Knowledge Base: Why didn't my tutorial get accepted?

The moderation process is undertaken by many different individuals, all with their own biases, strengths, weaknesses, and opinions. It's our hope that by getting more people looking at the tutorials, we can get a more accurate assessment of your tutorial. It's not a perfect process (and it's one we're continually working on tweaking and improving), but it's also a fairer process than the old days of just one guy imposing their will left and right (the one guy, naturally, was me).

The approval process

First off: a good read to start out with — if you haven't already — is the moderation process breakdown. It might give you a better understanding of the process and some insight as to why your tutorial wasn't accepted on the front page.

Reasons for not accepting tutorials

Again, there's a vast array of possible reasons as to why your particular tutorial was declined. Here's a few possibilities that have come up before:

• Not Making the Cut: This, for the majority of you, will be the reason. We get a heck of a lot of tutorials submitted every day, and we just can't accept every one of them. We have to make the cut somewhere, and some times your tutorial won't make the cut. That's okay. It doesn't mean it affects any tutorials you submit in the future, and as you continually improve your writing and tutorial creation, you're only going to have a better shot the next time you submit your tutorial. I see this all the time; someone submits their first tutorial, it doesn't make the cut, and then afterwards they're pleased to see that most of their tutorials make the cut afterwards. Give it some time, and you might be pleased with future submissions.
• Basic Content: Was the tutorial way too simplistic? Did it just cover very basic, introductory methodologies? While it's great to target beginners, we also have a number of these entry-level tutorials already submitted, so try to distinguish your tutorial more than just the absolute basics that someone could pick up in their first hour with the topic.
• Overly-Specific Content: Sometimes it's a problem when a tutorial gets submitted that is overly specific: techniques in making a particular effect that is really only teaching the effect, not a broader understanding of the topic at hand. Remember: strive for teaching the broader understanding of a concept, since those are the aspects people will remember far after they've left your tutorial.
• Poor Writing: Writing is important. The clearer you are in explaining your concept, the easier it is for people to understand that concept. How you write your tutorial, how you write your tutorial's description and title on Good-Tutorials... they all matter.
• Technical Difficulties: bad things sometimes happen. Usually it's related to your web host, but it can also be how you render your page and whether you require login before you can see your tutorials. We usually try to write a quick comment on your tutorial if we run into this ("Site's down; we couldn't view it!", etc.). If you suspect this was the problem, comment on your original tutorial about that and we can usually get the ball rolling on sending it through the review process again. It happens.
• Being a Bad Community Member: Tutorial rips, video hotlinking, submitting duplicate tutorials, or submitting straight-up spam. All of these things are, unfortunately, Bad. We're getting quite good at spotting these, so don't try. Repeated attempts will result in a ban of your URL.
• Rating Fraud: We analyze ratings as part of the process to get to the front page. Part of that analysis is on tutorial ratings: if we find that you're manipulating the system by creating multiple accounts, we're going to ban you and your URL from the site. This is blatant cheating, and as such we have very low tolerance for this type of action.

Those are some of the common reasons we've run into during the moderation process. Naturally, it's not an exhaustive list. List mentioned earlier, though: stick with it. If your tutorial doesn't make it in the first time, work harder on your next tutorial and I guarantee you'll see more favorable results after each tutorial you write.

Thanks!