) as Unity have grown quite much, they should be able to afford that, considering that they are opening branch offices in Asian market etc.

Only with some kind of quality support (be it fast (and competent...) replies from support - which is quite slow at the moment) or better quality of the support within the forum/UA.

 

So, based on some of the posts here, I have edited and added bits to the OP.

I would appreciate any comments or thoughts on the new text. Thank you!

 

This is the problem with coming up with a concensus on this issue; now matter what we decide to do as a group to enhance the quality of the forums, it is bound to fail so long as there's one individual out there who doesn't accept what the community has to say and operates under their own "code". This is why we need some StackExchange like functionality in our forums, so that these individuals can be overruled by the majority. Good intentions alone are not going to increase the quality of our forums; we need good practices to go along with those good intentions.

 

Well, the problem is you can't apply this paradigm to forums. Forums are not meant for that (neither they were meant to teach programming or something else, they were just abused for that for the lack of some better wide accepted system).

If I would be UT, I'd just scrap the whole "Scripting" subsection and replace it with a link to Unity Answers. So someone who asks for scripting related stuff automatically lands on Unity Answers, this way reducing the scripting platforms to one.

As a replacement, I'd add another subsection called "Game Design Pattern discussions", where people could discuss development related questions, which are not directly tied to specific problem (i.e. discussing pathfinding, AI systems, Game/Event Managers or some common patterns), as this kind of topics is not suitable for a Q/A platform like UnityAnswers/StackOverflow and have moderators delete every programming related question from that forum.

 

@Diablo, Tseng,

I agree with your last posts, but for now I'd like to take a breather and see what, if anything, people would say to being linked to the OP.
Do you have any links you would add?
Did I leave out anything?

I'll return to your previous post in due time Tseng.

 

Ok, so no more comments. I guess the text is ready for the wiki then.
I'll put it up one of these days.

Now, to continue our excellent side-track...

I'm sorry to hear you say that.
I was about to ask why, but then found that I don't really care.

I read through the thread a couple of days ago, and noticed some post(ers) which I should have replied to. I'm looking at exiguous in particular. My apologies to those. I guess you were kinda drowned in the flurry of posts.

When I didn't answer this question here, though, it's because I didn't see the relevance.
I still don't. But I'll tell you all the same: I have gotten answers from stackoverflow. Never posted one as far as I recall.
Bonus Info: I'm 36 years young and my first experience with usenet mailing seems to precede your's by a year or two.

We agree that you have to learn how to code before you can learn how to use unity. I never claimed otherwise.

Your disconnect starts when you assume that you have to actually want to learn about a given subject, and start doing so, before you are a beginner at the subject.

I have no desire to learn how to become a good huntsman, but I'm still a beginner huntsman.
You can't be an adept at unity without also being an adept at coding.
You can be adept at coding without being adept at unity.

It quite clearly stands to reason (at least to me), that as long as you are a beginner at coding, you are also a beginner at unity - the former is a prerequisite to the latter, as you agree.
Whether you actually want to learn coding and/or unity is completely irrelevant. Being a beginner is matter of what you know today - not what you intend to learn tomorrow.

I actually don't understand why you guys are making such a fuss over this point. It really has no bearing on whether we should help the code-beginner on this forum.

I've been postponing bringing it up, but I guess it's about time.

Aside from you, Diablo and to some extent exiguous, I have not seen any outspoken resistance in the community to include code beginners here on the forum (in addition to unity beginners).
Not that it really matters. What matters is what the unity team is trying to accomplish.

I have found no evidence here on the forum that they do not want people to respond to beginner coders. The forum overview explains the purpose of the forum with: "Coding with Unity's languages", which in no way implies that you can only ask questions about the Unity API. There is no hint about such views in the forum FAQ either. And finally not a single moderator has, to my knowledge, expressed such an opinion.

If they did, I would certainly respect that.
I think they would be wrong - severely so - but I would obviously respect their wishes in regard of the content on the forum.

Users come and go. That some people have stopped posting, doesn't in any way speak to a correlation between the number of beginner questions and the number of expert users.

Yes, that's all well and fine. But without those guidelines and the means to uphold them, we have to make do with what is at our disposal.

Well, I assure you that I try my best to keep an open mind about all this, but I certainly do argue from opinion and personal preferences. You do as well, Tseng

Well, what is a complex question to Brian may not a complex question to Susan. We agree that some questions do not belong here, but that does not make the questions any less complex to the people asking them.
Is that objective enough for you?

To be perfectly honest, If someone leaves before he has even read the answers to all those beginner questions, I wouldn't find that a great loss.

