The Future... How to best transform new modders into valuable members?

[Epistolary Richard]

Writing a tutorial can take alot of time and it isnt exactly the most enjoyable thing to do. Especially when you could be getting more work done on your mod instead.

That's not really the most positive way of looking at it. Doing a good tutorial can take some time - but take for example the adding new units for beginners tutorial I wrote. I didn't discover anything included there, I was one of hundreds of people who could have written it - it came long after such knowledge was widely known in the community - but it feels good that it's gotten over 13,000 views and that it's still quoted when people ask questions in this area (though it still does have that enums stuff in that I really should remove...) There's a satisfaction in having completed something well that's inherent whether the piece be a mod or a tute.

Tutorials have also changed the face of the modding community - our TCs would be nothing without the tutes on editing buildings, vegetation and skies that have been posted. The field of scripting was barely touched upon before tutes were written for it.

In my opinion to develop a new modder into a good one instead of a bad one (shame we don't have a Darth Vader smiley) the best way is assigning him a personal tutor.
The best way would be to communicate via chat and/or PMs in an environment where the pupil can ask the tutor anything they like. The tutor should, whenever possible, give quick answers, and if need be, explain it to the unexperienced in easy words
This of course means a major time commitment for the tutor, so this can only happen inside a mod team and if the elder and potential pupil like each other (because you are more likely to spend time doing stuff for people you are fond of).

Tutor relationships have been tried in the past. I agree mod teams are the easiest forum for them - but still tutors suffer from the fact that they have to invest their time in up front, and then have to rely on the tutored to stick around long enough to make the investment of time worthwhile.

What do you think about creating a tutorial request thread for M2TW where, if you discover one of the gaps you mention, you can request that a tutorial is written about it, or it is fitted into another tutorial. If anybody has the time to do that then, they have a number of topics they can write about.

I think that's a good idea as long as it's couched in the right terms then I could be a benefit.

I personaly find the scriptorium a little annoying to use
Personaly I think for MTW2 it should be devided up into a few catagories - ie units, scripting, maps, ect.
thats just my 2 1/2 cents though

Have you seen the Tutorials database - it seems to do what you want.

Not entirely sure, apprenticeship / guidance from mod team alone makes anyone good modder, it will probably make you good text 'cruncher' which helps others out, but if you're entirely told how to do things, then you just follow existing paths. There's something to be said for attempting to do things on your own, getting into a huge mess (ok as far as possible with help of tutorials etc), and having to hunt bugs etc., might not actually make you a good modder but it does eventually make you a good bug hunter!

Actually IMO I would have thought it would be the reverse. Text crunching can be picked up pretty easily from tutorials as it tends to all be logic. But the more 'arts' side of things such as making models and textures, benefit far more from 1 to 1 tutor-like relationships where feedback can be given directly on creations.

there often seems to be knowledge within mod teams that doesn't get shared with community until mod is released - partly understandable, no one wants to stick their neck out and say 'hey this works' until its tested, and sometimes mod may want to keep 'secret weapon' quiet....

I think that can be true and it can be for a few reasons - the first is that a mod doesn't necessarily want to shout out about the technicalities behind a feature, second it actually takes some effort to explain this properly and then answer people's questions and the third is that sometimes I think sometimes mod team members simply aren't aware of what is generally known in the community - therefore when they make a discovery they're simply not sure whether such a discovery has been made before or not.

Technicalities can normally be reasonably inferred by other modders in that field - for the second and third heads they would both be helped by trying to keep greater links between mod teams and the wider modding community after the first splurge of research is done.