User:Stephen Gilbert/Documentation survey

''This was my personal survey of Wikipedia's user and contributor documentation in early 2003. This is of historical interest only.''

Just a personal survey of our current documentation. Jump in if you like...

Entry points

 * Welcome, newcomers
 * Essentially the same text that Larry wrote a long time ago, but it's aged well. Needs a little more refactoring, esp. the links at the bottom.


 * Help
 * Pretty good layout; not too overwhelming for a newcomer. Linked pages need updating.


 * FAQ
 * Not bad, if I do say so myself. ;-) More re-organizing and migration of old material is needed, esp. with Contributing FAQ.


 * Utilities
 * Large and sprawling; difficult to navigate. Not really intended for beginners; should be turned into a complete documentation index, leave Help to be the more user friendly document.


 * Main Page
 * Serves as a documentation portal, but shouldn't.
 * Links to Help, FAQ, Mailing lists and Announcements should be enough.
 * The above no longer applies. The redesigned front page is much better.


 * About
 * Pretty bad; just a shotgun blast of links from the front page. We need a short introduction and a few relevant links.
 * This is also much better now...

Need updating, editing or expansion

 * Intlwiki-L -- should probablybe redirected to Mailing lists
 * What Google likes
 * Contributing to Wikipedia
 * ...and also How to add content to Wikipedia with minimal effort. Maybe these two should be merged.
 * Dealing with vandalism
 * Edit conflicts
 * Friends of Wikipedia
 * This is Larry's old project. He looked at all the refering URLs in the logs and tried to keep track of them all. This page should be more selective; it needs heavy pruning.
 * How to be neutral when taking sides
 * A good page, but needs editing to be a little less personal (use of first person, etc).
 * How to explore Wikipedia

Obsolete and/or redundant
Many of these are historically interesting and should be archived
 * Chat
 * now redirects to Village pump - I didn't archive, because I'm lazy Martin
 * Content and history now at Historical archive/Wikipedia chat - the page itself redirects to IRC channels now. Graham 87 01:59, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Wiki Supreme Court
 * Non-English Wikipedias/Text To Translate
 * Article a day queue
 * now redirects to brilliant prose - didn't look historically interesting to me Martin
 * I've undone the redirect and added to it. Graham 87  01:59, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Why Aren't These Pages Copyedited
 * Wikipedia NEWS
 * Building Wikipedia membership
 * Canonization
 * Disruption
 * French php translation page
 * GFDL History (unofficial)
 * I think User:The Cunctator started this one. I'll ask him about it...
 * Handling edit conflicts
 * Material should be merged with Edit conflicts
 * is now redirected - merge will take a little longer Martin
 * How do I do this
 * Being merged with other FAQs; almost finished

Phase II related

 * Votes for article-of-the-day
 * Votes for NPOVing
 * Votes for wikification

Nupedia stuff
The vaguelly current stuff has been put in Nupedia and Wikipedia, the historical stuff has been moved to meta

Pages I think are particularly good

 * 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica
 * How does one edit a page
 * Needs some slight updating, e.g. embeding images in text.
 * How to reduce colors for saving a JPEG as PNG

Documentation we need but lack

 * A complete beginner's tutorial
 * Detailed and up-to-date software user's guide
 * all user interface links explained
 * Preferences
 * ''Ah, there's User preferences help! I didn't know that.
 * Software developer's guide
 * good start at How to become a Wikipedia hacker

Wouldn't it be nice...

 * Guide for Everything2 Noders
 * started by User:Damian Yerrick
 * Guide for H2G2 Researchers
 * I'll try this... Martin