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Author Topic: Admin, please clean up main tutorials!  (Read 1665 times)

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Offline greywanderer012345Topic starter

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Admin, please clean up main tutorials!
« on: June 20, 2013, 11:55:21 PM »
    I would first like to say that I really love this site. It's accessible, the forum is well-maintained, the graphics are loveable, the ads are non-obstructive; I even follow the facebook page, and appreciate what is posted there. I also appreciate how often I actually see admin responses in the forum. It's very admirable, and if you haven't seen it in my posts before, let me say Thank You for this site.

    However, the main tutorials found through the home page, $50 robot, etc., are filled with holes in information; or worse, incorrect and misleading information. eg. the H-bridge tutorial suggests using 'pnp and npn mosfets' (which don't exist), and also fails to mention the simple, yet crucial information that pMOSFETS are turned off by applying a voltage to the gate equal to the source. They are only small mistakes, but each with huge learning impact. Also, because they are so small, they should be easy to fix.

    Before building the $50 bot (admin's design, could have allowed for use of MCU PWM with slightly different wiring), I had a plan to eventually buy and Axon for larger projects, but after having to relearn so many things that I found to be incorrect in the main tutorials, I thought to myself, 'eh, that thing's designed by Admin. that guy makes a lot of little mistakes...'

    The site is very active, and even turning the now static tutorials into a wiki would be something that would grow very quickly. A simpler, and more immediate solution would be a sticky forum topic for pointing out proposed fixes. Even if you go through your own tutorials carefully and fix the mistakes you didn't see before, it'll make a huge difference. I haven't seen the main tutorials change since I found this site 4 years ago.

    Even if a potential new user of the site recognizes the errors and corrects for them, it still affects the site's image. If a professor stumbles upon the site looking for something extra for her students, she might just dismiss this place after giving the tutorials a once-over.
    As a final note; again, thank you.
   
« Last Edit: June 23, 2013, 07:33:25 PM by greywanderer012345 »

Offline Admin

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Re: Admin, please clean up main tutorials!
« Reply #1 on: July 07, 2013, 02:35:08 PM »
All valid arguments . . .

1) If you see a mistake, just send me a note and I'll get right on top of it.

2) I plan to do a revamp of many of the tutorials this winter, while on a long-term vacation. Much of the stuff was written, as you noted, many years ago. Technology has changed, and my writing skills/knowledge have greatly improved.

3) I've been considering making a significantly revamp to the members tutorials section and integrating it with the main site, similar to as you suggested with a wiki. I'll be looking into this as well.

4) thanks!  =)

 


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