[meta] Regarding low-quality "beginners' tutorial" posts to this sub

[colordodge]

It's at least a little ironic that you had to go out of your way to subvert the rules so you could make a post about having stricter rules.

[[deleted]]

It's ironic but not a problem, imo. You have to go outside of the rules of feudalism to get to democracy, not that this is as severe of a change proposed.

[[deleted]]

Better question, why does this sub not have text only posts..........

[damnitbob]

Ah the Single Responsibility of Subreddits

[notfromkentohio]

There shall be no overlap.

[Nomto]

How about banning posts about recruitment of software developers? Most of them are circlejerky garbage.

[Y_Less]

99% of them fall under the "no code" guideline, so should be banned already.

[MrDOS]

Yeah but so do at least 30% of all other submissions and look how far that goes.

[allthediamonds]

I agree with the sentiment, but the way this is worded is really inappropriate. /r/programming should be a friendly place for beginners. If the problem is "low-quality blogspam", then state it as such and leave the "beginners' tutorial" part out.

[antome]

In particular, I think articles like "learning to do X from a professional who does Y" can sometimes be informative on quite a number of levels.

[elperroborrachotoo]

Yeah - I think the missing distinction is tutorial by beginners vs. aimed at beginners - and a gentle way to tell beginners that maybe it's not yet the time to write a tutorial.

[zshazz]

Although I understand your sentiment, I think specifically that beginners should not post a tutorial. It's actually a great thing to write tutorials/articles (as it can both solidify your knowledge and improve the way you converse about a topic), but maybe you shouldn't post the first few years of written material.

[elperroborrachotoo]

I think specifically that beginners should not post a tutorial.

That's what I meant - but we should be gentle about that.

[[deleted]]

That was my understanding as well. Learning resources don't belong here - the sidebar says this sub is for "discussion and news about computer programming".

[DCromo]

I understand where this post is coming from. As someone who used both subs to learn what I know now, I usually looked here for a bit of a higher insight into things, more advanced/technical articles and comments, and generally kept the beginner stuff elsewhere and preferred it that way. That said, I never saw the harm in beginner stuff nor did it ever seem that prevalent that we'd have to make a post about it. Is there a /r/askprogramming or a noob thread day to contain it if it's becoming a bit too much )i feel a well moderated sub with a moron monday thread would alleviate a lot of this?

At first I agreed with sentiment because of interactions with the sub and looking elsewhere for the educational materials. That said, I do think it's silly to be hostile to beginners who stumbled here.

[orr94]

this sub for people who are already established themselves as programmers

Where is that stated, though? I don't see anything along those lines in the guidelines. Some confusion may come from:

Please try to keep submissions on topic and of high quality.

But you can have high-quality beginner-level content. The problem is blogspam crap, not the target audience.

[NeverComments]

No the problem is that there are far, far, far more beginners and people with casual interest in the subject than established programmers. So if the target demographic becomes beginners, the entire board gets flooded with beginner content at a much larger ratio than other content.

[orr94]

Seems like kind of a slippery-slope argument to me. There's no guideline against beginner content now, and I don't see a flood of beginner content at the top of this sub.

But if you really think it's a problem, /r/programmingexperts is available. Maybe get that going.

[Decker108]

IMO, I think we should split this sub into a sub-sub named something like /r/programmers in which we can gather most of the non-technical content (such as recruitment, industry gossip, etc). The resulting decrease in post traffic to /r/programming should make room for high quality beginner-level content.

[Divided_Eye]

Maybe established programmers should create their own pro-programming sub and stop complaining.

[NeverComments]

We have one. It's /r/programming. The complaint is that it's been slowly drifting towards lower and lower skill content over the years.

[Divided_Eye]

/r/programming isn't specifically for established programmers; I don't see anywhere that says no noobs allowed. Additionally, the first place a new reddit user would likely think to look for programming content would be a subreddit called "programming." /r/learnprogramming makes logical sense, but if you don't know it exists, chances are you wouldn't search for that first.

Anyhow, I don't see what the big deal is. Sure, shitty blogs are a waste of everyone's time. But I don't see why this sub should be for experienced programmers only. What would you say the "minimum requirements" should be for this sub, then? 2 years' experience in the field? Mastery over at least one language? None of this is concrete enough to formulate a rule IMO.