If such a person left without even searching to find the answer to his 'expert' question (quite a feat when he just got here, I might add), I'd say good riddance.

I would posit that you aren't an advanced user when you register. Experts grow from beginners who get answers to their questions.

Further, there's a difference between asking how someone would react to seeing lots of beginner questions, and how they react to seeing a lack of expert answers. They're altogether different issues.

I agree the latter is a problem (in general, not on this forum), while the former is not.

I don't know anything about Unity's financial situation, but I think that's an excellent idea!

 

how does a thread that was intent to help others went off-topic like that?
next time ask for a Skype-addy or something but don't polute a thread like that, serious.

 

Just an observation, this thread is longer than most tutorials I have read.

 

Sorry but this is a basic logical fallacy, as basic as it gets (this is taught in Philosophy 101 I believe), and there's no sense arguing this point if you're not going to accept the universal truth of it. Why should we continue arguing that the earth is round when you keep insisting it's flat, and why should we listen to the point of view of someone who bases his entire theory on the world being flat? Once you correct your facts and adjust your arguments to reflect them, we can continue.

First, we argue this point because your premise is based on faulty logic, so it behooves us to correct this not only for your sake but for others, much like I would correct a math error or typo in a math textbook. Second, your whole argument of helping all types of beginners rests on this point, because according to you a beginner english language student is a beginner programmer is a beginner unity user, and therefore the unity forums should be open to all those types of questions and answers. This only exists in your mind; to the rest of the world, a beginner english language student is not equal to a beginner programmer is not equal to a beginner unity developer, therefore these forums should not host questions and answers for english language students or beginner programmers.

That's why they rely on your common sense. Also (generally speaking) you can't prove non-existance, so I'm sure you will find no evidence here on the forum that they do not want people to talk about the Chupacabra, or the movie Titanic, or the latest in women's fashion. According to your thinking, since there's no evidence of such a prohibition, then these posts should be expected and approved of.

Again, they rely on your common sense, which is unfortunate as you can see from all the garbage people post on this forum.

Bottom line : this forum is for UNITY questions and answers, NOT for english, beginner programming, algebra, or the latest fashion gossip.

 

do it and stop derailing a thread that can help us

 

If you were in the programming newsgroups then you should knew that the level of competence was very high and made it a valuable source for gaining and sharing knowledge.

You could be a Level Designer (Making levels assigning stuff to the objects via Inspector), 3D Artist (make models, test it inside Unity, know how to make sure certain bones have their forward vector aligned correctly) or Tech Artist (creating special effects/Shaders) who worked with Unity for years and never touched a line of code.

Most people who start with Unity assume that they can do everything at once, make graphics, levels, scripts, debugging, testing, publishing, marketing etc. Only very few can do this.

But many of the people who come here to the forums can't even be called beginners, as a beginner programmer is expected to have at least done some basic research on what programming actually is and what expects them. But many (not all of course) people who come here assume that you can read a 3 side tutorial and become a programmer or quirting 2 scripts and your game magically does work.

There was this user in the other, who wasn't aware of why it's necessary to declare a class [Serializable] in C# while it wasn't in US (actually it was, just that it was done by Unity).

He's not to blame about it, as usually you are usually not required to add the serialize attribute unless you actually need to serialize something (object to some other form of data storage, like xml, binary, json, etc.). It's a somewhat more advanced stuff of .NET (not just C#), though the fact that Unity uses it to display (and initialize) objects/fields via Inspector users get involved with it, w/o directly needing them (It's a Unity editor related thing) and it may be difficult for them to understand the usage of it.

While it may look inconvenient and annoying at first, there are reasons for it, which in the end help reduces the amount of errors/mistakes a programmer can do.

Let's be serious. UT will never spoke for or against it, because from a company point of view it would be commercial suicide. Whatever they may think about the situation of the vast amount of "bloody beginner" questions is something we will never know, unless a UT coworker quits and let his frustration out by telling inside information to the rest of the world.

It's same as politics. The politicians (especially the current ruling party) will never openly say that foreigners (especially some middle-east ones) are a serious problem in their country due to their "resistance" to get integrated and assimilated in the country population and instead like to create a state inside state, because then everyone (not just the opposition, but also neighboring countries) will scream out "racist government", "nazis".

It would create a horrible publicity and that's not in the interest of any company or government. For that reason you will never see an official statement against it.

Yea, but these + a few more (like hippocoder) are some of the most experienced in working with Unity3D and there are not many which could fill out their absence, especially when the forums get more and more full with "bloody beginners" questions and the real problems drown down.

