Allow New Members to Post Community Tutorials

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#1

I just found out that new members have the ability to post in #learning-resources:community-tutorials-resources but not #learning-resources:tutorials. This seems weird and inconsistent to me, and I can only imagine it being like that due to one (or both) of these reasons:

  • During forum reformat, it was overlooked that new members cannot post tutorials, whereas it was decided they can post resources
  • New members cannot post tutorials to preserve the quality of the tutorials section

There’s not much to say about the first point as it’s pretty straight-forward, though the second point, to me, is confusing. Why restrict new members from posting tutorials if they can post resources? As far as I can see, both sections could be just as easily polluted with low quality content.

So far, the community resources category seems to be going pretty good despite new members having access, so I don’t see why we should restrict new members from posting tutorials too. Currently, they’re just told to post tutorials in community resources by top contributors (pending source), which means without posting permissions in community tutorials we end up with things more disorganized than they should be.

I personally think new members should have permissions to post tutorials, so here’s a poll:

  • New members should be able to post community tutorials
  • New members should not be able to post community tutorials

0 voters

Edit: I closed the poll. See the thread solution for an explanation.

2 Likes
#2

As much as I love the idea of granting wider access, I feel like this change could be counter-intuitive.

The New Member role is often described as a “trial run” or a place for members who are still in the process of learning. It wouldn’t make much sense to allow learning users to post teaching content.

That being said, if Resources is doing well with New Member posting enabled, I suppose it might be fine to enable it for Tutorials as well.

4 Likes
#3

One of my bigger issues is this:

I’m trying to get the source, but it doesn’t make sense for this to happen. New members should either have access to posting tutorials or not be told to post them in the wrong category. This could be an error with the top contributor group becoming over-saturated, but either way something isn’t right here.

1 Like
#4

Community Resources is open because anyone can find a resource it doesn’t take anything special on the other hand tutorials require an in-depth understanding of the subject material new developers don’t have that so we are left with either low quality or extremely basic tutorials none of which are particularly useful if someone was knowledgeable enough we would want to promote them to member I don’t see the point of allowing new members to post in tutorials

As for top contributors recommending new members post tutorials in Community Resources I don’t think that’s the case the two categories are completely different if you find any threads that are tutorials in Community Resources let us know so we can do something about them

Sorry for lack of punctuation this is voice composed

3 Likes
#5

I see your point, but someone having the “New Member” rank doesn’t automatically make them less knowledgeable of a certain topic.

It’s extremely difficult for New Members to contribute to the DevForums when they do not have permission to reply to most topics or create threads in many sections.

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#6

Even if the New Members are going to stay limited, at least set a better system for them to become Members. We all know that if most of these New Members applied before last year August, they would be Members now and would have many extra permissions.

Also, a new member can be full of ideas, but they are not allowed to post in the feature requests category. They can’t even reply, which is actually pointless. Changing this could let many people contribute to the community.

I’d say even if you are going to keep these permissions as they are, at least give the New Members bigger chance to become Members.

3 Likes
#7

I’m going to disagree with this until there’s strong evidence.

They can’t directly post them to ensure the feature request section isn’t abused. By giving more access to it, it makes the section less efficient. For a new member to make a feature request, they have to post their request in #bulletin-board, and follow these steps:

I’d also like to note that new members have more areas they can post in than they did when I was a new member, but I had no issue becoming a full member. You can contribute, but in most cases to do so it requires having the ability as a developer to do so. This seems intended to me. I got my new member role around January 24th, and my member role on February 15th. I’m telling you this to show it is possible, just make sure whatever you post is good content. Some good content will stand out more positively than some good content and a lot of bad content, in my opinion. (Note that I’m not accusing anyone of posting bad content)

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#8

Are community tutorials something new members can file through the same process as feature requests and bug reports? I ask because I saw a post a while back from a new member in #inception-forum, which as far as I know can’t be done which leads me to believe it got there through the same process.

#9

Yes any restricted category can be posted in by following the same process for feature requests and bug reports

1 Like