Is the Unity Community too big?

I have been a member of the Unity forums for a two and half years. In that time I feel like the forums have changed.

When I first joined, I couldn't believe the support that I got here. Any question that I posted received several responses and follow up questions received a similar response. It was warm and welcoming to receive such a high level of support from the community.

I find the forums very different today. Posts, sometimes don't receive any responses, questions often only receive half answers. The level of help that can be found here seems less than it was a couple years ago.

The reason for this could be that my questions are now technically more challenging. But, looking through the forums, I think the newbie questions are getting less response than I enjoyed when I first joined.

I still think there are lots of fantastic people on the forums that provide amazing support. But I am guessing that the community has grown so much bigger and their support is spread a lot thinner.

I try to give back to the community and answer questions I can now answer. But I do find that some of the newbies almost want you to finish their project for them, rather than just answer their question.

Or maybe I am just getting more grumpy as I get more time poor trying to juggle, work, family, friends and now game development

 

This could also be a result of the unity forums accumulating the answers to all newbie questions. How many times is the community willing to answer the same question that's been answered as best as it will ever be? Unity has been around quite some time

I used to answer more questions, but then school got busy and now I'm about to enter the job world. I probably won't have the time.

Also, the existence of quill18creates invalidates the purpose of the help forums. He is really just that good.

 

Unity has this marketing strategy of "Anyone can make a game". That anyone includes a good portion of the population who actually can't make games. Combine that with media hype about the amount of money the top 0.0001% of games have made, and you have a recipe for the forums today.

This. The number of users that struggle with Google to learn basic concepts is astounding. There are tons of good resources to learn that don't require hand holding in the forums. And when the same question has been asked and answered three times on the front page of the getting started section, its no wonder that people give up.

The other thing to be aware of is that many noob questions don't make sense. Kind of like asking "what colour is a square?" My most recent favourite actual question was "When should I use a static variable as opposed to a namespace?" The question doesn't actually make sense. Its like comparing apples and tables.

These days if I see a question that requires me to explain OOP from the ground up I generally skip it.

 

[Humor]
Is the Unity Community too big? Yes. And since my Joined date is before yours, you can just get off my lawn, whippersnapper! *shakes cane*
[/Humor]

Kidding aside, no, I don't think the questions have gotten any dumber than when I first started reading these forums. There do seem to be more of them, but that makes sense with more users of Unity and the forums. Think of it as the same signal-to-noise ratio, but with more overall signal output, there's more overall noise.

I also think it's quite common to go through a process where you start helping and think it's fine. Then after a while, you start seeing the same questions over and over and over and over, which makes you wonder if the people are perhaps getting dumber? They're certainly getting more frustrating; right? Actually not. It's just that when you first started answering that question, it was new and seemed okay. Now that you've answered it for the 50th time, your brain hurts.

If you ever work in larger scale IT, a call center, or any kind of customer support, you run into this. If you spend any significant time in a MMO help channel, you run into this. It's just how our perspective changes over time based on our own experiences answering the simple questions.

After all, we were all newbies once...

 

Not all of us. For reference check out my early posts here or on answers.

Some users are smart enough to realise that in the time since Unity has had an active community, every noob question has been answered. You just need some patience and Google fu to find the last time it was answered.

 

Yes, but for some of us this was a very long time ago. MS-DOS was mainstream when I was a newbie.

 

Can't say I ever programmed in dos, but I do remember writing batch files to set up extended memory, mouse drivers, joysticks and the like before launching a game.

And besides, dial up bulletin boards were probably just as problematic with noobs.

 

I think what's missing is a series on "How to learn effectively". It's a nice meta skill to have that accelerates everything else.

As for the community being too big: I don't think it's too big. We tend to naturally divide into subgroups when that happens. Just let nature run its course.

 

LOL

@Tomnn & @Socrates, You both make a good point, there are a lot of repeat questions and it is very obvious that some of the posters haven't made any effort to search for an answer first. All these repeat posts then make it harder to find an answer, because your search results return the unanswered posts as well as the post someone took the time to answer.

 

I do not disagree there. As a forum moderator, I'd be inclined to force merge all threads with the same question. Of course, that level of OCD would also mean I'd never have time to sleep again, and it would probably torque off community members.

Which is an entirely different problem. One I won't get started on because I'll end up on a rant.

Related to that, though, I do think that sometimes people could be a bit nicer when telling someone, "Did you even bother to Google or look at the docs?" Not that I fault their bluntness, it's just that I kind of wish there were a more friendly way of saying it that was just as direct. Then folks could copy and paste when needed.