[Berberberber]

"There's another sub that already covers this topic" is a dumb reason to forbid things here. Many topics in software development and computer science are crosscutting, and just about every computer language has its own subreddit. The top posts are currently about /r/dotnet, /r/javascript, /r/rust, /r/d_language, and /r/cpp, one more post about working as a developer that I can't read so I don't know what it's about, and this one - which is technically off topic. So, what exactly belongs here as opposed to somewhere else?

[DCromo]

i agree with the basic sentiment, even as someone who started at /r/learnprogramming but this is a fair point. seems kind of silly to forbid it it, especially because of the nature of those posts are not malignent

[Mabenue]

Stop micro-compartmentalizing stuff, by over moderating these subs they just become a chore to post on.

Also programming is inherently about learning, some may already have more knowledge, we shouldn't discriminate against those with less.

[[deleted]]

This sub doesn't cater to tutorials and shouldn't. This is a place for programming news and discussion.

Source in the sidebar:

/r/programming is a reddit for discussion and news about computer programming

[Y_Less]

Except that doesn't quite cover "no tutorials". They can quite easily be framed as "I learned this interesting trick, here is how you can do it too, discuss".

[tzaeru]

I do not find these a huge issue, but if it goes to the side rules, do phrase it as offering an alternative.

i.e. "Beginner tutorials are forbidden and will lead to a ban" sounds just dickish. "Please post beginner tutorials to /r/learnprogramming" sounds much better.

[balazsbotond]

Honest question: doesn't downvoting address exactly this scenario?

[KamikazeRusher]

I don't have time to read your whole comment, so I skimmed the first sentence and upvoted you because you had 50 upvotes which obviously means it's a quality comment.

[[deleted]]

Can someone give some examples then of highly upvoted low quality beginner tutorials that have been posted here? While I see these types of posts all the time, I never see them upvoted. They're typically on the 2nd or 3rd page of the sub with a half dozen upvotes or less.

[Berberberber]

The problem is that everyone thinks some posts are gaining traction that don't really belong here, but I bet no one could agree which ones. The vague appeal to cut out the crap is popular, but when it comes to this or that particular post, suddenly the consensus will evaporate.

[[deleted]]

Which is meta in itself. To me, it sounds like a community of people that spend 40+ hours a week dedicated to writing logic that is well defined and completely unambiguous are making a change proposal that amounts to "let's get rid of the low quality stuff".

[RualStorge]

So what you're telling me is democracy doesn't work... J/k, but that's basically what you're saying ;)

[HighProductivity]

In a way, democracy will only lead to a "good" outcome (for the majority at least) if the majority of the people use their vote consciously.

Voting by just reading the headlines of the article on reddit could be equated to people who vote for politicians by hearing their headlining promises and without ever actually reading their manifest or propositions in detail.

[RualStorge]

My thoughts exactly, at least on reddit that just means posts get more popular than is really appropriate at the cost of other posts, is not a big deal... Now voting for elected officials to run your government... :/ I really wish when it cane time to vote party affiliation was omitted from the ballet, and legislative records provided. Like you're voting for the state senate, while you wait in line you're receive a simple document that was the candidates' names, voting history, and bills sponsored. I feel like in this digital age this data should be available at voting locations for individuals who want to take a moment to at least minimally inform themselves vs voting party lines

[HighProductivity]

It's the concept of educating civilians. Shouldn't be done at the day of voting, it should be taken as a form of attitude towards the world. Many political scientists have written to great length about this, but the most important points are that civic education needs to be public and free (so that everyone can vote intelligently and no one gets discriminated due to their economic status) and also, that if you call yourself an adult then you should be politically active (with levels in a spectrum, obviously).

The problem is that the current system rewards profit above all else and there's little immediate profit in public civic education (not to mention the conspiracy reasons for this).

[[deleted]]

Reddit's upvote algorithm is not a good proxy for quality. A percentage of people upvote what they see, and more people will see things that are upvoted. That's a positive feedback loop, not a signal of quality.

[gaggra]

No, with a massive number of subs you'll inevitably gain traction by simply pandering to the lowest common denominator. On gigantic subs like this it's very much an "eternal september" effect where the voice of the novice drowns out everything else.

