The Social Problems That Plague Instructables - A Discussion for Everyone
Disclaimer: Nothing I say relegates to any sort of EULA/terms of service instructables may have. This is strictly concerning a matter of taste and public interest. I don't really know anything about the "legal" matters here, in fact, I could care less - I'm just seeking a practical solution.
Before I begin my ranting and raving, I'd like to begin with these few questions. I don't expect you to respond tit-for-tat in list answer form - these are broad questions that you may choose to answer in your response I suppose, but the purpose of them is to get you thinking a bit:
1. Do you feel as though the quality of an instructable is important?
2. Does it bother you when you read an instructable that is very sloppy and appears as though no effort was put into making it appealing to the reader?
3. Does it bother you when you see instructables that tell you how to create things that appear to be ostensibly simple, as if you are being instructed on doing some menial thing?
4. Do you ever feel as though people post instructables in order to gain attention and don't seem to care about the instructable itself? If so, does that bother you?
It appears to me that many people feel as though the content of Instructables.com is crummy at times. It looks as though more often than not as of late, people are posting a lot of negative comments on certain instructables. The populace is simply becoming frustrated with the amount of poorly-written, lame duck, perhaps "half-assed" instructables that are popping up on the site.
Allow me to purge a bit before I create a storm: I am a man who preaches "For each, his own." I usually fall towards a laissez-faire policymaking attitude and I seek to just "let it lie" if necessary. I find that things work better uninterrupted. This is why I think I have held back here for a while about my thoughts on Instructables I didn't appreciate. Usually I would just mark it with a "-", leave a comment about what could be improved, and flag it if it was inappropriate.
The problem is, I started to do this too much over time. Maybe I just became too acquainted with the functions, but it feels to me as though it is the quality of the instructables that have waned. I am evidently not alone with this feeling. I have remained as reserved as I can, but I think it is time to speak out about something because other people are starting to shed light on it.
Perhaps we should be a little more conscientious about what we post. As the site grows, I think it is important we keep it tidy and nifty looking. There will be tons of new instructables every day, but I think we should reduce the number of them that many of us find pretty crummy. Perhaps a more overt ranking system.
Instructables is a really awesome site that has a very strong backbone - it was founded by people who really cared about it's potential. They actively upgrade the website to our whims and make it as best as they can make it. At the least, we owe it to these people to post our best and brighest works and make instructables look like a decent site.
My personal opinion:
I hate to sound like an elitist jerk, but there are a lot of trashy instructables... they're not worthy of being labelled as instructables. It seems like every day the number of atrocious posts increases. At times, it seems as though instructables is no longer treated as a decent site, rather, it's just a landfill for people to post their junk. I won't name anyone or any specific instructables, but honestly, there are some that are just there to garner attention and get our juices flowing. It's not fun.
Tear this to shreds, gents. G'nite ;).
Lomography Konstructor - World's First 35mm DIY SLR
Office Warfare Book on Sale Now
List of Upcoming Contests (updated 6/6)
Spanish translations of Instructables / Instructables traducidos al Espanol
JULY 2013 Build Night with SUGRU
High-current, electronic sword-fighting, fancy drink pouring, and more @ Makers Local 256 Build Night!
New Instructables Books for 2013
Souped Up: Projects to Make Everything Better [Book]
Backyard Rockets Book on Sale Now
Visit Our Store »
Go Pro Today »
I was just updating myslef on the new instructables and came across this one: http://www.instructables.com/id/EUWMRVNNFVEUJ7Y28T/
I personally don't mind if someone's second language is english and attempts to write up an instructable in english (as long as they include that fact in their into), but this got me to thinking about how many people would rather just spell and use grammer in whatever way they want then have to find and use a checker. One such example (in which trebuchet was trying to be nice): http://www.instructables.com/id/EPESC11DWVEUHCALDX/
So maybe another idea would be to place (or integrate) a spelling/grammer checker (perhaps even a translator) into the make an instructable section, so that members would be less likely to publish an instructable with bad grammer.
Anyone else have any thoughts on this?
I just wish there was a moderated RSS feed. I want to see the simple stuff, like Tim's
http://www.instructables.com/id/E1JG589AF1EQ6T2AC1/
I don't like 57 different types of rubber band guns made with office supplies. If you all could figure out how to filter that out, that would be great.
2. Does it bother you when you read an instructable that is very sloppy and appears as though no effort was put into making it appealing to the reader?