 

Some days I think that. Other days I think "If I can scare this guy away that's one less guy who will keep asking dumb questions". And you know what, it works. Anybody that doesn't get offended by a link like this one is a keeper, and will quickly loose their noob status and become a valuable forum member.

 

Or if they don't get offended when someone inevitably links this.

http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

 

We should really have an abridged/specific version of that as a sticky in all the forums. I nominate [insert better writer than me] to whip one up.

 

I agree, the original is way to long. And a bit more stuck up then our community is. I might give it a go. If I ever finish reading the original.

 

Oh god so much this, I've been working in a call center for 5 years and having to explain the same basic concepts of wifi over and over again just kills me. I've always tried to keep my forums requests at a minimum. After all my day job only is about Google-Fu so I've gotten pretty good at it.

I like answering the odd question here and there especially if it's a problem I've encountered before. But I really think people should grasp a basic understanding of programming / oop / general computers inner workings before tackling gamedev in this kind of environment.

And in my short time here I have noticed the extremely n00b questions seem more common. Especially How do I access a variable from another script sometimes you can see it 3-4 times on the first page alone.

I love helping people, I love programming, I love learning. But yeah after a while you realize some people won't even bother to do a bit of search on their own. I saw a thread a few days ago where a guy didn't even have any idea for a game yet wanted someone to make it for free.

 

Maybe if the unity help forums required a completion of a google-fu course before posting there, the section would be pretty much empty?

 

You're getting grumpier. You've also been around long enough to notice the people who want you to write their MMORPG for them; I've been in this community about 5 years (!!!) and they've always been there.

It used to be WoW clones. Then SAO. Then MOBAs. Then Flappy Bird. Now, it's back to MMOs. Who knows what "Do It For Me" button they'll want next?

 

Maybe that would be a good asset for the asset store. A big button in the editor that says "do it for me" and when they press it, it randomly assembles scripts from a kit you've put in there for mobas, infinite runners, flappy bird clones and an mmo.

 

That was hilarious

 

That would be a clear sign of failing communication system. Documentation and even the Unity Answers are trying to give solutions to the questions that are being answered again and again. Now if only there was good way to somehow aggregate the knowledge of the community in easy way and also to find answers to project specific questions.

No silver bullets here, just plenty of lead bullets unfortunately

 

A couple of reasons....

First of all, people have become lazier. My kids, when they don't know an answer, are much more likely to ask me, than look it up themselves. Sometimes I answer, sometimes I say..look it up. When I was a kid, my parents didn't have the education I have now. They didn't always know the answers so I had a shelf full of huge, clumsy encyclopedias and I looked everything up.

Now days..just use google answers or forums. No need to actually do research to find out how something works. Youtube videos can teach you how to braid your hair or replace your computer's graphic cards. This is fabulous and it allows many of us to do things we could never do otherwise.

But it also creates the belief that getting answers should be quick and easy. Also, that everyone wants to share their knowledge with you. They really do want to take the time to tell you how to write that script or how to sell your game.

So..here we have this huge Unity Support Forum. To many, it's purpose is to provide support for using Unity. That means, that if it is "too hard" to figure out the answer or find it on google, it is okay to come here and ask. And it is, of course. Someone posts in the scripting support forum and there is a good chance their question will be answered. Most "noobs" who ask questions do just that. You might not even know they are noobs if not for the low post count.

But of course, we then have some folks, maybe youngsters, who need a bit more hand holding. They should be going to the "encyclopedia", like ZergBerg (which is where I went years ago to try to understand code) or maybe they should buy a book or watch other tutorials on YouTube. But....they see "Unity Forums" and that seems like a logical place to go and yell "HELP" in the title, in hopes of rescue.

I feel for them, I do, and I often wish I could help them. My coding skill is very low level, my modeling skills a few notches higher but still learning, and my design skills, while mature enough, are not really what they want.

So...I accept that you will always have people asking questions, some that to us seem stupid. But after some struggle, they either learn to figure things out or they leave. I see no need to be rude, to be honest, although I have slipped a few times, much to my own embarrassment.