It's something you don't expect to come or be solved by a beginner. Let's say, design questions, GameManangers, certain caching patterns, optimization of complex CPU intensive calculations which require some higher skill of Algebra to make it easier, AI discussion (For the note: Making a script which follows a player in a straight line is not AI. AI means artificial intelligence, not follow this, walk there), writing complex shaders or certain shader effects, trajectory calculations, or when they have something unexpected happened.

That's a pretty damn good "complex question": 2000+ Bullets in one scene damage detetection

Though there was no more detailed source about it, which was bit disappointing, as I'd be interested in having a read on it... for educational reasons. Though since I don't need it directly I am also not going doing research on it. I've read a bit about binary space partitioning which is used in some engines (Half Life for example) to compile levels and make efficient rendering of the level geometry, I didn't knew it could be used for that particular problem above.

 

w0w!
all this energy being expended on debating whether or not to help "stupid" people? Same energy could probably have answered half the questions on the forum by now... lol
For the record, i have to agree with Tobias its incredibly arrogant and self-righteous to start telling people their questions arent worthy of being asked... im dumbfounded by this attitude on a public forum... if you want to be exclusive start a country club.

neX

 

This is pretty disingenuous in it's twisted oversimplification of our argument. It's not about stupid or smart, elite or not... it's about keeping the Unity forums focused on Unity content, period. We argue that the Unity forums should only be for Unity related posts (and by related, we mean 1st degree related), and that these forums are NOT here to help those who are looking to learn programming for the very first time, any more than a Calculus forum is meant to help those with addition problems. Unity REQUIRES programming basics, just like a car requires DRIVING basics, and you don't learn to drive in a Mazda forum, so don't expect to learn programming in a Unity forum. Keeping each forum focused on their specialization helps keep the quality of the posts higher than if it became a forum for all forms of gossip.

Now you would think this is basic stuff... I mean, you never EVER see people posting on Mazda, or BMW, or Toyota questions like "Can you show me how to drive?", right? And you never see addition questions posted on a Calculus forum either. Yet, we see Unity's forums *flooded* with garbage questions that aren't directly related, and people empower them by feeding them answers, which exacerbates the situation.

 

Last time i looked it was called the "Unity Scripting Forum"... so if the question is at all related to scripting for unity its valid... thats pretty logical...

And for the record, im not being disingenuous at all (im not pretending to not know about something i do know, or being insincere) so please refrain from bandying about accusations like that. Im giving my opinion, simple.

Im also not (IMHO) oversimplifying the argument. As one very famous person once said "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler". To me, this argument boils down to some (very talented) individuals who frequent this forum being so annoyed by the "stupid" questions on here that they now want policies to stop it from happening, the flipside of the argument being that its a public forum, and everyone has the right to post whatever questions they want (as long as they are Unity Scripting related) and that those who dont like it ALSO have the right to just ignore the question.

What am i missing here?

I certainly have an issue with your rather broad statement "..and that these forums are NOT here to help those who are looking to learn programming for the very first time". Who says? You? Methinks the forums are here for the benefit of the people who use Unity, whether they have lots of coding experience or none. Your power lies in what you do with YOUR time, and not with dictating to others their worthiness in asking questions PUBLICLY.

Personally i like the suggestion already made that the Scripting forum be forked into Basic, Intermediate and Advanced sections. CreativeCrash does it pretty well (http://www.creativecrash.com/forums/maya-boards).

One thing ive noticed is that this is the forum with the most vitriol i have come across after 10 years of using 3D software (and the forums associated with it). Its quite shocking really, cant we all have a nice big group[]hug ?

neX

 

Yes, it is, as long as it's *directly* related to Unity. It seems that people here have a *very* hard time understanding what is meant by "Unity Scripting" and what is meant by "Beginner Programmer Scripting"; there's a world of difference, and I'm beginning to think that perhaps beginner programmers can't tell the difference after all and that this is why we have to keep repeating the same basic stuff over and over again.

I can be a troll too and go to a "Math Forum" on a Calculus website and stink it up with hundreds of posts on simple arithmetic questions because, as you say, if it's at all related to "Math" then it's valid... does that sound pretty logical to you? I'll join your revolution, we should call those Calculus people who only want Calculus related questions on their site elitist pigs! I mean, how DARE they, how rude! Disgusting elitist pigs! Such vitriol! Whoever HEARD of such a thing!

 

Sorry, didn't find the heart to read the back and forth Diablo has engaged in with other forum members about quality posts...

While we are providing links, finding a good set of video tutorials (short ones, focused on one thing, like a series of 5 videos about making a pong game, step by step, 5 minutes each) would enchace and perhaps captivate the beginner to do better. As most of us here noted, people do better when under direct guidance -- some learn with a hands on approach, and the current education system (at least up untill college) demands you write word for word what the teacher says (most schools at least here, no idea about the west culture). We are taught to memorize, not understand, and the "bog" described is the result of such mentality.

