User:Sphilbrick/Yes, we can have too much help

Imagine a friend expresses interest in editing Wikipedia, and asks what they should read to learn how to edit.

You might:

Point them to Help:Contents, tell them item 2 is "I want to learn more about editing Wikipedia". Sounds like the perfect answer. Well, good, but short of perfect. It doesn't really say how to edit, it suggest four different places to go.

Rather than point them to the high level page, you decide to point them directly to Help:Getting started (one of the four places in the list above)

OK, they are closer, but there isn't a single thing on that page that tells them how to edit. It is a list of 23 (count 'em) links to other pages. So maybe they look at the page, and decide they aren't interested in learning about Wikipedia, they really want to jump in and edit. The fourth entry "Plain and simple" sounds inviting. Yet that page is neither plain nor simple. I didn't count exactly, but I think there are Five sections with about 40 links before getting to the word "edit". Finally something that will tell me how to edit.

Not so fast, you have to read something about what a wiki is first, then it tells you how to edit. Finally there, but should it have taken so many steps to get there?

So you decide "plain and simple" isn't the best advice, and you look at the next entry "Primer for newcomers". Sounds perfect.Except it starts with a question "Find this page confusing?" (Answer: Yes) Then some boxes, and an intro and a pretty picture, and yet another intro, then the Basics, and Policies and lions and tigers and bears but editing? There's no section on editing, but if you look carefully in "Get familiar with Wikipedia" you can find the word "editing" which leads to Help:Editing. Which does help, but it was quite painful getting here.

So let's consider the third entry in that list Tutorial/Editing. It is better, you are brought to an intro, but it doesn't take long to see "editing" and that actually talks about editing. If this page is perfect, it ought to be higher in the food chain. Suppose you think it is OK, but not quite what you wanted.

The next entry in the list "The Missing Manual" sounds promising, as it claims to be " A general manual for Wikipedia". One might wonder why it is called missing, it appears to be right here, but let's move on. It is a general manual about Wikipedia so I don't expect editing to be the first entry, and it isn't but it looks easy to find, there it is as "Chapter 1: Editing for the First Time" That link brings me to a page that doesn't have the word Chapter in the title, so one might wonder if one is at the right place, but that's a nit easily fixed. However, I'm in the chapter about editing, and I have to read an intro, then a tip, which doesn't tell me how to edit, then I see a chapter listing, fine, but I want to learn how to edit, then a Table of contents, then a section about "The Wikipedia Way of Editing" which tells me interesting things but not how to edit. Then a discussion about sandboxes, and I'm wondering if I'm in the right place. That's followed by a tip about a sandbox, which doesn't tell me how to edit. then a box about a search box—do I need to understand this to edit? Then finally, almost as an afterthought, a single bullet point explaining what to do, and we finally get into it.

If one is still reading.

I could go on with other examples, but I'll lose you, so I'll summarize.

If someone asks you how to edit you might send them to:


 * 1) Help:Contents
 * 2) Help:Getting started
 * 3) Plain_and_simple
 * 4) Welcoming committee/Welcome to Wikipedia
 * 5) Introduction
 * 6) A_Primer_for_newcomers
 * 7) Tutorial
 * 8) Tutorial/Editing
 * 9) Book:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual
 * 10) Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual/Editing, Creating, and Maintaining Articles/Editing for the First Time
 * 11) Training/For_students
 * 12) Training/Newcomers/Editing basics
 * 13) Training/For_educators
 * 14) Training/For_Ambassadors
 * 15) Help index
 * 16) FAQ
 * 17) New contributors' help page
 * 18) Introduction 2
 * 19) Help:Starting editing
 * 20) Help:Editing
 * 21) Plain
 * 22) The newcomer's manual
 * 23) The newcomer's manual/The basics
 * 24) Video clip on editing

I put this list together in less than 30 minutes of poking around. I bet there are more.

And please note how narrow the question is—I didn't include articles on how to edit a reference, or how to edit images, I just looked or article which told you the basics.

I am not suggesting the answer is to replace 23 pages with one, I am not suggesting that the first words on the page need to be "Click on the edit button" I do understand the need for introductions and context. I do appreciate that we need editing for dummies plus more sophisticated pages, but I strongly suggest that there is more overlap than desired on these 24 pages.

This is not an isolated example. If our newcomer said "I need to learn about copyright issues", I could point them to far more than 23 pages. If they said "I simply want to add an image" I could find a dozen or more.

We have help. We have too much help. When we have 24 different ways to answer a basic question, multiplied by a 100 or so basic questions, we have a mess.