Difference between revisions of "Talk:Tutorials"

'Tutorial' prefix to tutorial pages

I notice that currently only a few of the tutorials have a prefix to the page name. I think the rest of the tutorials should be made to follow suit. As there may still be pages that are linking to them the old pages can be used with re-directs to the new location. We can then use the 'what links here' feature to update all the pages. Thecoshman (talk) 09:50, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Text vs. video

I think videos are a much more effective format for tutorials -- faster to explain and easier to understand. Any objections on adding a list of links to tutorials on YouTube? — Elembis (talk) 21:33, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

There is already a list of some youtube videos. The one thing that the textual tutorials have, is the fact that can make use of the wiki system. For instance, dozen tutorials can all mention that rockets need an ASAS unit, and just link to the ASAS page to explain what the hell it does, such interlinking is harder to manage with videos. You also need to consider that some people prefer reading tutorials, rather then watching and that the textual tutorials are easier to update. Thecoshman (talk) 07:49, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Tutorials with and without a space after Tutorial:

Hey there, when I'm searching for a tutorial I'm not sure if it has a space after the prefix or not. Maybe this should be make consistent? I would prefer without. — xZise [talk] 12:19, 16 April 2013 (CDT)

Space Plane Tutorials

Hi, I'm having trouble working with Space Planes, and while I can build a better Space Plane every time I try, it would be an enormous help if someone could write up 'Basic', 'Moderate', and 'Advanced' tutorials for building and flying SPs. Then maybe someone could make a SP tutorial for getting to Mun, or Minmus, or Duna, Eve, Moho, Jool etc.

Thank You!

-- Toa Aerrow ~ Toa of Nature (talk) 18:22, 22 June 2013 (UTC+08:00)

Forum posts?

Is there a policy about adding forum posts that function as tutorials (or are intended as tutorials)? I'm asking because there's some forum posts that have served as the basis for calculators and they're pretty solid as far as information content and presentation goes and I'd like to add them, but I'm unsure as to whether I'd have to write up a "Tutorial:" page or just link to the forum post itself (outside of youtube links there only seems to be a single dropbox link here).

--MechaLynx (talk) 07:33, 19 April 2014 (CDT)

I think you should link to the forum. Although I'm not sure if there should be a separate section (similar to the video tutorials section) or if it should be integrated into the existing list. — xZise [talk] 15:37, 19 April 2014 (CDT)

Well then I'm assuming there is no standing policy on this, so I'll add the forum links to the related sections and if there's a problem we can just revert the changes. --MechaLynx (talk) 16:21, 19 April 2014 (CDT)

New suggestion by new wiki contributer

I'll come out and say I don't know the first thing about wiki's besides how to find information on them, so by all means stop me if I start sounding silly. I understand this idea is a bit of a undertaking, but I feel that it would help new players and students like myself out a lot if all the mathematical and physics principles could be brought together in one place, then discussed both in 'by the numbers' theory and in Kerbal practice as sort of a how-to and learn-math article. It could also be a collection of pages organized perhaps as "basic principles", "atmospheric flight/computations", "orbital mechanics", etc. I understand that other authors have placed up very informative pages on certain individual subjects (which I thank you all in that effort), I feel that in it's current state it's sort of haphazard and easily overwhelming to the mathematically unlearned. And hey we might be able to teach people calculus at the same time, helping increase the number of future engineers and scientists, which is never a bad thing. Thoughts? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chris.T (talk • contribs) 00:09, 21 July 2014‎ (UTC)

Now I don't see the necessity to bring something into one place, if you mean with one place “one page”. If there are references to “previous” formulas or concepts a link should do it. Of course if you mean with one place the whole wiki, I won't object.

There are currently some pages like that: Terminology and cheat sheet, but both only show you the resulting formula/concept or link to a more detailed article (like specific impulse).

Also there are some pages which already talk about orbital mechanics and deduce how to get to at least one formula (I know, that's many): Geosynchronous Orbit (Math)

Of course it would be good to have articles like that structured. I actually think that having something like a “Wikibook” here about that orbital stuff would be awesome. Unfortunately the problem is to get the (wo)manpower to do that, because such a “book” would require lots of work.

You also made already a suggestion how to split such an article into multiple (connected) articles (with “Basic principles” and so on). You could use an {{Episode}} box at the top like in Campaign: Age of Rocketry to go through each “page”.

And another thing: Sign your posts on talk pages with --~~~~. — xZise [talk] 05:50, 21 July 2014 (CDT)

Tutorial overhaul

The current policy for tutorials on this wiki makes it so that most tutorials are created and maintained by individual users. This, along with the Tutorial:Template, makes it easy to write new tutorials, but it's also resulted in a fairly large saturation of tutorials on the wiki, some of which are poorly maintained or abandoned and a few of which are duplicates (an example being Tutorial:Orbital Rendezvous and Tutorial: Orbital Rendezvous). Additionally, with the update to 1.0 and all of the associated changes to aerodynamics, part configs, etc., nearly all of the tutorials became outdated in some way or another. I wanted to open up a dialogue on whether we should revamp the tutorial concept in general in addition to updating them.

