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Tutorial Forum Posting Guidelines -- UPDATED 20 Jan 2014


david.atwell

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(The following is a companion to this list. Please read both for the full Tutorials Rules list.)

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. Screenshots must be .JPG, or optimized PNG (such as with the OptiPNG plugin) files less than 800 pixels at their largest dimension, at a reasonable filesize. 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, and moved to the Tutorial Graveyard.

3. Please post the tutorial you've created in the correct sub-forum. If they're posted in the wrong place, we'll have to move them.

4. Please include links to any plugins used in your tutorial.  This makes it so much easier for users to locate that hard-to-find plugin.

5. Special rules for video tutorials: Video tutorials are allowed and encouraged! Please follow the following rules:

-5a. Please embed the video into your post (you may add a link back to the video or to your channel if you like); posting blind links or URL shortener links is dangerous.

-5b. Your video must follow forum rules; specifically, rules 9 and 24 (courtesy and swearing).  We also recommend that it follow rule #4 (must make sense).   :)

-5c. Screenshots are not required in the case of video tutorials, but please do include an image of the final result in the thread.

 

Content:

6. Always use search before writing tutorials, to see if it has been done before. (Forum search or Google Custom Search)

7. Don't write tutorials on something everyone can learn by reading the help file.

-7a. Don't write tutorials on something everyone can learn by fiddling with effects. If it just takes a couple clicks, don't post it.

8. 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; Paint.NET is far more powerful than you think! Start posting your work in the Pictorium, and if your work really wows us, many users will ask you for a tutorial.

-8a. Keep in mind, even if you're not a newbie with Paint.NET 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.

9. Think HARD before posting a tutorial that includes Polar Inversion, or run the risk of being mocked.

10. 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.

11. If you're making a tutorial about how to create a signature with a video game render in it, it had better be darned good and unique. We have locked hundreds of them, and we're tired of looking at them. Make sure it's original.

12. 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:

13. 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.

14. Don't start fights if someone posts constructive criticism.

 

Licensing:

15. Tutorial authors are strongly encouraged to publish their tutorials under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) License.  This license allows sharing and adaptation of the work provided attribution to the original author is included. This is the same license Wikipedia uses. A text covering this license can be found here. To apply the license to your work, copy the following icon and text to your tutorial.

 

Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

 

 

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, it may have been moved. 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. 🙂

You can find your missing tutorial by looking in your post list. Just go to your profile and click on the "Topics" link.

Thanks!

 

UPDATE 03.02.09: Added rules 5a and 6a.

UPDATE 11 Nov 2010: Added 1b - PNG filetype is accepted, if optimized.

UPDATE 20 Jan 2014: Added 3.5 - post links to the plugins used. (EER)

UPDATE 25 Aug 2015: Added video rules and renumbered list. (-d.a)

UPDATE 14 Oct 2020: Added 15 - note about licensing. (EER)

 

Edited by toe_head2001
Very minor adjustments to #15
  • Upvote 1

 

The Doctor: There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior... A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world.
Amy: But how did it end up in there?
The Doctor: You know fairy tales. A good wizard tricked it.
River Song: I hate good wizards in fairy tales; they always turn out to be him.

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