Is it me or are the help forums not very noob friendly?

Hi, i just started using unity and i love the bobbins out of it. its the future!!!

But as a noob i find these help forums intimidating. to date i have asked 5 noob questions and received an answer only once. if i scroll through a few pages of posts i see the same happening to lots of other new members. it feels scandalous. i feel like im either too stupid to talk to, or getting the brush off cos im new.

Anyone else notice this? anyone know why this is so?

 

Probably users are annoyed by duplicate questions, that's all...

Edit: I also noticed that nearly all users have replied to your threads except Directional Light issues. Other two threads were asked to be ignored by you because your issues has been solved.

 

Well let's see...

You asked one question and answered it yourself the same day.

Then you asked another question about shadows that didn't get answered, but has very little actual information, just a screenshot with some settings and "This isn't working, what's wrong?". You haven't really said anything that you've tried. I honestly don't know what's wrong with it.

You asked another question about triggers which got answered.

Then you asked another question that you again answered yourself within 8 minutes. (you hadn't set your scene in the build settings).

Then you asked another question 45 minutes ago that is an obvious RTFM question. I just answered it and give you a link to the learning resources on Physics.

So, 5 unanswered questions is more than a bit of an exaggeration for starters. Secondly, you'll find that it actually is a very noob friendly community here but there are a couple of catches. First of all, we want to help people who have at least made an attempt to help themselves. When you see questions that are going unanswered, it is most likely because they are questions that have been asked a thousand times before in the forums... and when they get asked again it's obvious that the question poster didn't actually search the forums.

And finally, the vast majority of those questions can be answered by just reading the documentation and going through the Learn section and tutorials. They really are quite good and you can save yourself a lot of time by just going through them and learning rather than trying to jump right into developing a game.

 

the answers i do get are short and vague. its not fostering a very friendly environment.

the most lengthy answer i have had is this last one, which is an unfriendly and agressive post.

Dustin, when you "answered" my question, all you did was say that their phisics were interacting (which was obvious) and suggest i read the entiure physics section. that is not helpful at all

 

And so your threads.

 

its called nervousness, and unfamiliarity. i was hoping someone in the know would have an inkling and ask me the right questions rather than me just fill a thread that probably wont get answered with spurious information

the users who answered me, are me for the most part
are you counting me saying "i found it out" as another user answering me?

 

I didn't. Read my last sentence carefully.

Which means I didn't count your solutions as others.

Then re-write your threads because most questions are quite confusing. I understand you're here for the first time and had a "harsh" welcome, but this thread "harsher" to users.

You basically complain about forum users not answering your questions, which people can barely understand.

 

no, i basically ask if its just me, and if not why. if you feel attacked then im truly sorry, but that was never my intent and it seems im not the only one being too sensitive here.

i am writing in english, it may not be as technical speech as you may be used to speaking with others with a greater skill set than my own, but its as concise as (in my noobishness) is possible currently.

so you're basically saying to me "stop whining and talk more about your issues in your posts". is this right?

 

Not trying to be rude, but...yeah. : P

 

Wow I wasn't aware of a nooby section of Unity. I was under the assumption that the Scripting section was a combination of a nooby section and other scripting issues.

I come from a background of developing things with code/scripts and completely forgot that Unity can be used without much scripting knowledge. I was also unaware that the Editor and General Support was the 'nooby' section.

I'm not being sarcastic when I say this, I'm actually taken aback at my own noobiness XD

 

These forums are very normal as far as I can see for a programming board. You're expected to search first, ask as a last resort, or have patience to wait a day for replies before bumping. It's not harsh to newcomers.

If people treat you harshly, report the post.

 

Personally, I ignore topics that:

1) Have useless titles like "Help!"
2) Have code but the poster didn't bother to format it.
3) Post a screenshot and just say "what's wrong?" with no explanation of the problem or what was expected.

There's being a noob, and then there's going out of your way to make things difficult for people who might want to help. Here's an example of noob post I just answered. The poster might be just starting out, but clearly was making an effort, and made it easy to see what the problem was.

--Eric

 

I can agree that sometimes the forums are not noob-friendly... but then you have to remember

no one will hold your hand here, you have to make the effort.

Typically I see users who ask questions, then give some help is given, then they post a minute later saying "I didn't understand any of that", and I just find that annoying, they should make some effort to comprehend or go back a few lessons until they can.

 

I sometimes think these forums are TOO welcoming

By the way, here are some definitions I use:
Newbie: Somebody who doesn't know much yet, but knows it, and is willing to learn.
N00b: A lazy git who wants to be spoon-fed everything.

Try to avoid being a n00b

 

There are substantially worse places on the internet for noobs. Just the fact that there are people that provide any help to someone who clearly has no idea what they are doing and are completely oblivious to the giant LEARN button at the top of the page shows it's not that bad.

