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To be honest, this sounds like an issue with search engines. Why are "garbage" tutorials getting high rankings in search engines? Why aren't good quality tutori

To be honest, this sounds like an issue with search engines. Why are "garbage" tutorials getting high rankings in search engines? Why aren't good quality tutorials rising above them?

wruza 8y ago
Because search engines are designed to show what’s popular, not what’s correct and thorough. Search engines still cannot weigh an article’s sense, only its “pagerank”. This is an issue with people, not with a search engine.
- ChrisSD 8y ago
  But that merely moves the question on. Why are garbage tutorials more popular than good quality tutorials?
  - joelthelion 8y ago
    Probably because people who look for tutorials are not experts, so it's hard for them to tell if a tutorial is good or not.
  - noxToken 8y ago
    Because a garbage tutorial isn't necessarily incorrect. The solution in the tutorial might be slow, inefficient, un-optimized, hacky, etc., but if it works when people have been slamming their head on the desk for hours, people will use it. It's a matter of which tutorial captured the audience first.
  - projectramo 8y ago
    I think it is just numbers. There are many more poor quality tutorials written than high quality tutorials because high quality tutorials are much harder to write. The writer has to know the domain, be up-to-date in the domain, have the communication skills and the time to write and edit.
  - KineticLensman 8y ago
    Because people find them using search engines optimised for popularity (not quality) of content, as perceived by the readers, not a community of experts.
  - thanatropism 8y ago
    I can speak for "data science" tutorials: there's A LOT of people saying you don't actually need to know the math! Learning math makes you feel stupid.
akerro 8y ago
>Why are "garbage" tutorials getting high rankings in search engines? Because John experiments with X for the first time and writes about it on his blog. Janette has the same problem while learning about X so she takes his code, makes a few changes and puts it on her blog. This scenario happens 8 more times and we have 10 low quality tutorials about how to do things, but none of the authors has experience and expertise in X, and they won't admit it. Bad practice is copied to many places. 1000 garbage kill 1 gold.
- TuringTest 8y ago
  This explains why 1000 garbage tutorials are created, not why they are ranked high in the search engine.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    The same exact mechanism (and the parent already alluded to it in his comment: "Janette has the same problem while learning about X so she takes his code, makes a few changes and puts it on her blog"). Non experts look for tutorials, They chance upon tutorials by non-experts They don't know enough to tell they're junk They use the code, link to, and suggest those tutorials to others Those tutorials are getting higher ranks, attracting even more non-experts
  - akerro 8y ago
    Because search engines don't rank quality of source code and tutorial, they rank page layout, bolds, italics, font color and page speed. Literally any garbage can get to top3, you dont need to be good Ruby tutorial writer for it.
- nerdponx 8y ago
  and they won't admit it. There's your problem. If you are writing a "here's how I did it" post, you should be clear that you don't have any idea what you're doing.
  - pavel_lishin 8y ago

To be honest, this sounds like an issue with search engines. Why are "garbage" tutorials getting high rankings in search engines? Why aren't good quality tutorials rising above them?

wruza 8y ago

Because search engines are designed to show what’s popular, not what’s correct and thorough. Search engines still cannot weigh an article’s sense, only its “pagerank”. This is an issue with people, not with a search engine.

ChrisSD 8y ago
But that merely moves the question on. Why are garbage tutorials more popular than good quality tutorials?
- joelthelion 8y ago
  Probably because people who look for tutorials are not experts, so it's hard for them to tell if a tutorial is good or not.
- noxToken 8y ago
  Because a garbage tutorial isn't necessarily incorrect. The solution in the tutorial might be slow, inefficient, un-optimized, hacky, etc., but if it works when people have been slamming their head on the desk for hours, people will use it. It's a matter of which tutorial captured the audience first.
- projectramo 8y ago
  I think it is just numbers. There are many more poor quality tutorials written than high quality tutorials because high quality tutorials are much harder to write. The writer has to know the domain, be up-to-date in the domain, have the communication skills and the time to write and edit.
- KineticLensman 8y ago
  Because people find them using search engines optimised for popularity (not quality) of content, as perceived by the readers, not a community of experts.
- thanatropism 8y ago
  I can speak for "data science" tutorials: there's A LOT of people saying you don't actually need to know the math! Learning math makes you feel stupid.

akerro 8y ago

>Why are "garbage" tutorials getting high rankings in search engines? Because John experiments with X for the first time and writes about it on his blog. Janette has the same problem while learning about X so she takes his code, makes a few changes and puts it on her blog. This scenario happens 8 more times and we have 10 low quality tutorials about how to do things, but none of the authors has experience and expertise in X, and they won't admit it. Bad practice is copied to many places. 1000 garbage kill 1 gold.

TuringTest 8y ago
This explains why 1000 garbage tutorials are created, not why they are ranked high in the search engine.
- coldtea 8y ago
  The same exact mechanism (and the parent already alluded to it in his comment: "Janette has the same problem while learning about X so she takes his code, makes a few changes and puts it on her blog"). Non experts look for tutorials, They chance upon tutorials by non-experts They don't know enough to tell they're junk They use the code, link to, and suggest those tutorials to others Those tutorials are getting higher ranks, attracting even more non-experts
- akerro 8y ago
  Because search engines don't rank quality of source code and tutorial, they rank page layout, bolds, italics, font color and page speed. Literally any garbage can get to top3, you dont need to be good Ruby tutorial writer for it.
nerdponx 8y ago
and they won't admit it. There's your problem. If you are writing a "here's how I did it" post, you should be clear that you don't have any idea what you're doing.
- pavel_lishin 8y ago