 

I learned how to program before there was an internet. I had a BASIC reference manual and source code to simple games out of 3-2-1 Contact magazine. How those games worked, and how to make them do what I wanted instead was all left to me to figure out. I can't help but wonder if the internet, in the grand scheme of things, isn't more a liability to our intellect than an asset. Even I find myself googling what I need to know far more often than actually retaining it these days. That would have been unthinkable 20 years ago. Now it seems we have a whole bunch of people that skip right past the googling part and jump to the asking other people part. You can't really learn anything if you don't make any attempt to figure out things for yourself. It seems we've replaced the memory in our brains with the memory on someone's server somewhere.

 

Yeah, Hemi, I think you might be right.

I just now sent a teenager into her room when I found out she was googling answers to her homework rather than reading and figuring them out. Used to be parents had to worry about peers and drugs and all that jazz. Now we have to add internet "cheating" which is what it is. You learn by processing, not by copying other people's answers.

 

I saw a program involving how the human mind works that basically said that if we know there's a continuing source of the information, we're more likely to remember where to find the information than we are to remember the information itself. I found it interesting, but scary.

 

Heh, I've done that a few times. But only for electives

Sounds like one day Google will become a religion.

 

You know, for some things, that is okay. I always thought it was stupid in college when I had to memorize formulas, especially math formulas. I mean, as a geologist, I would really only need those formulas when I was back in the office trying to some complex computations on groundwater flow or something like that. lol The only math I needed in the field were distances, latitude and longitude. No calculus required. Same with the periodic table. If I needed to know the specific gravity for an element, I could look it up!

On the other hand, there were a lot of things I did need to know, such as the ability to recognize various rocks and minerals in the field, or to realize what thin bedding might mean, or what readings on instruments meant. I couldn't look those up....well, that was before smartphones I guess!

Regardless, the efficiency of your work could depend on you being able to pull a formula up for that engineering problem rather than look it up all the time. A programmer has to learn syntax or it slows him down.

Knowing where to find information is very important and useful, although I would argue that Google Answers is not a great place to find accurate answers. But still, processing that information by using it rather than just pulling it up and forgetting it, is even more important. Getting that stuff into your long term memory somehow is crucial, at least the stuff you use every day.

 

Sure it is definitely too big. The idea of 4 million users trying or even serious enough about making games to download Unity is a good indication of that. I mean seriously... 4 MILLION?! It's a wonder we don't see many more of the same old questions than we do. So yeah I'd say the user base is too big anyway. Maybe not the actual community of truly active users. I have seriously thought about leaving it so there would be one less person around but haven't done so yet. Perhaps in time.

I agree with the people saying people don't want to put forth much effort these days. Like @HemiMG when I started learning this stuff there was no real community. I had some magazines full of BASIC and hexadecimal formatted machine code and spent hours studying and experimenting until I literally cracked the code. When I was able to write a machine code subroutine by poking values in the RAM of my c64 that when called printed out the alphabet on screen I felt like I had unlocked the secrets of the universe. Lol

Everyone seems to want it all "now". Right this very minute not realizing they should come in with the mindset of putting in a month of hard study and experimentation. Heck that is the fun stuff... learning. But you know a lot of people hate learning and I think that is the main difference between the people who got into this stuff 30 years ago and the people today. Back then it only appealed to those of us who enjoyed learning and were willing to spend masses of time learning and experimenting. These days game dev appeals to a broad audience and a lot of them probably hate learning.

I also think a lot of it is because there is so much to learn and sure things have been answered multiple times but maybe none of those answers have been incorporated into the reference material. If the docs themselves had some common issues you run into and how to get around them drawing from the most common questions and best answers that might do a good bit to help the people who are wanting to learn.

 

I hope you don't leave! I really enjoy reading your posts. It would be a sad day when you leave the forum.

 

And yet in today's world, the ability to find, verify and use information is more valuable then the ability to know information. This is very try in my day job as a chemical engineer. Hardly a day goes by when I don't need to uses search engine to track down information.

I look forward to the day this trickles down through the education system. Students will be given exams on topics they have never encountered, plus an internet connection, and be told to solve questions and write essays.

 

Hey @Teila thanks for the kind words. I enjoy your well thought out posts too. Well I am here still writing books. I've just had the thought of fading away once or twice. Lol

I think what would be very cool to see is some kind of forum dedicated to more experienced users. These forums are filled with beginners and that is cool very understandable and all but it would be nice to have a place to "talk shop" with people who are not trying to understand what 2D and 3D means or wondering where the make mmorpg button is. Maybe just a forum that focuses on more advanced stuff and we don't see "help me my cube is not displaying" and instead we see "Let's Design the Next Gen Enemy AI" or "Best Practices for Decoupling in Unity" or even "My Top 10 Best Practices for Unity Game Dev". A place where people who have been around the block once or twice can have a good conversation.

