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XxXGenesisXxX:
Ok, so a few things from my perspective on what has been mentioned so far (read a lot, skimmed some):

The problem I have with both tutorials and especially auto-mated process is that they do not promote lateral thinking, which is more important than having the skill sets required in WoW modding. Yes, if you want to write some code to do something you should learn some programming, that is obvious, but as mentioned there are countless places on the internet to learn that. Same with 3D modelling, texturing and even tool development. However it isn't easy to learn to think laterally without practicing it.

When I started to get into WoW modding back in 2012 there was some documentation and tutorials, but not too much, let alone a time before that when some members of this community came started. The main thing that veterans all have in common is an interest in exploration and learning. About 10% of everything I learned was from tutorials (and that was still a fair bit), the other 90% was from experimentation, exploration and memorizing my own form of documentation in my head based upon what I found. Furthermore, it's motivational to know you figured something out on your own.

That said, I do believe tutorials are a good thing, but to rely on them is a fault. That goes double for automation for people who should be learning (as opposed to people who already know but want to speed up the process).

The second thing I wanted to touch on was Modcraft itself as an identity. I joined this site in 2012. At that time both AC-Web and MMOWNED/OwnedCore were flourishing and highly populated, unfortunately, that was exactly why I came to Modcraft. I never liked AC-Web personally, as to me it was what OwnedCore became; a dumping ground for tutorials. I remember thinking to myself, holy crap if I see another crappy tutorial on how to compile a core I'm going to shoot myself.

Then there was Modcraft. When I joined Modcraft, to me it was where the skill level per member significantly exceeded that of other sites. But more importantly it was almost like a filtered society where people were generally interested in growing the modding community, not just themselves. Well, for the most part at least... I don't mind information for new modders, but I believe we should teach them how to teach themselves, not teach them exactly what to do.

The last thing is more personally towards myself, but I know others are the same. I'm over WoW... I am sick of it, plain and simple. I have played that fucking game since beta. All it has done in my eyes has gone downhill. The modding community was the only good thing it had left. But there is only so much one can enjoy working with a severely limited client. Given the lack of people interested in quality custom content for WoW, it makes me question "why don't I just make my own content in Unity Engine instead?"

A big part of that thinking is that my learning curve has plummeted, I used to be learning so much everyday and so quickly, now I look at the WoW cores and it's all rinse and repeat, or stuff I am simply not interested in. In terms of WoW I am completely without goals or targets to achieve that I am interested in. This wasn't as bad back in the day because I was self-motivated through learning, I would be halfway through completing a goal and would find a new one to do after I was done. Long story short, WoW as a game and evolution of a game is stagnant in my eyes. Feel free to disagree, hell I'd like to be convinced otherwise, I could of course be completely wrong as I am severely out of touch with WoW modding.

ANYWAY! On to the productive side of this post:

I like the idea of a formal tutorial system that would require approval and proper structure before it is accepted and published. If you think about how .wikia pages are structured by default (ignore custom templates), they are simple, clean and force you to structure your content. Something along those principles would be great.

Personally I have gotten used to video tutorials, perhaps video implementation would be nice.

Though it shouldn't be the goal of the tutorials an incentive would be nice. I wouldn't go as drastic as paid Tutorials like Method suggested, but perhaps a competition per month for the best tutorial of the month with a small prize. Promoting quality over quantity.

On the idea of competition, something I would considering coming back into the WoW community for is a challenge competition. For example similar to art forums: Once per month a challenging task is set that everyone can try and see who does the best job at. Perhaps one month it's a best custom boss script (or custom boss), another it is who can find the full limits of the custom factions (there are a few bugs I could never resolve), who can squash a well know bug that many have tried before. Even a who can write the best tutorial on a set topic commonly requested. Basically just some form of challenge and friendly competition that again promotes quality and learning.

Small time collaboration - people collaborating for small projects. So instead of an entire server with custom classes that would take 4 people 6 months to make, why not have 4 people spend 2 weeks developing 1 custom class for release (with documentation for people to learn with).

This is a huge stretch but a suggestion none the less... Why not make a brand new game with an engine like unity? There is so much talent on this site, why not do something more with it. What if Maruum was it's own game? Free from the limitations of the WoW client. That would be incredible.

Honestly, I just don't want this site to ever turn into quantity over quality. Quality should always be Modcraft's highest prerogative, be it for releases, learning, tutorials or even collaboration.

schlumpf:

--- Quote from: "XxXGenesisXxX" ---Personally I have gotten used to video tutorials, perhaps video implementation would be nice.
--- End quote ---

Ugh, please, no, no, no and no. Videos are horrible. I will never understand why everyone thinks that doing anything in video helps at all. It always results in 30 seconds of worthless intro, 30 seconds of worthless outro and hugely blown up content, which most of the time is two paragraphs max.

Please, don't do video tutorials. Ever. For anything but pottery.

XxXGenesisXxX:

--- Quote from: "schlumpf" ---Ugh, please, no, no, no and no. Videos are horrible. I will never understand why everyone thinks that doing anything in video helps at all. It always results in 30 seconds of worthless intro, 30 seconds of worthless outro and hugely blown up content, which most of the time is two paragraphs max.

Please, don't do video tutorials. Ever. For anything but pottery.
--- End quote ---

Bahaha, the funny thing is, your pottery example fits well. I could not see myself learning Autodesk Maya from a wall of text if I was to make 3D model of some pottery. However I feel a video tutorial for a visual medium would make a lot more sense. xD

Although, yeah it's not for everything and some things can be explained in a great deal less time with written text.

Milly:

--- Quote from: "schlumpf" ---Ugh, please, no, no, no and no. Videos are horrible. I will never understand why everyone thinks that doing anything in video helps at all. It always results in 30 seconds of worthless intro, 30 seconds of worthless outro and hugely blown up content, which most of the time is two paragraphs max.

Please, don't do video tutorials. Ever. For anything but pottery.
--- End quote ---
Everyone learns differently. I have a really hard time reading long text...

schlumpf:
Yes, pottery is the right example. Still, most of modding is not pottery but just plain tech. Learning maya is pottery, but it isn't really part of modcraft, at all. The modcraft part is somehow getting through a shitliads of options and menus to export stuff using write scripts with the right options. That's far from pottery.

I do agree on not having an easy time with learning by reading long text. That's exactly the same issue with these videos though. The hard part is one little checkbox clicked right in a five minute video, or two page text. Both suck. That's why both should be way shorter. With videos, clicking a single checkbox is just laughably stupid though, thus a video is pure overkill, a one paragraph text would be fine.

Keep stuff simple, free of worthless surroundings. Keep stuff technical where it should, explain things instead of saying which checkbox to check (ie what does it do? Why do we need that?)

Tutorials not being on point is one of the worst issues, and videos are often worse at it. I will never understand why you would watch a one minute video of someone entering a cave to find a rare instead of just getting coordinates.

Bonus against videos: language barrier, learning/acting speed differences.

I know that video tutorials, letsplays, quest guides, do it yourself guides, and every little shitty thing gets days of YouTube presence. I have been hoping for that to die since it began.

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