Compiling a short series of 5 min x 5 videos with increasing difficulty (pong, then pac-man, then some platformer, then some FPS, introduction to AI) seems like a good idea. I can't actually remember right, but I believe I did see a free tutorial series that was both professional and free, extremelly inspiring (the thing that made me interested in Unity to be honest.). Damn me for forgetting what and where it was... Somewhere in the support section?

 

@Brendan Schlumpfsack:

I understand your frustration and astonishment, but there was apparently not much to add to the original topic.
This derailment is fine by my personally, and though the original topic does imply that the question of whether to help in the first place is assumed, they are related, you must admit.

I'm happy to see that it isn't just Tseng, Diablo and me taking an interest in this, though

Like I said the last time you posted this drivel, you have yet to start arguing this point. If the logic fallacy is so blatant, simply point it out and be done with it.

More nonsensical babbling. IF this is the level of debate and reasoning I can expect from you from now on, I'd rather you make good on your threats and stop "arguing".

Please, for the love of all things purple: Start correcting!

That's not what I'm saying.
They aren't the same, they follow each other.
First English. Then math. Then programming. Then Unity. Not the same, but certainly related.

Neither have I ever claimed that any and all questions should be answered here. I think I've repeated this many times over by now.

Like I said, they're not the same.
What I've said, quite clearly I believe, is that you can't use unity if you haven't first learned these other things. This is not the same as saying we should teach English here. The line has to be drawn somewhere.

You draw it in one place, I draw it in another. The topic of the debate is, which line is the proper.

Taken to an absurd extreme, you're right.
However, I would certainly expect a moderator to step in if a flock of fashion designers swooped in and started discussing lingerie (much to my dismay, I might add).
Likewise, I would expect a moderator to step in with any other way-off topic. The fact that they haven't done that with beginner coding questions (in fact, even answer them from time to time!), is a clear indicator to me of their intention with the forum.

You know Tseng, I quite like you, respect your knowledge and ability to reason (not least your ability to calmly communicate that reasoning) - but you do tend to ramble a bit here and there.

We have already been over this a number of times. Not every subject belongs here, no.

The questions are: Which subjects do belong? What do we do with those who ask questions outside the subjects? And most importantly perhaps, how do we respond to those we think, in our own opinion, have answered a question which was not on topic?
We should have tackled them one after the other, but I'm afraid that train left long ago.

You're starting to confuse me (and I'll thank you to recognize that I've been serious all along).

At first you say that Unity should not answer beginner questions, that they should install various moderator tools and even hire people to enforce this rule.
I can't think of a clearer public statement - yet now you argue it's commercial suicide?

Please elaborate on this.

It surely is a shame when a veteran user leaves, but you have yet to back up your claim that they leave because of many beginner questions, or that 'real' problems are not answered because of them.

Indeed, how we chose to spend our time here is at the heart of the matter, and my commenting on it was what started all this.

I do agree we could be spending our time in better ways, but some times you have to go back to the basics before you can move on (especially if you want to move in the same direction).

Thanks for voicing your support.

@Zethariel (others):
Please post them if you find them!

 

The text is up on the wiki. You should obviously feel free to edit and add!!

I have taken the liberty of placing it at the top for reasons I consider self-evident.

 

Is this OP even script related lol>? Or Teaching/Gossip.

 

Thank you, from a beginner who has lot's of questions, and not sure how to phrase them.

Sometimes you don't know what you don't know, and that is why this site is so valuable. Until you have an understanding of this game concept, you don't know how to word the question.

I appreciate so much all the valuable information from you experienced gamers.

 

Would lit be appropriate to paste a link to our Kickstarter? We're aiming to create the most comprehensive, exciting and accessible Unity 3D course on the web.

 

Is there a thread or forum where new people can ask other new people dumb questions? My main questions are when a menu option is is different than in tutorials, but the questions are too dumb to ask unless there is one main thread for newbie questions. I searched for hours, and I am reinstalling Unity to try to fix some things, but wish I could find a place where new people can ask each other questions.

 

Feel free to ask editor-related questions in the Editor topic. There are no dumb question, only lazy ones.
(You will get that if you ask question you really can easily find the answer with one simple google search or similar), otherwise we are happily assist you.

Regarding your problem: if you're not comfortable with the editor just yet, our general recommendation is to follow any given tutorial in the very same editor version what the tutorial using. This will prevent you to get confused if the thing changed in subsequent unity versions.

 

Thanks. To stay the same as tutorials, I am installing an earlier version.