 

@GarBenjamin

Consider how difficult it was to get the Design Forum, I doubt that is going to happen. We will have to take it off Unity forum.

 

I believe that's the point of the pro filter that's coming. (Should be here about the same time as asset store 11 subscriptions and the new input system). Trouble is that will filter out people like me. But for pro users the noise reduction should be significant.

 

Interesting and that will filter out me as I am also not a Unity Pro user just an experienced software dev pro. Lol

Anyway it was just a thought. There are some other good forums around that have more advanced discussions. Just thought it might be cool here. We do get some from time to time but they are almost always buried within days by "am I going to jail? Unity said I performed an illegal operation!"

 

Something to keep in mind is that the people who do, in fact, use Google/YouTube/books/tutorials/forum searches to find answers to their questions are less visible, so I think it seems worse than it is. I rarely ask questions on the forums, since most of my questions have already been answered 100 different ways. I imagine there are quite a few more lurkers than most realize.

When I do have a question, it's typically something so obscure that you can practically hear the tumbleweeds after the post.

It does get a bit tiresome to see the posts where the person hasn't applied the tiniest bit of effort, I'll give you that.

 

@GarBenjamin I'll second the motion that you don't go away. That would shift the signal/noise ratio in the wrong direction!

I mostly hang out in the discussion forum because I'm usually too busy working on something to also want to "talk shop" and the discussion forum is a nice place for more watercooler style talk. So I don't know how much I'd benefit from an advanced users only forum. It would be really nice if we could keep the basic questions out of this forum though. My faith in humanity is ruined every time someone manages to scroll past the "Getting Started" forum, scroll past the "Scripting" forum, scroll past the "iOS" forum, see the "Discussion" forum, see the part that says the forum isn't for support questions and proceed to ask a question about getting started scripting in iOS here anyway. I just want to shake them and tell them to find a new hobby, because programming requires a way higher capacity for logic than that. Of course, I'd have thought that merely functioning as a human being on this planet requires a higher capacity for logic than that.

 

Oh the old days, where lazy people did not exist!

Is it too big? Well not really. But the more popular it gets the more people with silly questions will come around and flood the forum. So its harder to find the more interesting stuff for some people. If that is a bad things i don't really know. Depends on what you are using the forum for i guess.

 

I hope we get to see that (for the sake of future generations), but unfortunately I don't believe it's going to be any time soon, at least in the public education system. The system is too focused on memory-based tests instead of trying to promote more practical skills, such as self-learning and how to find information. We live in an era which offers huge amounts of easily accessible information and many people don't have the skills to properly get to it.

I wonder why we've reached this point. Is it because more people have access to the internet so we just get to see more incapable people? Is it because sites like stackoverflow or Unity answers/forums are so good at getting you a good answer from a generous/greedy (for points) user that they promote spoiling/hand holding? Do people trust more in an answer from someone else than in their own searching or self-learning skills? Did people simply get lazier?

 

Really depends on where you live...

 

I know your comment is tongue in cheek. However, I have been recruiting for a junior c# developer for over a month now. I was discussing the difficulty I was having finding an intelligent/motivated junior with a recruitment agent . He said that they are seeing a definite trend in young people now entering the workforce. They want jobs that aren't demanding, are low stress, flexible, not interested in career progression or chasing $'s. Maybe lazy is a bit harsh, but also not the attributes I am looking for in a person to fill the role.

 

Well, there will always be people that are too lazy and just want you to basically write the game for them. Those people are simply going to burn out and more of those people are going to show up right behind them. Anything that requires dedication has this phenomenon.

But I also want to vent. So I'm pretty dedicated to this. I've spent the last 6 months getting burnt out over and over trying to learn this stuff, and I'm pretty smart guy. It was only after 6 months I truly understood how a gameobject can connect with another gameobject and make two scripts work together.

Six. Freaking. Months.

That is awful.

That's going from knowing NOTHING about programming to just barely scratching the surface. I paid for like 3 months of Lynda.com even! The big problem I've seen as a student is that just about everyone that teaches programming sucks at teaching. This isn't exclusive to programming, not by a long shot. For example, I wouldn't recommend anybody trying to learn photography by buying a book. Most of the books you find serve two purposes: Allows the artist to validate his own portfolio, sell you more books when you don't learn anything. (And honestly, I've seen a lot of photography books where the author isn't actually all that great at what he does...) Anyways.

