Help talk:Contents/Draft/Archive 1

Article Orgins
This article came into existance at roughly 02:15, 19 October 2005 (UTC). It was a stub, a few paragraphs long, and a very early draft. The purpose was to allow for expnasion, and it even had a disclaimer that it was not Wikipedia policy. HereToHelp 02:15, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Expansion
Okay: do we list the topics like the Community portal or Help: contents? HereToHelp 02:16, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
 * it's purpose would be a help portal - a central place to find all the "how's." So it should be the merge of Help:Content, the part from Community portal about references and all other "About's," helps and other stuff that is skatered among many different pages. It should use some graphics to look attractive. Renata3 04:54, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

How about moving?
I think it's a good idea to move this article from main namespace to Help portal, just like Community portal is. Conscious 11:53, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Or Help:Help portal would be an even better location. Conscious 13:07, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Moved to Help portal for now. -- Beland 00:05, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Overall look
So the first question I have here is whether we want the final product to be a straight list of annotated links, like the bottom part of the current page, or two columns of colored boxes, each of which has a list of links on a particualar subject? Or something completely different? Personally, I'm leaning toward a single column, so there is more room for helpful annotations. -- Beland 00:12, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm going for the conventional Help format, to make layout and editing easy. Let them scroll! -- Beland 04:54, 29 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Personally I like the colored boxes. It looks atractive. If I am a lost newbie, I will be even more lost checking this endless & very ugly page. Renata3 11:16, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I would definitely agree with this. Colored, organized information is definitely more approachable by new editors, which is the whole point of a help portal. --bbatsell |  &laquo; give me a ring &raquo;  00:07, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand the stuff about "coloured boxes", but I REALLY do not like the all-in-a-line format, such as

Explore Wikipedia &middot; The main Wikipedia portal &middot; Using Search &middot; Using the Go button &middot; Media help &middot; Reference desk ( Help finding articles or information. ) &middot; Category of resources for researchers &middot; Category of Wikipedia related articles

I changed one small section to a list format. Some sort of columnar format is far preferable in my view. Is that what you all are saying? Matt 02:48, 22 November 2005 (UTC).
 * Not perfect yet, but still an improvement over previous help page Dustimagic 20:37, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Bad idea
Personally, I think it's a bad idea. People have a very short attention span, that's why a help page needs to be precise and to the point like the current help page with single liners. A 50 pages article is just not gonna fly for 99% of the users out there. People here, who are actually involved and want a complete and in depth directory of information pages, use the community portal. Elfguy 00:00, 23 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Whatever, can we please have all this "How to use Wikipedia" info in just ONE place? Can we please not have ten different pages all trying to do the same thing? It's sooo confusing and makes maintenance sooo difficult. For example, there is another project to rejig Wikipedia help at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Guide, and I just worry that the end result will be a bewildering tangle of duplication and half-finished projects, even worse that what we have at the moment. Matt 03:35, 23 November 2005 (UTC).

Please don't put it at Help:Contents. Try Wikipedia:Help Index, maybe. This is way too confusing and isn't "help"ful at all. Ashibaka (tock) 19:10, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Abridged version of the editing help
An idea would be to have an abridged version of the editing help somewhere, just to outline the most important parts. Of course it should be prompted that reading the abridged version is not enough to know the complete rules and things, but is a way to get familiar with them in basic. I find the current editing help (which consists of several pages) a bit more than what it should be for me.

There are other web sites, who give an abridged version of their terms of use or privacy policy, etc, in their help section, etc.

I'm not watching this page, so if there is something I should answer, please post a message to my talk page.