I left a comment on this instructable:
http://www.instructables.com/id/EFQACE9HWCET9K5KYO/
If we could get everyone to summarize what the heck the instructable was about and why one would want to do it on the first page that would be great. And if you say “hack your scanner for better output”, you need to state that you are doing something with a radio scanner or a sheet fed scanner or a barcode scanner.
Also, cost breakdowns are good. Even if it does not end up saving money. Some things are worth doing anyway
3. Does it bother you when you see instructables that tell you how to create things that appear to be ostensibly simple, as if you are being instructed on doing some menial thing?
Simple can be good. I cite Tim's cord thing example above. I don't need instructables on how to pick my nose
4. Do you ever feel as though people post instructables in order to gain attention and don't seem to care about the instructable itself? If so, does that bother you?
I liked the kee klamps stuff, but the fiery furnaces pizza one crossed the line for me. There's nothing noteworthy there and the pictures don't add anything either.
I wonder if there are ways to direct an instructable (vote I guess) toward particular levels of experience, or perhaps specific skills required. Quickies such as Tim's cord trick would find themselves slowly grouped, where as Homebrew Laser Cutter would find a different home and perhaps a different RSS feed.
An example: http://www.instructables.com/id/EE5OGLZHRWES1762KH/
(which never was set up with instructions as was implied in the comments).
It's OK by me. I have an RSS reader that polls sites I find worthy and let's me know there's new content. I'd read much less on much fewer sites if I had to go there manually myself with the browser. In my personal blog, i might publish 3 or 4 things a month. I hope there's not a bunch of people checking back to my site every day in the hopes to read something new. That might get a little frustrating. That's why I have the feed in the first place
What might be cool is that if the is a really good instructable, it nearly always ends up on the Make feed. I find a lot of uninteresting stuff on the Make feed, but I can usually figure out whether or not I want to read the link by the text that comes across in the feed. Anyway, If I could somehow AND together the Make feed and the "latest" instructable feed, and only read the ones that appear on both list, that would have a very high signal to noise ratio. I'm sure, however that I'd miss things like Tim's cord thing.
Also, if most of us move to the moderated feed, who will do the vetting?
Yup, and I don't have any really good answers. Adding a slashdot or K5 or Digg meta moderation is one route. There's nothing as an original idea I can suggest on that track. I read instructables because I enjoy it. If the S/N ratio on the site goes down, I'll likely find something else to read. Sorry, but there's little I have invested in this site beyond a few comments. I'm more than willing to one-click spam, but to get me to contribute to the vetting process, I'd need to be properly motivated.
I will say again, if somehow you were to filter out every instructable that did not, in the first step, explain clearly what the subject of the instructable was about, and why one would want to do/build/construct whatever the subject was about, it would filter out 90% of the crap (the spammers would game this system, but you already have an effective system to deal with that)
I hate to pick on FrenchCrawer, because I like reading his stuff, but he had an instructable that showed how to mine dirt for iron specks. Nowhere in the first step was it stated why anyone would want to mine dirt for iron specks. Now he did have an instructable elsewhere on making ferrofluid from those iron specks, but that was not stated in the first step. (I did end up reading it, and hopefully I offered positive feedback)
I may hate whiskey sours, but if I read the first step in my RSS aggravator and find out it's a step by step on how to mix the drink, making the sour mix from scratch (fresh-squeezed lemons and such), well I can make an informed decision on whether or not I want to read further. I might want to anyway, because perhaps I like amaretto sours, and the making of the sour mix from scratch is interesting, (perhaps I don't like the artificially flavored stuff made from high fructose corn syrup that's in the stores).
If the title says “cool drink” and the first step says “this is how I make a really cool drink!” Well, I might not waste my time on it.
Three flags:
- not crap
- summarized correctly, with the spelling checked
- I like it, recommend
I can see something be both non-crap and recommended, yet not summarized correctly or without needed photos.I'd like to be able to choose the feed I wanted. In my case, I'd want a feed composed of people who I trust that say that these instructables are not-crap and either formatted correctly or they like like it. That would filter out all the pen-gun stuff (I would hope)
The pen-gun crowd might think the mango-sushi is total crap. I can't see the pressure cooker beef stock rating very highly with them either. That's OK, they have a different feed from the peers that they would trust.
I would like more granularity in the rating system; there's a big difference between one of Lady Ada's fascinating and lovingly documented instructables and (say) my recent motor control hack. There are a lot of instructables I wouldn't mind giving a positive nod toward, that I'm not quite ready to have my name up there as "westfw likes it."
I think I also agree about the apologizing thing. At first, I was fine with it (everyone's nervous their first time :P), but now it just seems like a 'cop out.'
