Posting
To try and stop most of the fighting in the Tutorials Forums, keep it clean, and to prevent floods of duplicate/similar tutorials, here are some guidelines for posting in the Tutorials Forums.
Formatting:
1. Tutorials must have screenshots in almost every case.
-1a. Pictures must be .GIF or .JPG files less than 800 pixels at their largest dimension. Not everyone has a network connection as good as yours.
2. Please post a finished tutorial. Don't say "I'll finish later" or "I'll add screenshots when I have time." Unfinished tutorials will be locked immediately.
3. Please post the tutorial you've created in the correct sub-forum. If they're posted in the wrong place, we'll move them if we're feeling generous. Otherwise, we'll lock it.
Content:
4. Always use search before writing tutorials, to see if it has been done before. (Forum search)
5. Don't write tutorials on something everyone can learn by looking at pictures.
-5a. Don't write tutorials on something everyone can learn by fiddling with loose parts. If it just takes a couple pieces, don't post it.
6. Please don't be in a rush to write tutorials. As a rule of thumb, if you have very few posts (i.e. only a few dozen), think twice before posting a tutorial. As BoltBait famously wrote, "Noobs should be reading tutorials, not writing them." Stick around and learn more before trying to teach; Start posting your work in the Galleries, and if your work really wows us, many users will ask you for a tutorial.
-6a. Keep in mind, even if you're not a newbie with the hobby(s) but are a newbie to this forum, this rule still applies. As a newbie to the forum, you don't know what's new, what's old, what's been done to death, and what we'll make fun of. Stick around a little bit, learn about how this forum works, and then you might have people asking for a tut.
7. Think HARD before posting a tutorial that includes insignia placement or run the risk of being mocked.
8. If you are tempted to put the word 'simple' or 'easy' in your thread title, ask yourself why you are writing that tutorial in the first place. Your 'tutorial' is probably not necessary.
9. By and large, you should lean toward publishing tutorials that depict concepts and procedures well, and not just a specific result. We don't want to lead people by the hand; we want to help them become better. You know the old adage, "If you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he'll eat for the rest of his life." Let's teach, not just show.
Civility:
10. When you put any work for the world to see, you will get praise & criticism.
If you only want praise and can't take criticism, don't post a tutorial.
11. Don't start fights if someone posts constructive criticism.
Any tutorials or authors not following the above rules will be locked.
Please understand that having your thread locked is not necessarily a bad thing. We lock tutorials that do not follow these guidelines not to squelch discussion, but to prevent fighting and bickering. We're trying to keep this forum friendly and happy, and locking tutorials that will cause fighting is part of that. It's nothing personal, so please don't take offense. Thank you!
Where's my tutorial?!?
If you recently posted a tutorial, and now you can't find it, one of two things may have happened:
A. Perhaps it broke one of the above guidelines or one of the forum rules. In that case, it would have been moved to the Legacy Tutorials forum. It is still visible to anyone who wants to see it, don't worry, but we need to have the Cream of the Crop in the Tutorials+ sections so that new users can find and browse tuts more easily. Please see above about locked tuts.
B. If it was a good tutorial, and didn't break any guidelines or rules, we may have felt that it fit better under a different umbrella and moved it over. For instance, if you posted a really nifty tutorial about cutting images out the easy way, and put it in the Photo Manipulation forum, we might think it was better suited to the Newbie Playground and flipped it over.
In either case, you can find your missing tutorial by looking in your post list. Just go to your profile and click on the "Search User Posts" link. You should be able to flip through the pages and find it that way.
Thanks!
Replying
Civility (very important!)
We're trying to keep this a civil forum. In addition to the general forum rules, please follow these when replying to tutorials.
1. If you see a tutorial you think is really bad, and you feel that you MUST say something, just post once. Say something constructive about WHY it's bad, and then leave it alone. And don't start fighting if someone disagrees with you. As Rick said, "Humiliation is hardly the best remedy. If a tutorial sucks, then don't even bother commenting on it. Or, if you must say it sucks then post once and then leave it alone. If you keep whining and crying on a tutorial that's bad all you're doing is bumping it and forcing it to stay at the top of the list."
2. Please don't dig up 2+ month- old tutorials, just to reply with "This is too simple," "this sucks," etc. Why bring the tutorials you don't like back on the top? If you can do better, show us. Write your own tutorial.
You will get a warning the first time you start fighting; the second time, you will get banned for 24 hours or more.
Posting In General:
1. This forum is for Tutorial Publishing only; not requests for tutorials or general "how do I..." type questions.
2. Please post questions about a specific tutorial in the thread for that tutorial.
Every thread that is not a tutorial needs to be published in the General Discussion and Questions forum. If your thread is misplaced, we will either move or lock it.