The issue is most noobs are trying to hunt a mastodon before they can even crawl.

 

My intent wasn't to be harsh, but to be blunt in at attempt to help you. You asked if it was you... and, well, it is. I'm simply encouraging you to go through the learn section and do the tutorials. It will help you and is well worth your time. The reason is... we can answer the one simple question for you, but as soon as you clear that hurdle there will be another, and another. I'm trying to encourage you to take the initiative to learn more of it on your own. Understanding more of the basics will also help you to formulate much more concise questions on the forum as well. Also keep in mind that this is a community driven forum so it is people who are volunteering their time an expertise. We do it because we enjoy it, but we also have to pick and choose. During the day when I'm working I'm much more likely to pick up questions that I can give quick an easy answers to and that I understand right away.

 

I just read through the threads you started. I did not see any examples of people being rude or generally anti-newbie. I did see some of your really basic Unity usage questions resulted in very few (or no) responses. That does typically happen for very basic questions. Go through more tutorials and you will become more comfortable with basic usage. Once you get through some addition lessons on basic usage, you will probably be more interesting to talk to and you will find a lot more people willing to respond at that point. Most users are not interested in guiding beginners through the basic usage issues.

In some cases, experienced users cannot even guess about what a newbie is doing wrong. For example, I read your post "The game i built is not the game i made. weird and annoying". There was nothing in the initial post that would have lead me to suggest that you were building the wrong scene and I have not personally gone through the "survival shooter tutorial", so I was not prepared to offer advice specific to that project. Fortunately, you were able to figure out what you did wrong yourself, because there was not enough information in your post for the rest of us to figure that one out for you.

Keep in mind that this is not an issue of unfriendliness toward newbies. Anytime you post in a forum, you will get a response if people are interested in the topic you posted about. Very few experienced users are interested in the very basic usage issues. Sometimes moderators or employees will step in and answer a question anyway, but other users generally won't. But when you post something that people are interested in, then you will see pages of discussion from everybody. That is the nature of forums.

 

I would like to use myself as an example as a noob who wanted to be spoon-fed. Here's my first post ever. (From the support section. obviously.)

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/accesing-a-variable-from-another-script.123117/

I asked a simple question, answer was just some links, and I obviously wanted more. I gave a remark telling I knew more than I actually did, and actually got somewhat offended... (lol, stupid me)

From that single thread, I was actually afraid of posting more.

But instead of leaving the forum and having a frowning face, I took the "harsh" nature of these users answer and thought to myself...

" I don't know S***." and these guys are just trying to help me realize that. So from there on, I went on to actually learn the material instead of asking questions about topics I didn't even understand.


So to Select_Casey, stick around a bit, maybe you'll see these forums aren't so bad after all .

 

Sorry to sound harsh, but we dont exist, or come here, to serve you. Everyone on here has their own stuff going on, their own projects. If you get an answer, its because someones taken the time out of their day to help you. If they dont, its not because they're bad people, its because they didnt feel the desire to.

I guess all I can say is this these forums arent harsh to noobs, its just hard. Because game dev is hard

 

I think she understood that she was wrong:

 

@Aurore - the only thing you have left to do is to Google the correct spelling of "ton". Silly British spelling.

 

Yeah i suck. sorry guys

 

Everyone makes mistakes friend, thats what learning is all about

And part of learning game development, a big part even, is learning how to learn (if that makes sense)

 

You don't suck. In fact, since you're communicating to us about your problems as opposed to giving up, I'd say you're already better than most of the people I know.

 

After reading my records in UnityAnswers, I feel UnityAnswers is not very advanced friendly

 

That's why I prefer forums

 

Essentially, when someone is answering a question they're volunteering their time to help someone out. There are too many questions to answer, so we have to pick which ones we will give some of our limited time to. Generally, that time goes to a) people who are making the most of it, using it to bolder their own learning and exploration or, b) people who present an interesting and challenging problem that's fun to help solve.

If you're finding it hard to get answers, try and figure out what you can do to better fit into one of those categories. For the former category, this guide is invaluable and well worth skimming. It goes over a bunch of things that will become second nature really quickly, but which plenty (myself included!) overlook to begin with. It's a really long guide, but a skim should get you most of its value.

Basically, you're asking someone to volunteer their time to help you. You want to a) make it as easy as possible, and b) make it as rewarding as possible.

 

Hi,

I skimmed through the replies here, and was disappointed that the Answers section of the Unity website was only briefly mentioned. Honestly, as a fairly new game developer, I use Answers a lot. (Mostly 'cause my questions usually have been asked there by someone who came before me. ) Check it out here: http://answers.unity3d.com/ Hope this is helpful.