Thank you

huji :: TALK  21:17, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

"Most Frequently Used" help pages
The introduction to this page indicates that it should be listing the most frequently-used help pages. It should provide a succinct list of common pages, not a comprehensive list of every page in the Help namespace! Users need to be presented with a reasonable number of choices. I've accordingly removed several pages which seem uncommon or unnecessary -- they should be linked from places deeper in the help hierarchy than this Introduction page. I'll be trimming more in the future. Please leave me a message if you'd like to discuss this. -- Creidieki


 * I agree wholeheartedly.  r  speer 06:15, 28 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, the main help page should have as few links as possible, and far fewer than this design. I don't like being negative, but to my eyes this design is far worse than the current Help:Contents. It's got more text and more links... we should be aiming for a tiny amount of links compared to the current design. Something similar to the new contact us page (compare to the old version). I'll have a think about this some more. Tom- 12:44, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Wow, the Contact Us page is beautiful. Congratulations on that.  Agree completely that this design is worse.  I think I'm going to be bold and try to write something similar to Contact Us for Help in the next few days, but don't let me discourage you from working on it.  -- Creidieki 18:44, 28 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks! I've been trying to come up with at least a rough Help design, but it's very tricky indeed. We need to figure out tasks and how to generally order the information. Start off with basics and get more and more detailed down the levels, for instance imo all the syntax guides should be linked from another page, instead of bundling lots of Wikipedia jargon on the first page. Tom- 23:18, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Work on Meta
Note that many of the help pages -- particularly, the ones in the Help: namespace -- are transwikied from Meta, where they are in an increasing state of disrepair due to the small number of watchers. I'd encourage people here to go help out on Meta. If you want to improve Wikipedia's help, that would be a good place to start.  r  speer 16:56, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I second that encouragement. Uncle G 18:22, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Gods, I find the transwiki thing confusing. I'm sure there are advantages, but it seems like a real discouragement from working on the Help pages.  I wish they didn't do it. -- Creidieki 18:45, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
 * So, I was pretty frustrated with the help content about links and templates, ended up here via "Help:Contents", and clicked on the Main Page link above as you requested, but it doesn't seem to let me create a user?
 * --William Allen Simpson 22:08, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

help please
im tryin to recreate and it wont let me have my name how long does it take to reset my name after i delete it?
 * For various legal and practical reasons, you cannot delete your user account. If you do not remember your password, you can request a password be e-mailed to you.  If you have not registered an e-mail address, I believe you will need to pick a new username. -- Beland 11:35, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Length
So let's assume that it's mainly new user who are using this page. This page is way too long and daunting, I know that there is a tutorial, but the tutorial lacks many things a new user needs. Maybe when creating this new page, we need to update and expand on the tutorial.

Also, as someone mentioned above, this page looks really long, maybe some sub-pages or something along that line. After a certain length a page difficult to read or focus on

CuBiXcRaYfIsH 20:57, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Can we replace this?
The current help portal is a garbage dump. What's really bad is that Help:Contents has a link to it. Can we replace the page with something short and marginally useful, until someone with actual design skills comes along and makes it as good as Contact us?  r  speer 03:14, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Proposed help portal
I've changed the Help portal to be what I think the portal should actually look like. (Some graphics and more inspiring layout would be nice.) The previous list of links is at Help portal/Work area.  r  speer 22:34, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I like the look, but it still seems like the information for new wikipedians, there is a ton of information, but it's spread out all over

CuBiXcRaYfIsH 00:45, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Ah... it seems that there are two different purposes to the help portal. Right now, Help:Contents says that it's eventually going to be replaced by the help portal -- in which case it needs to be targeted at new users -- they're confused and they just clicked "help" in the sidebar, so we shouldn't go right into telling them how to archive a talk page.


 * The other purpose, I guess, is to collect help information in one place for more experienced users.


 * We can accomplish both on the same page - we just need a section below of links for experienced users. This section should not be the ridiculous mess of links that was on the Help Portal before, though; it needs to be simple and organized, and maybe that means it will take two links to get to certain help information instead of one.


 * The first purpose will always take precedence, though. Experienced users know how to find help information, though it certainly doesn't hurt to make things easier to navigate. New users, though, need to be pointed at useful information as soon as possible, so that they don't jump to a wrong conclusion about Wikipedia or go and make unhelpful edits.


