I miss text-based tutorials

When I use the internet to learn, I don't want to have to spend 2 minutes watching an advert, then try to decipher an accent I can barely understand whilst a 15 year old speed runs the task whilst seemingly skipping crucial steps in a video.

I want the steps written down. Maybe with diagrams.

I'm old. Learning is hard enough.

Infynis ,
@Infynis@midwest.social avatar

I'll spend 15 minutes scouring forums to avoid watching a 5 minute tutorial video. Having an actual written guide is so much more useful

Tyoda ,

The worst is when I had scoured all the forums and as a last resort I turn to videos, which turn out to just be reading the same forum post.

nickwitha_k ,

And Discord is not a substitute for documentation.

Reucnalts ,

I am always saying reddit and discord are killing the use of forums and therefore are killing a lot of content that would be accesible and readable for people in the future. Discord is my main problem with that. Back in the days games had their own forums and people would post guides and they could be sticked to the top. But in discord servers so often you just have long ass on going conversations that hardly give you any information. It is nice to have the option to chat and look for groups and the abillity to immediatly join a group voice chat with said people.

A friend send me a link from a reddit post with same topic but it was french and i dont use reddit anymore. But i miss the small communities for games like Dungeon Crawl by Stone Soup, some good old roguelike :)

grrgyle ,
@grrgyle@slrpnk.net avatar

It's like anti-documentation

henfredemars ,

I think there’s something to be said for the difficulty in writing a good tutorial. I remember back in the day, before video game walk-throughs, even the text versions were often difficult to decipher.

I also believe we have way more tutorials than we used to have, but the tools for locating good sources are focused more on making money than serving visitors.

Empricorn ,

"Difficult to decipher"? I honestly don't think I ever encountered this. At worst, text walkthroughs were too verbose, but that was just because they were passionate single-person projects. Can you elaborate, or do you have examples? Keep in mind I'm mostly thinking of GameFAQs-style text walkthroughs.

0110010001100010 ,
@0110010001100010@lemmy.world avatar

I feel this in my soul. I'm SOOOO fucking sick of a 20+ minutes video that could be like 2 paragraphs of text. I can't tell you how many times I have to pause, rewind, watch again, pause some more, etc videos. I get it if there is something that has to be shown visually but if you are just running commands or something why do I have to watch it?!

apfelwoiSchoppen ,
@apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world avatar

Gamefaqs, but for life, please!

ipha ,
@ipha@lemm.ee avatar

Ahh yes, the 15 min video that should have been 3 bullet points.

pivot_root ,

Hey guys, welcome to another of Johnny's Tech Tutorials. I'm your guy Jim, and today we're going to be covering how to prevent Slack from showing other users when you're away from your computer.

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Ok, I don't know about you guys, but back when I worked for a company, we used Slack for communication. Slack is great for most things, but they just don't let you set your status to be permanently online. If you step away for a coffee or a washroom break and don't come back fast enough, there's a good chance your boss will see it. Unfortunately, not everyone has an understanding boss. And, if you're one of those people with a minute-counting pencil pusher for a boss, you'll know how bad it can be. Luckily for you, there is a way that you can bypass that pesky Slack snitching.

If this helps you, make sure to smash that like button and subscribe for more tech tutorials. So, here's what you're going to do: head on over to Amazon and search for a "USB mouse jiggler". Any of them are going to work, but I highly recommend the "JigglePhysiks Pro 300" for its natural mouse movements. I'll put a link to that in the video comments if any of you are interested and want to help out the channel. Once you get your mouse jiggler, you're going to need to find a USB port to plug it into. If your computer doesn't have any free ones, though, don't worry about it. You can grab a USB hub from Amazon to get a few more ports. Or, if you have a Mac, make sure to grab a USB C to USB adapter. Once you have all those set up and plugged in, press the button on the device and walk away for your morning coffee. That's it! No more away status.

Thanks for sticking with me guys. If you haven't subscribed already, I post new vids every Tuesday and Saturday. And I would also like to thank my wonderful Patreon members for helping keep the channel going. I couldn't do it without your generous donations.

dactylotheca ,
@dactylotheca@suppo.fi avatar

This is so horrifyingly accurate it gave me a headache

GregorGizeh ,

I really want to vote this down because it is textbook cancer youtube but I have to respect the precise craftsmanship.

eran_morad ,

10/10.

maegul , (edited )
@maegul@lemmy.ml avatar

Like all the other replies ...

  • On one hand ... fuck you, you awful person, why would you put me through that
  • On the other hand ... you are a treasure and a master craftsperson and ought to be celebrated for the mirror you hold up to society

... sometimes ... fucking "modern hustle" youtube ... just come on!

EDIT: just to be clear, this was wonderful and thank you, I’m being mostly facetious here.

reddit_sux ,

Read it faster than seeing it on video at 2.5x

Sotuanduso ,
@Sotuanduso@lemm.ee avatar

Pro tip: When you start a YouTube video and it's seeming like this, push 3. It will skip you to 30% into the video, which is usually right around when the relevant part starts.

Here, going by character count, it puts you halfway through the last sentence of the sponsorship, which isn't bad, though this example is particularly eregious and doesn't start the real instructions until you're about 59% through.

nieceandtows ,

What if all text tutorials became this? Recipe websites are already this way.

Emerald ,

Yeah recipe sites are the worst. I get it if they truly want to share their personal story about the recipe, but I'm sure many just do it for SEO

grrgyle ,
@grrgyle@slrpnk.net avatar

I even hate the sound of the voice my head made up to read this in

LinkOpensChest_wav ,
@LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

https://youtubetranscript.com/

It's not perfect, but usually I can ctl+F and find the part I'm looking for

I fully agree. Text based tutorials are so much more convenient and becoming scarcer all the time.

dactylotheca ,
@dactylotheca@suppo.fi avatar

And the text tutorials that we do get are either padded out with bullshit or written by a fucking LLM

henfredemars ,

I hate that BS so much. Despite the advancements in technology I feel like I can’t find anything anymore unless I know exactly what I’m looking for in advance and from whom.

adam_y OP ,
@adam_y@lemmy.world avatar

I blame cooking blogs for introducing this bloat.

"First let me tell you a little about my relationshio with cinnamon... It all started 40 years ago whilst I was..."

WhatsHerBucket ,
@WhatsHerBucket@lemmy.world avatar

And I have to stop listening to my music :(

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