A few things I think we could do:

• Merge duplicate/similar tutorials to make updating more manageable
  It's impractical to maintain every one of the 50+ tutorials on this wiki. Currently, most of the tutorials listed in this page are outdated due to the update to 1.0, and a large share had already needed updating prior to that. With the somewhat high frequency of updates to KSP, it takes a considerable amount of time to update every tutorial with each new game update. Reducing the number of tutorials would make it easier.

• Create a set of "official" Kerbal Space Program wiki tutorials
  This would involve separating tutorials into "user tutorials" and "official tutorials", the latter of which would be a new set of pages created either by copying from existing ones or starting from scratch, that would be featured more prominently and be given higher priority to maintain. The official tutorials would be minimal and restricted to the most vital information, and the user tutorials would cover a wider range of topics, as they do now. The currently-existing tutorials would become "User tutorials". The potential problem with this is that it might make it so that many non-official tutorials get abandoned and deprecate (though this already happens to an extent).

• Give updating tutorials a higher priority
  Tutorials is listed in the sidebar, and is currently the third most viewed page on the wiki, ahead of Parts and Version history. Special:PopularPages All of the tutorials listed here should have high standards, especially because of the influx of completely new players from the 1.0 release.

• Outsource tutorials
  Instead of maintaining the tutorials on this wiki, we could slowly start replacing some of them with links to instructional videos, forum posts, and other external resources. Then instead of updating the tutorials, we could just change the link targets.

Also, I recently made this nav-box template: Template:Tutorials, and I was hoping an admin could add it to Tutorial:Template. VariousMetals (talk) 22:02, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

- I've updated "getting started" several times, and started to create a second part of it (basic editor and rocket building tutor), but I am not a native speaker, so I need grammar correction. And most of those tutorials (just like many of wiki editing) are written as narrow-minded (the ascending from a celestial: is only Kerbin's prograde LKO), and not worthy for translate or update - rather need a total rewrite, and illustrations. But it seems, uploading the illustrations are paralyzed for a while... - NWM (talk) 04:19, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Regarding the quote: That is just not feasible because as soon as that editor leaves the wiki for whatever reason do we need to delete it? And regarding official tutorials I'm not sure if that is possible, that people will maintain those primarily. — xZise [talk] 16:41, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it doesn't make any sense to me to give some tutorials an elevated "official" status. "Higher priority" is meaningless for a wiki maintained largely through volunteer efforts. You can set whatever official priorities you like, the volunteers will work on whatever they feel like, any overlap between those two things will be mostly coincidence or only when a volunteer happens to feel that a particular article actually is a priority in their exclusive personal opinion. I don't mind if there's a central list of stuff that needs more urgent attention, or someone considers higher priority, but I'm certainly not going to give that list more than an occasional passing glance. My editing will always be 100% based on what I feel is important and what I feel like working on at the time, with lists like that just a curiosity that I might browse looking for something that I do think is important. I do look at the stub and outdated categories from time to time, to see if anything in them jumps out at me as something I'd like to work on. I will only work on your high priority stuff if I happen to agree that it's high priority and I'm not working on something more interesting to me (which might be lower priority).

I disagree with outsourcing/replacing tutorials here. Any truly terrible tutorials that are not being actively worked on by someone, and have not been worked on for some time could quite legitimately be nominated for deletion; but only deleted if they are clearly abandoned, contain very little of value, and are just beyond salvation. Others that are simply needing a refresh or a bit more work should just be tagged with {{Outdated}} or {{Stub}}, as appropriate (and include with the tag the specific bullet points that need work). Any that become completely historical (e.g. because the topic has simply become completely impossible in current KSP) should just have a clear statement that they are historical, and not deleted, as the history may interest someone or the topic may become possible again in the future, assuming that the content itself is basically good.

Outdated or incomplete information is still better than no information at all, as long as it has a clear notice declaring its status (which those templates provide).

Clear duplicates should probably be merged, as long as both are not actively being worked on by someone, have not been worked on for a while, and the merge doesn't throw away good information. If either is being actively worked on, the editor(s) could/should be encouraged to merge their work into a single article comprising the best of both. N.B. I support merging of duplicates not for ease of maintenance, but for a better experience for visitors. If, however, the duplication is limited only to the topic, but the 2 tutorials provide alternative approaches with significant and useful differences, they should probably not be merged unless it is easy to preserve the alternative options in a merge; cross-linking them might be the better option in some cases (possibly with a rename if needed).

--Murph (talk) 17:48, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Rover Help

Can someone help me build a durable fast rover? I can't build any by myself and none of the tutorials seem to work.

TOO MANY VIDEOS!!''

Why are there so many you tube videos. This whole page is you tube. This is not a tutorial.