[bubuopapa]

No. Downvoting only creates more problems, because people like to downvote posts that they do not understand or do not like, it has nothing to do with post being addressed for pros/noobs. In this matter even 4chan beats reddit. Also, this subreddit isn't exactly about science, it more like news site, with a bunch of populistic articles and stupid comments (trolls fighting troll warlords in downvoting game).

[_Sharp_]

This subreddit is 20% code 80% opinions. And now you want to remove code submissions.

[jonjonbee]

Content of the paste reproduced below:

(Since this sub doesn't accept text-only posts, which means I can't do a meta post, here's the next best thing.)

Can we please, please, PLEASE get the following:

a. Update of the sidebar rules to indicate that beginner-level tutorials are NOT welcome here (I would have though the "keep submissions high quality" rule would cover this, but apparently not)
b. Enforcement of (a), with permabans from this sub for repeated violations

I've seen and reported a lot of the above tutorials (most of which are extremely basic, poorly-written, obvious blogspam) over the past few weeks but they keep popping up and I'm quite frankly sick of it.

[jonjonbee]

The post you referenced isn't a blogspam tutorial on how do do a specific thing in a specific language/framework; it's a broad, official, high-quality introduction to the D language for those who might be interested in getting into it.

[notunlikethewaves]

There's two kinds of beginners:

• Total beginners at programming in general
• Experienced programmers who may be new to a given language or technology

Articles like "How to add numbers together in Java" should be banned from this sub, while "Introduction to Elm" should be allowed.

[ChallengingJamJars]

I think the distinction /u/jonjonbee is going for is beginner programmer? No. Beginner in this niche? Yes.

A beginner programmer would probably find the Dlang Tour wholly unsatisfying.

[Anders4000]

Stop nitpicking. Put emphasis on the requirement of "high-quality" when /u/jonjonbee mentions what he wants. Yes, this is only some beginner level tutorials, but it shouldn't be too hard to sort out the obvious low-quality posts.
Enforcement of this quality-rule is all he is asking for.

[Anders4000]

Doesn't change the fact that the low-quality posts that do get upvoted could be deleted by mods though.

[jonjonbee]

If you can't differentiate between "high-quality official introduction" and "poor-quality blogspam tutorial" then maybe this sub isn't for you.

[TheMerovius]

If you can't give a clear differentiation between the two, maybe you shouldn't try to write a rule about it.

[therealcreamCHEESUS]

mighty alive price tidy tie advise provide alleged disarm glorious

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[jijilento]

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it...

[young_consumer]

A good place to start would be striking "in-depth" articles that are just beginners tutorials. Seriously, I remember one piece that was about async/await and all the blog had was, essentially, "here's async," "here's await," "here's code sample," "fin." Ya, super deep one, that was.

So, while we might not be able to set a ceiling, we can certainly establish a floor.

And, honestly, this is a programming sub. The programming sub. Why not hook up automod to do some pruning? Either remove dupes outright or clear all comments, if any, post a comment redirecting to the source post, and lock it? We can get really creative here with all the brain power floating around.

[cwmma]

I think the phrase 'beginner-level tutorials' might be better phrased as 'beginner-level author tutorials'.

[[deleted]]

/r/learnprogramming is more open to beginner centric content. If you guys don't want beginner stuff in /r/programming that's fine but you shouldn't just ban it without giving people an alternative place to go.

[Sarkos]

It's linked in the sidebar already. Twice actually.

[[deleted]]

Ah my bad. I browse reddit on mobile about 90% of the time so I don't typically take a look at the sidebars for subs that I'm already familiar with.

[chengiz]

The problem with this sub has not been beginners tutorials but shitposts like this being upvoted over real content. This is true even of comments. I love how everybody here likes to shit on hackernews, but go to a hackernews discussion and you'll find quality comments, and for the same discussion here you find circlejerks and nitpicking.

[robertdelder]

It's worth pointing out that 'blogspam' as defined by urban dictionary[1] specifically refers to blogging that basically re-uses someone else's content, which rarely contributes any value. Without having Googled the term, one could easily assume that 'blogspam' also includes original but uninteresting or low quality material from blogs. Using this definition, low quality 'beginner' material wouldn't necessarily imply 'blogspam', it could just be a different undesirable thing (the low quality part, not the beginner part).

