Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
Heres how things currently seem to work:
1. New people come here, think "wow this is cool, I'm going to submit a movie"
OR
1. New people come here, think "wow this is cool, I'm going to ask how to do stuff"
2. New player submits a movie, gets ripped by the community for a sub-par movie and has it rejected.
OR
2. New member asks some questions in either General or a random board which they feel the question would fit (i.e an emulator specific forum).
3. Player/member gets frustrated with lack of help/positive feedback/encouraging remarks and leaves.
This is, how I see it, NOT how many people here want it to be. For a start, it puts off new people, clutters the submission queue and also clutters other forum sections also. As I understand it, we can always do with new TASers :)
As such, I propose a beginner's section on the forum. There, new members can post their beginner runs, ask questions about how to do things and help each other out. There could be a sticky with the most important resources and guides. The most frequently asked questions with answers could also be stickied.
In short, a beginners section should be created allow for education, creation and self-improvement when making TASes. I would be interested to hear what other community members think of this.
<adelikat> I am annoyed at my irc statements ending up in forums & sigs
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2161
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
I too have been thinking along the same lines. Perhaps it could be a good idea to have two different pages explaining how we make these videos and how the site works - one page for those with good technical knowledge, where terms like FPS, save state, RAM addresses etc. are used. The other page could be for those who don't know anything about emulators, where all these emulator terms are explained in a way that anyone can understand, and where the goal with our movies are explained in an easy way. Think of it as one page for computer geeks, and one page for those who barely touch a computer.
I guess it's inevitable to mention the "Beginner's TASing guide" project when talking about a beginner's section - perhaps we could fit one in that section. Something like one guide for each emulator that goes through all the basic features of that emulator, step by step, and how they are used in the making of TASes.
I also think that it's extremely important that newcomers see this section as soon as they come to the site. If they have to look around to find it, it doesn't really serve its purpose. Perhaps a large, red, flashing banner at the top of the main page as well as the forum? ;)
Overall, what I want to say is that I support this idea. :)
Well, I'm not so sure about a flashing banner, but maybe a new tab on the front page instead of having to go into the "About" section? In my humble opinion, on a lot of sites, "About" means "About Us" and has a bunch of stuff hardly anyone cares about, so they don't look at it. Maybe a tab that says something like "Tutorial"?
if beginners can't find the FAQ page, how do you plan to make them spot the new section ?
As much as I would like to support Raiscan, this is really the stumbling block. Now instead of pointing newbies to the FAQ, we're going to do so with the beginner section. Which essentially doubles the funtionality of the FAQ et al.
If you look at any niche community that revolves around something technical (and whether you want it or not, TASing is technical), pretty much all of them have FAQs intended to educate inexperienced users and share the context. RTFM'ing is one of the two feasible ways to deal with lack of experience, the second being ad hoc education using forums or chats ("ask a question, receive an answer"). Remember how you learned anything in your life, and you'll find it to be considerably close to truth. Anything else is going to be redundant, because it'll be a copy of existing functionality with basically identical problems.
However, it doesn't mean we can't make RTFM'ing (read: self-education) more accessible. There have been many discussions on creating video/flash/whatever tutorials. This is the way it should develop in my opinion. Furthermore, I believe using flash is much better than video because it allows for greater interactivity and ease of use, as well as the possibility of seamlessly embedding it into the FAQ.
[EDIT]
Further elaborating on the idea of interactive tutorials, we can make them even more educational if we base them around problem solving (which serves a double purpose since problem solving is the key element of TASing).
Example: give a newbie an emulator and a certain lua script for, say, Mega Man 1. The script will load particular sections of the game and have hardwired goals assigned between checkpoints (for instance, a sequence of jumps or a boss fight) as well as a number of frames for optimal solution. The player will then have to come up with a path within a certain threshold of the optimal solution. The script will also assign score points for overshooting the threshold. After all challenges are passed, a sum of the points from all checkpoints in a form of per-task statistics can then be used to measure your e-penis determine and increase a newbie user's TASing capability in a concise and user-friendly way.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 2687
Location: Seattle, WA
I agree that there are two types of people who eventually submit movies; those that rush in and those that do their research beforehand.
The latter is an awesome group, as they take the time to read the FAQ/tutorials, will post in threads/send PMs asking general questions, and seek feedback before doing any work. These people are great. There have been a few people who have PMed me in the past with questions and advice on running, and I was more than happy to help them on their way. We need more people like this, honestly.
The former, however, are the troublemakers. Creating multiple threads for help is silly and submitting without any feedback is reckless. Some of them mean well, though, and we can really easily remedy both of these issues by adding an addendum to the submission page that states "please seek help in the forums before making any serious attempts at submission material, and be sure to post early examples of work in order to get constructive feedback." Once that is posted, people who may be a bit impatient will (hopefully) take the advice and get better. People who are still going to ignore that warning, submit crap, and then get angry when their work is rejected really aren't conducive to a productive group.
There is such a thing as being user friendly, which we do now (FAQ, feedback in the forums, etc.), and then there is babying newcomers. I think that a new subforum could be great for newcomers to work together and reduce the culture shock, but forcing people to go through the motions when we already have a good set up seems a bit superfluous. That, and I'm guessing that a lot of people will still get turned away when they realize that quality submissions require way more effort than just playing a game super fast. Maybe that's just me not having faith...
I think a much better way to induct new members would be to have a semi-trial, such as "PM someone a run of SMW in under 13 minutes without cheating." It's a fun way to weed out those who want to try from those who just want to get their name on the site. (After reading the thread, I realize moozooh decided to edit the same sort of idea in.)
The problem with the current system is that it is actively repellant to people who are anywhere in between those two extremes. There should be a more community-interactive way for new users to get introduced to TASing, for people who want to learn how it works beforehand, and have difficulty with the site FAQ.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Hum I hardly notice the FAQ page, as most people don't. Maybe the FAQ link could be Sticky on the General Board or something ? When I visit a forum, I tend to look at the post, not at some option that I don't really need exept login.
I think it would have much more visibility with a Sticky,
Actually the link titled FAQ on the forum leads to a generic PHPBB FAQ; the one that should be linked to more is the FAQ in the wiki that makes up the main site.
The "first" FAQ link to appear is already the one on the main site and it's even in bigger letters. That those don't help the regular ignorant user shouldn't need to be mentioned, though.