In the spirit of your last sentence - I propose a user made set of guidelines (approved by the admin of course) similar to what fungus amungus posted earlier. Should someone 'screw up' a project, they can be directed to said guidelines and know what the community expects from them (instead of just the admin).
1. # of Projects Published (perhaps also projects in queue too)
2. Average Current Rating of projects published (to weed out ratings by "junk" posters)
3. # of comments posted AND number of comments received
4. Member Age -- as far as how long you've been registered
5. Flags Against the user (Something tells me you might not have that in your db)
6. Some other variables.
Put it in a nice little formula and go. I'd think if the negatives outweigh the positives, you'll have issues. And then, there's situations like canida's taxidermy -- its not socially acceptable everywhere (so lots of flags).
Do you track flags per project on the admin side of the site? I'd figure out a threshold (I guess 5 if that is within a good tolerance) and then unpublish, and then shoot off an eMail to the creator. There are of course drawbacks - again Canida's project is a perfect example (sorry, I don't mean to pick on you ;) ). This is why a human moderator is preferable -- someone that you can trust to make the call.
To tell a user they did wrong.... Send them an eMail to say that their project has been unpublished. Also send them a guide of possible things that went wrong - spelling, grammar, copycats etc. Ideally, this list should be constructed by the community (likely the same group that has deemed the project less than satisfactory). This way, everyone knows what to expect and what is expected because they were sent a direct message.
I'm also happy to put in time as a moderator.
I was just looking at WikiHow and how they decide which posts should be deleted while giving everyone a heads-up about why. Maybe we could use the same system, but have something like a set number (neg. rating) that once it is reached the post is then deleted. Also perhaps have a message appear automatically when the halfway mark (or quarter) of neg. ratings has been breached, saying that the post will soon be deleted unless the rating goes back up. Just a thought...
Here's one ex: http://www.wikihow.com/Be-Like-Me-;)
Except instead of giving the post 1-2 weeks, have it set to once the number has been reached to be deleted. Also it would give the "poster" some time to change what needs to be changed to keep their instructable up and running.
1.Yes - but what is "quality" is up for debate
2. A little - in some cases (and it is sometimes not evident), the writer is "speaking" in English but English is not his/her native language. However, in other cases "what" is replaced with "wat" and "you" is replaced with "u" etc. etc. This is not AOL and I prefer not being dumbed down to that level.
3. westfw made a good point on that. However, somewhere on the instructables site it says something to the effect that things posted should be how to do something and not a component of how its done. Say, how to walk - not how to take a step.
4. Yes, the manager thing elsewhere in the forum is a perfect example.
I don't know who else is using it - but Firefox tool has this nifty little spell checker built into the interface (red - underline for misspelled words). And with the huge selection of third part spell checkers (such as tinyspell et al), gross spelling error bother me a bit. You ma have noticed my spelling > you comment in the past.
But, that's not to stay I'll stop coming here. I have a few websites open while I'm working or studying. And most of the time - I'm studying (Mech engineering student) :P I frequently take breaks to keep my attention and that is why I stop by here frequently.
Instructables still gets some great projects - but they are mixed in within caustic soda bombs etc. Those projects are def. worth the visit :P
Question, are you the same person that made those brass goggles? I just realized how similar that flicker account name is to your instructables username :P
Here are a few:
- Spelling and grammar. Instant messenger-speak has no place here. Take the time to spell the whole word, capitalize the first letter in a sentence, and spell check. If the title itself has an obvious spelling mistake (not to be confused with a typo), then there's obviously no solid intent. Foreign-language speakers are an exception.
- Pictures. Pretty much every time someone posts and says that pictures aren't necessary it's pretty much laziness and there will be people who don't get it.
- Completed projects. Why bother putting up just the first half and then say that more is coming? It's still laziness and they're shooting themselves in the foot because if they ever do get around to finishing it it will be past the first page of instructables. It's like those websites that are "under construction." Who wants to go back?
- Copycats. So your pen launcher has the rubber band on the side and not the top. Who cares?
- Spam. Blatantly copied projects with an obvious lack of understanding of why it works. Also projects where kids are just trying to have a laugh at posting crap.
The beta site mentioned something about group moderators coming soon. I think that will help weed out some of the crap (which always floats to the top :P). If moderators can make projects private and send out a quick blanket message to the creator that he/she needs to fix it to meet standards, I think that will greatly reduce these problems.
Yeah "I'll add more later" kinda sucks. Telling people to "come back soon" never works (with very few exceptions) :P