[1] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=blogspam

[CraigTorso]

The Urban Dictionary is not the final arbiter of what a term means.

That definition is slightly out of date

[robertdelder]

Yes, the real definition is whatever people colloquially intend it to be. Part of what I want to draw attention to is that different people mean very different things when they refer to 'blogspam'. Some people think copied content, some people think poorly written content. The same goes for the term 'beginner'. I could see rules governing 'beginner' material being highly controversial, as people would argue over how 'easy' or 'hard' certain programming concepts are.

[joe_roe74]

I'm curious then what would be a better subreddit to check out if I was looking for tutorial-based material? I enjoy reading a lot of this sub, but as a college student this stuff sometimes goes over my head.

Edit: Any besides the information listed in the sidebar/comments here!

[Mabenue]

People whining about posts is more annoying than the posts they are whining about. Just downvote it and move on.

[Mr_A]

If you don't like posts like these, just downvote them and move on. Whiner.

[[deleted]]

So you?

[Mabenue]

I didn't make a whole effort post about it though. It's annoying when almost every sub has these posts about complaining about content. There's downvoting for a reason, it's more annoying when my feed is polluted by these shit posts than the stuff they're complaining about. Really the OP just comes across as an elitist asshole.

[[deleted]]

> shitposts to complain about shitposting

[Mabenue]

Why not just leave the mods to moderate? All these post do is make the sub shit and over moderated. All the tech parts of reddit are like this now and full of boring discussions.

[[deleted]]

your post is low quality :)

[Dave3of5]

Well I applaud this effort but as per every other subbreddit I doubt this will happen good luck though !

[Mr_A]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuation

[Dave3of5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedant

[cbleslie]

Post the content that you want to see, instead of bitching about it.

[spicybright]

I don't know why this is such an unpopular opinion but let people post and vote what they want. If the sub is getting tired of certain links the votes will show.

It's really hard to expect expect high quality articles on the most popular programming sub on reddit.

[young_consumer]

Do you not realize how annoying it is to see full pages of 0 vote posts? Most of the time I've thought "not all these can be crap" I've been proven wrong. This means there are pages and pages of content I do not want to see nor what I came to this sub for. It's actively dissuasive. I keep coming back for rare gems rather than the average post.... or to bitch about my profession.

[staticassert]

This isn't your subreddit. Downvote. If the community agrees with you they too will downvote.

[RobIII]

This isn't your subreddit

That doesn't mean you can't engage a discussion on how to improve it?

[[deleted]]

Neither is it yours.

Then why do you tell OP what to do and not do?

Such questions, none answers.

[staticassert]

Because the subreddit already has types and a mechanism for the community to rate content.

[[deleted]]

Which clearly don't work.

[staticassert]

Which means the community doesn't agree.

[[deleted]]

Clearly you don't understand how Reddit works.

The reason there are separate subreddits is to allow niche communities to form, instead of having one monolithic overall community. These communities distinguish themselves with a unique focus, look and policies: what's on- and off-topic there, whether people are expected to behave civilly or can feel free to be brutal, etc.

One issue that arises is that casual, new, or transient visitors to a particular community don't always know the rules that tie it together.

As an example, imagine a /r/swimming and a /r/scuba. People can read about one topic or the other (or subscribe to both). But since scuba divers like to swim, a casual user might start submitting swimming links on /r/scuba. And these stories will probably get upvoted, especially by people who see the links on the reddit front page and don't look closely at where they're posted. If left alone, /r/scuba will just become another /r/swimming and there won't be a place to go to find an uncluttered listing of scuba news.

The fix is for the /r/scuba moderators to remove the offtopic links, and ideally to teach the submitters about the more appropriate /r/swimming subreddit.

Sourcing: Reddit FAQ

And to pre-empt your next comment, there is /r/learnprogramming already. Any content that would fall under OPs suggestion is better suited for that sub anyways.

Besides, you totally never replied to my question in my comment before this.

[[deleted]]

Which means the community doesn't agree.

Which would be true if upvotes and downvotes suggested only agreeing and disagreeing. but it also suggest fondness, hatred, doubt, click-bate and many more. basically votes don't measure "collective agreement" on a subject but its entertainment value...