More Tutorial Shenanigans

Both "tutorials" were by the same guy - a newcomer.

I'm afraid that, as tutorials aren't pre-moderated - any more than any other post, they are open to this sort of abuse. My private suspicion is that there is probably a lot of plagiarism in tutorials, especially as some posters seem to churn out a huge number of them, but it's difficult to test this.

I do have my doubts (as must be obvious) about the value of tutorials on this site. Most of them seem to be trivial or else amount to "read the manual" and they are not arranged in any easy-to-scan hierarchy. It would be interesting to know how many people use them for the purposes stated in their rationale. I don't think I have ever seen anyone link to a tutorial - their own or someone else's - as a solution to a forum post.

I wouldn't mind if it weren't for the fact that they sometimes cause a lot of noise in the system by appearing amongst the more regular posts.
 

jpishgar

Splendid
Overlord Emeritus
Neither of these were staff-written.
Users are empowered to write their own tutorials, which they can and do. Tutorials undergo the same moderation oversight that normal threads do - so naturally there will be some that are not the best that get through the front lines. I will say that we are considerably more aggressive on tutorials than any other thread content type. Good catch, by the by.

-JP