 *  r  speer 01:08, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

edits for beginners
I'm not happy that Gareth basically reverted my edits, as I'd put some thought into them.
 * Don't open the sections with a bullet. It's not welcoming.  (Actually the welcome article needs to be split anyway.)
 * Don't use "if" for "when" or "whenever".
 * Having actually read the referenced pages, don't put explore before playing media files! That's not what explore is about, so it's not the same thing as browsing.
 * You cannot just begin an article anymore! Belongs in the next section.

And researching should be W-A-Y down the list, as most folks coming to a "Help" page for the first time aren't looking for these services.

Also, putting the contact in the middle of the list makes it hard to find, it belongs as the last item.
 * -William Allen Simpson 23:32, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

New outline much better!
I just had started writing this rant about the old version, but I held back because I felt it wasn't constructive enough: I'm no newbie, but I find the outline of this page utterly confusing. This is the most unstructured "content" page I've ever seen. What is supposed to be the difference between "Using Wikipedia", "Modifying a Wikipedia page", "Information and resources for contributors", "Asking questions" and so on? I respect the effort of the individual contributors to this page, but it really sorely lacks a common vision. It doesn't seem as if there is agreement about the above as well as the following questions: Sorry if this is coming across as a bit of a rant, but navigating through the many parallel or anti-parallel efforts on Wikipedia can get a bit frustrating sometimes. Common Man 05:40, 12 January 2006 (UTC) But now the new outline seems to address all these issues!
 * 1) Isn't "Information and resources for contributors" what most of this page is about?
 * 2) Isn't "Asking questions" part of "Using Wikipedia"?
 * 3) Why is there a section called "Links to other help pages"? Isn't this what all other sections contain, as well?
 * 4) Are "Wikipedia pages" any pages on Wikipedia or just  pages? (Assuming the former)
 * 5) Isn't "Modifying a Wikipedia page" part of "Using Wikipedia"?
 * 6) What's the difference between "Asking questions" (which contains "General Complaints") and "Getting in touch" (which contains "Bug reports and feature requests")?
 * 1) Who is this page for?
 * 2) People who (so far) only want to read Wikipedia
 * 3) Newbies who just want to ask a simple question
 * 4) People who want to start seriously editing
 * 5) People who already have some editing experience and need specific advice
 * 6) Everyone
 * 7) * I would contend that this is as impossible as creating an information page for the whole internet. The best people achieved were link lists.
 * 8) * If it's a link list: why does it repeat so much verbose information from other pages?
 * 9) What exactly is a "contributor"? (I assume anybody who constructively changes something in Wikipedia - #2 to 4 above) Wouldn't that be about 99% of all people who visit this page?
 * 10) Why is information for newbies scattered throughout the page?

As to the layout, I would slightly favor not using a table because it is easier to edit. Common Man 05:40, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

TOC
I just added a minimal TOC to the help page. It helps one get an idea of what's here in the help page, before bothering to scan the rest of the page. I think the page still needs more work to better help those (e.g. most people) that just scan web pages. It's somewhat difficult to read through the *long* lists under each heading. Furthermore, I don't think the bold background colors help make the page easier to scan and find the info needed. Especially the purple is too bold, and makes it difficult to read the text. &mdash;--Aude (talk | contribs) 21:11, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Help portal topics
Maybe it would be more *usable* to just list the main help topics and subtopics, with links to more in-depth help pages. Take a look at how Amazon does their help page. They have headings (w/links) for "Ordering", "Viewing & Changing Orders", "Shipping & Delivery", etc. Amazon makes it just so easy to find answers on their help pages (though dealing w/ their customer service staff isn't so helpful). Another good example is Ebay, and how they break up their help pages by topic/function (e.g. "New to eBay: Registration | How to buy | How to sell | more...").

Let me know if you want me to mock-up something for the help portal, and work with you on improving the help pages. And, kudos for taking on the task (and the work on the portal pages). It is indeed very important if we're to implement the main page redesign, that the redesign goes along with improved help pages and browse pages, to help people navigate through Wikipedia. &mdash;--Aude (talk | contribs) 21:20, 12 January 2006 (UTC)