Experiences as a newcomer to programming:

• Instructors that make no attempt to structure lessons (either from paid or free sources)
  They cover the super basic stuff agonizingly slow, then skip over everything else and assume you've been programming for years.
  
  For us gamers, it's like "Welcome to the newb zone. You can use WASD to move around!!!" to level 2 being thrown into end game PVP and trying to learn how to play with 26 new spells, and having to guess on how to talent spec your character, learn the map, and learn about tactics, and what to expect from the other available classes.
  
  I paid for 3 months of Lynda.com and there was only one or two lessons worth viewing, both by http://simonallardice.com/ - every other lesson was garbage for a newcomer. I've yet to find a single source online that takes the task seriously and attempts to build a fluent understanding of the basics and connect the dots to intermediate topics.
  
  
• Being linked to documentation online that is WAY TOO DETAILED to actually be helpful.
  I'm looking at you, Microsoft, https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms310241
  Seriously this webpage is HORRIBLE for new comers.
  
  
• Experienced programmers getting off on how hard it was when they learned to program.
  This attitude of "it was hard for me, it should be hard for you" mentality needs to end. It's not healthy for any craft or industry. Just because you can google "anything" doesn't mean you're going to understand it. Then you're spoken down to for feeling stuck. It's not welcoming and is why a lot of people burn out and give up trying to learn, despite putting in a good effort.
  
  
• Rude and pompous reactions to legitimate questions. Trying to get help from a lot of experienced programmers is like attending a dinner party where you're the one that's not welcome and gets harassed in the politest way possible, but you know you've been burned.

Unity specific:

• Trying to learn C# for the first time on Unity. Unity has a bunch of things you wouldn't do for a regular C# application you're designing on Windows. There is no good lesson for "You're going to find tutorials for C# and .NET that say to do this, but with Unity you would do this instead. Here's why."
• The Unity API stuff is hard to learn from because it assumes you already know what you're doing and you're just referencing, so it's not a good resource for new comers.

What I would like to see happen.

Matthew Schell, Mike Geig, Adam Buckner, etc, please start making course videos that focus on "connecting the dots". Your general topic videos are often better than most of the other videos and tutorials. However, I watch them and go "I understand what you're showing me, but I'm not walking away being able to use the tool."

Instead of a massive project like the robot stealth game, focus on SUPER SMALL projects that are very specific about the concepts they teach. Make an entire series about Cubes. Call the series "Basic Implementations" or something. Like, how to use interfaces, what the options are when you want to create a gameObject and why you would do one or the other, how to use monobehavior stuff in its simplest form. No game mechanics, just cubes doing stuff to show how to use the tools and why. I would pay money for these kinds of lessons.

Sorry for the long and hectic post. I really wanted to vent about how frustrating this has been to learn and this thread seemed like a good place for it.

 

Good for them, they want to enjoy life. Does not mean they are not qualified for the job.

However i do see where you are coming from. Its just that wanting people to chase $ and career progression is the wrong things to look at. Rather think a trend is that people tend to look for things they enjoy rather than money and fancy titles.

I for one search jobs that are demanding in the regards that they challenge my developer skills. I dont search for a good salary or career progression in that regard. I search for a challenge - when its done i will search for a new one.

I might be wrong though. Its just thoughts

 

Its because a mere 15 years ago for all intents and purposes the internet didn't exist. 15 years ago knowing information was powerful. A doctor was successful based on the diseases he knew how to diagnose and treat. An engineer was successful based on the formulas he knew. A scientist was successful based on the knowledge he had accumulated. All of the high skilled technical professions were based on knowledge. And it has been that way since Aristotle first bemoaned that books were causing his students to have a poor memory.

But its changed, and quite dramatically. In the doctors office I describe my symptoms. The doctor googles a few terms on the computer. He suggests treatment based on those results. As an engineer I find my formulas on Wikipedia. And so forth. The education system will catch up soon, and we are seeing early signs of this change (Plenty of schools with 1:1 student to computer ratios, or requiring a laptop or tablet as stationary). But education always lags behind industry, by nature of the fact that you have to teach the teachers first.

 

Agreed @BFGames . Those attributes the recruiter mentioned aren't necessary to be a good programmer. But what I would like to see, is commitment, thirst for knowledge, drive for excellence, self motivated. These often overlap with the other attributes mentioned, but not always. I just want to see some spark of enthusiasm

 

The longer you're here, the shorter your posts get.

