As a DevForum user, it is currently pretty annoying to view tutorials and how-tos made by people in the #resources:community-tutorials category without certain people’s posts being basically an ad for their YouTube channels or any other social media.
According to the Forum Rules, people can’t advertise on the DevForum, and (if I interpret the rules correctly) by doing so, they are breaking the rules. Not to mention that some users might end up clicking on a masked link that might take them to unsafe websites. This also makes it incredibly difficult for people to look for certain specifics that might be further down the line and waste their time on looking up something minuscule.
If Roblox can address this issue, it will improve the category significantly by essentially forcing users to type out everything and using the videos as a visual guide instead of just linking people to their social media for an explanation. It would also deter anyone from making really basic tutorials for likes and attention on their off-site accounts.
They should just show the steps inside of the post instead of making people watch a YouTube video for views and advertising. I feel like if this starts to happen too commonly, then it should be changed to only Regulars can make tutorials.
I disagree with this. I do agree that just YouTube tutorials shouldn’t be allowed, but many members post useful tutorials. Just look at this tutorial. How To Make Your Own 2D Game (NEW ASSET ADDED). It’s created by a member, and yet I, along with many other people probably didn’t know.
On one of my tutorials, I put a helpfulness survey out of 10, and the average rating is a 7.13. While not great, that wasn’t my best one.
Anyways, I do agree that YouTube only needs to be stopped. What if we do the same thing we do in #collaboration:recruitment? If a link is detected, it awaits approval to see if it is YouTube only. It would just detect YouTube links, because if there is a written version and then a YouTube version, I’m okay with that. Some people prefer YouTube versions.
Yeah, just kind of sad how as a member it’s so restricted. I can’t submit bug reports, can’t report Dev Hub errors, and with this, can’t make tutorials. This isn’t really commonly abused, and it can always be flagged.
When you look in #resources:community-tutorials you usually expect to see written guides explaining something. If a written guide comes with a YouTube video for people who don’t want to read, that’s no problem to me, but creating a post simply to link a video is pretty useless considering it takes about 15 seconds to search for a video yourself.
I put a ton of effort into ensuring that it makes sense. I also make sure that the code is working and efficient and i am there to help. If you are going to create a “tutorial” but it doesn’t have enough information, then it’s not really a tutorial, more like a resource.
I think a better rule (along with this?) would be to not allow almost-empty topics that just link to youtube videos. Not only is the topic itself extremely short but it is also basically a way to indirectly advertise channels.
We all hate seeing shitty topics that are literal ads.
Along with this higher character limit, making the rules clearer about this topics could be extremely helpful.
As long as you make a well-explained tutorial in the category, it is not breaking the rules. If you check the links the OP posted, you’ll see what we are talking about.
A good tutorial (in my opinion) must have this specifications:
Clear and concise
Pictures and examples
It should work
It should be about a topic that really matters. Imagine a “How to place a part” tutorial, no one needs that.
A video (along with all of the mentioned above) could also be pretty useful
You need to be an expert in the topic you are writing about, since you are (probably) going to receive questions. Please note that “expert” does not means that you can’t commit errors or that you know EVERYTHING. It means that you should be able to answer most of the questions and do your research before posting.
The issue is that people like me are monetised on YouTube and earn £30/month off of YouTube which means those users are obviously going to profit off of video tutorials.
I never said a YouTube video. You can add an mp4 file on the forum and there would be no profit. Personally, I have no problem with people makinh profit out of the videos, but an almost empty topic that only have a link to your channel is straight up advertising.
Also, I’ve seen that when people link their videos, they make them intetionally so everyone goes to their channel.
The forum has a file limit of 20MB though. I can literally link a 1:30 minute video maximum or for some files (I sent someone an MK8DX capture before) it literally will only allow a 15 second video max.
Thanks for linking my tutorial, and I agree big time!
While it might not be the best idea to do this, I wouldn’t say it should be banned. Many of these are hard to find on YouTube and don’t get much attention. By doing this, they can grow viewership while helping developers out. Who knows? We might have the next big studio how-to channel come alive because of this.
Yea but I’m not calling for banning them. I find those to be useful although I am not talking about videos that are there as a companion to the tutorial, I am talking about those that are just slapped in as the “answer” to the problem and forcing you to watch them. As I said here:
As the title says, I am asking for the tutorials category to have a higher minimum character count for people to post in there. Once again, I am fine with videos being in #resources:community-tutorials but as a side piece to the post and not the main thing.
