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I find myself often wanting to give a user a tutorial rather than explaining an answer to a user. Sometimes, a tutorial can explain the answer to a user's question much better than I'm able to, eloquently or technically.

What are the ethics of this? Users often mention how posting tutorials is against the rules. However, I don't feel comfortable plagiarizing someone else's hard work, especially because the meaning of the answer could be lost in translation/paraphrasing.

Has anyone else come across this question?

Do others prefer to post the tutorial/answer in the comments section from another source, or do you break it down for the user for the sake of it being available on Stack Exchange sites to keep information readily available here other than elsewhere?

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    Isn't the question simply too broad if it requires a tutorial and if so, the question should be flagged/close voted for that reason.
    – rene
    Commented Nov 9, 2015 at 21:12
  • Sometimes, but not necessarily. I'm primarily a stackoverflow user so my references will be from there. A user asked on SO how to format some code to display it on the user interface. I could explain how to format the code he needs, but a better and more helpful answer is available from a tutorial which I provided in the comments section. The whole tutorial explains how to use a framework. But a thorough and well explained section is dedicated to formatting the code he needs with text and code examples.
    – Lukesivi
    Commented Nov 9, 2015 at 21:20
  • In the future sense, this may be (or maybe not) a useful scenario for the new documentation feature that is going into preview.
    – Marc Gravell
    Commented Nov 10, 2015 at 12:34

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Occasionally I find that an external source is useful for answering a question but link-rot is certainly a problem. I tend to use a few tests in deciding whether to answer a question.

  1. Do I have personal experience of the process the tutorial covers - are there any issues, gotchas and other things that I should add on to the tutorial

  2. How similar/different is the OP's actual issue to the tutorial? Do I need to tailor my answer to the problem?

  3. Can I paraphrase the answer for brevity and clarity? Can I avoid the TLDR problem? In short, can I turn part of the tutorial into an answer in my own words?

At this point I typically have a nice, trim, useful, focused answer.

  1. Link back to the tutorial as a supplementary part of the answer.

  2. If I had posted this as an answer at a university, as an undergrad, and I had a grumpy old prof who complained a lot about laziness and plagiarism, would he approve?

In any case plagiarism is impolite to the original source, and that and one line, link only answers kind of cross a line of laziness

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If you're going to post a tutorial, then at least include some specific info that may help the OP. This would require actually reading the question instead of just glancing at the topics. Don't just say, "You may find this useful [link]" and leave it at that. I do downvote all such answers, but I don't care if they're comments instead. At least then they can be easily cast out if the tutorial is either irrelevant or if the link eventually rots.

Other than that, if the question specifically asks for tutorials, then chances are it's off-topic, especially on SO.

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Unfortunately, a link to a tutorial is not actually answering their question in the context of this site. It is simply sending someone elsewhere to find that information.

I can appreciate that you are trying to help that one person, but the folks here are working hard to curate this collection of knowledge… so when someone finally finds their site through search, the last thing we should be doing is sending folks elsewhere to find that information.

Stack Exchange is not a search engine or a collection of links. Adding a link to a tutorial or whatever might seem like an expedient way to help that one person, but ultimately link-only answers do little more than add another barrier between all future searchers and the actual information they are looking for.

We do not do that; and especially not in comments where the information cannot even be vetted.

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