 

OMG, I feel your frustration. I think we have all been there and gone through the same pain. Game development is so much harder than just coding business applications. There are so many more skills to learn, animation, Unity API, Shaders, Modelling, Android, iOS and more.

I would have loved a course that could "connect the dots". You are correct, this information is hard to find.

I hope you stick with it and find success with your games.

 

Does 6 months sound unreasonable to learn new skills including something of such a technical nature as programming? How much time do you think it should take someone who knows nothing about programming to gain enough experience they are comfortable writing scripts to control game objects for a simple game (Flappy Bird)?

I agree with this. They are trying to focus on the foundation, the very basics and in doing so they don't need to worry about designing a good architecture, have no concern for scalability and so forth. The odds are high that so many people focus on this level because it is very easy and many of these people may not be much further than this in their own learning.

Do you think this might be because there is a huge amount to learn and it is only through time and experience that most people will ever be able to really understand this stuff enough to have a degree of mastery?

Microsoft is expecting their beginner material to be used by beginners / inexperienced developers: a person who has just completed a BS degree in computer science and has no (or very little) real world experience yet but does have a good grasp of the basic principles.

My posts above may have come across that way and, if so, it is not what I intended. I do enjoy helping people and have spent quite a bit of my time on here doing just that. I am not looking down at these people. Everyone has to start from the very beginning at some point of their life. Just for the record, all I was getting at is we see tons of posts from beginners and it would be very cool to have an area where that is not happening and the discussion is all on more advanced topics by more experienced people. Certainly never get rid of all of the posts from people who are just trying to learn this stuff for the first time. Keep that. But just have another section that is the opposite and not diluted with this same series of posts from beginners.

Also, I do not see why the "it was hard for me, it should be hard for you" is not healthy and needs to end. I think all we (those who say these things) are saying is there is a lot to learn. We help out as we can. But if a person really wants to do this then they need to put in the time and effort to learn it. And yes... the same way as we did. And I think it confuses some us who have been around a while (in IT or game development in general) because there is far more information available now than there ever has been before.

What we are really saying is we do not understand why people are having so much difficulty with this stuff when there are YouTube videos and masses of websites providing tutorials and other information. Yes, we mention what it was like when we started. We do that to try to provide a frame of reference so all of the new people can understand that if we learned it basically completely on our own through a lot of effort and time then surely people should be able to learn it all even faster now when the information is literally at your fingertips. It makes it seem like people these days just don't want to spend the time and effort to learn. Like they think there is some magical way they can just absorb all of this information and gain experience automatically downloaded into their brains or something. It might take one person 3 months to learn enough to feel comfortable scripting. It may take another 9 months. There is nothing wrong with that. What is the hurry? If it takes 3 months or 9 months to get to that point well that is what it takes. So maybe it is really that people are trying to learn all of this stuff in an unrealistic time frame?

This does happen more often than it should. However, there are many good people here who spend a lot of their time helping less experienced programmers without doing anything (at least not intentional) to be rude and pompous.

I do agree the Unity documentation is sadly lacking in guidance. Basically it is "there" but, as you said, it does require a certain level of experience to even know what it is you should be looking for. I think the idea is that a person will watch all of the videos so they can gain an understanding of all of the things that go into making a game. Maybe there needs to be another section that focuses on the fundamentals of a game. The basics of what goes into making a game. Then that leads to the tutorials. It may help it to all make more sense to a beginner.

There is a lot to it and I think part of the issue is the perception that this should be easy. I agree that things can be improved. You have provided a lot of good feedback for the Unity guys and gals and maybe some will keep it in mind and try to address some of these things in the future.

 

I think everyone who wants to post in the forum should have to download a script that is generated just for them. The script would be simple enough code but it would have bugs in it, preventing it from properly running.

The prospective forum member would have to use their own brain to figure out how to fix the code. Looking things up in Google, brute force figuring it out, whatever the method, they'd have to solve it and fix the program.

When they finally get the code running, it displays a custom generated key code on screen. They use that key code to log into the forum, and only then will they have the permissions granted to make their first post.

-----------------

or not.

 

Nah.

--Eric

 

Uh-uh.

 

A major issue with most domain experts who create instructional material, whether it be books, videos or whatever, is that they don't get real feedback on their teaching. I teach Java Programming (amongst other things) to beginners at tertiary level, and it's pretty obvious to me that when all my students fail their assessments that maybe there's something wrong with the way I presented it. If you don't assess learning you have no idea whether you're doing it right.