Wikibooks talk:WikiProject Users/Tasks/Help pages

Help planning
I've added several potential avenues for improvement in the help planning section of this page. If anything strikes you as objectionable, please let me know. – Adrignola talk 16:46, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm open to the idea of using subpages for help pages. My only concern is that Wikibooks has tried to do that in the past and it actually made things worse rather than better. I think the FAQs might of been collected together under a FAQs subpage at once time too. I think I contributed to the reduction in the use of subpages in the Help namespace as one of the ways to provide some order to the namespace. I think subpages were used inconsistently and perhaps sometimes overused. I don't see the harm in enabling subpages even if its decided later not to use them. --dark lama  17:14, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

On structure
There seems to be some inconsistency with some help pages being singular and others plural. I think the use of singular was so people could use help:table or help:tables with the pipe trick interchangeably without redirecting. Additionally, some of the merge suggestions seem as though they'd create pages that are too large, especially if there are other help pages we're missing in the same subject area. There seems to have been a desire for organic linking where you could simply slap "help:" in front of a term to get a page on it. – Adrignola talk 18:00, 6 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes singular would allow the pipe trick without redirects, but I find myself assuming the names are in plural form often enough that if its not in plural form I create a redirect as a convenience so I don't have to keep reediting pages to fix the fact I accidentally got it wrong. I imagine other people have done the same. I think both should exist and it shouldn't matter which form is used. What merges do you think would create pages that are too large? I think a lot of the pages if merged together could also be edited for simplicity. --dark lama  18:33, 6 December 2010 (UTC)


 * For some of these pages I can imagine having organic Help: shortcuts throughout like is the case with WB:WIW or WB:DELETE. --dark lama  18:41, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Editing might help and certainly redirects could be made to sections. Another option is to leave them as separate pages and group the concepts you've designated for wiki tools (for example) on a subpage of Help:Contents with links. For instance, similar to Help:Contents/Browsing Wikipedia. That would avoid lengthy pages, continue to permit organic linking, and avoid overwhelming new users by cutting down the number of links shown at Help:Contents. Thoughts on that option? – Adrignola talk 18:48, 6 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure why new users would find Wikibooks' help overwhelming, or English Wikipedia's help less overwhelming than Wikibooks'. Wikibooks did at one time use English Wikipedia's subpage and grouping of related pages approach. I think it was a contributing factor to why Wikibooks had many missing and duplicate pages, and why many people turned to community discussions for their help instead. I went looking around at many wikimedia projects both English projects and across languages editions for inspiration before deciding to dive right in with a hacksaw and a torch. My visits to other help spaces left the impression on me that English Wikipedia's help structure should be seen as guide of what not to do. With Wikipedia new users must travel at least two pages away and hope they followed the right links to find what they are looking for without getting lost in the jungle of help pages. I think the need to do a lot of looking around and to dedicate a bit of time to finding the help one needs is more overwhelming than a list of links all in one spot. --dark lama  20:37, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

On Help:Contents layout
I can definitely agree the layout could eventually benefit from changes. The current layout is a direct knock off from Wikiquotes with a few additions I thought were worth using from other projects. I had thought to base the layout and some of our help pages on Italian Wikibooks too. Now that our main page has a very basic and simple design, I think this is a good time to consider doing so again, with a 3 column layout though to match the main page. --dark lama  13:35, 7 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I have no attachments to the current layout. I'd imagine it'd look like three vertical lists then, rather than horizontal link lists on the current page.  That will look better and allow the additional links that would be necessary if we're not using subpages of Help:Contents to organize.  Feel free to dive in on that front.  I'm very much a left-brain person and would have trouble designing my way out of a paper bag. – Adrignola talk 14:22, 7 December 2010 (UTC)


 * When I changed the layout before I tried to use the old subpages as a bases for the groups of links and headings seen at Help:Contents. It will probably be awhile before I change the layout again, because I need to see where the short term reorganization is going to have a better idea of what to do. --dark lama  14:39, 7 December 2010 (UTC)


 * On that last note, I'll note that I'll be updating some pages that have been marked as possible merger candidates. That shouldn't be construed as a rejection of the merger on my part.  It's simply easier for me to see whether the mergers would be workable once the content is current.  Some of the pages that were pulled from Meta include technical aspects that aren't of note to readers so cutting out those portions will make them smaller and more conducive to merging.  On the other hand some may be missing content and so they would become larger.  Some pages that are red links were deleted as not being relevant to Wikibooks but I'm pretty sure we do reverting, have bullet lists, etc and so I plan to create those, if only temporarily, to get the content sorted out. – Adrignola talk 14:57, 7 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Some of the pages were probably deleted by me because I had merged their content into Help:Editing. I encourage you to read that page and the section below before deciding whether to go through with creating them. --dark lama  15:02, 7 December 2010 (UTC)


 * All the ones I saw were deleted by Jguk. I see that there is "minor edit", "edit conflict", and "reverting" on Help:Editing but those sections are only a sentence long and don't do the topic justice.  I don't really like the content of the page right now and so I do think updating its content through merges will be good, especially if as noted below you don't want to duplicate the help now in the edit toolbar (with the wiki markup section and special characters sections).  It seems to try to skim over everything at once and cover nothing well. – Adrignola talk 15:51, 7 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I have improved Help:Editing over time and I agree it is still far from doing the topic justice. You may notice the page repeats what is covered a few times as well. That is from adding contents from several pages to the end of the page and not having decided yet whether to combine sections or have a brief overview followed by more detailed sections later. I also was thinking about whether I should combine the editing page with the how to contribute page. Many thoughts on what to do next kept me from making any progress alone. --dark lama  18:54, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

When I have merged FAQs, I did so with the intent to keep the FAQs focused and relevant to the needs of different audiences. I never intended to suggest all the FAQs be merged or to remove any questions, but I suspected that might come up eventually. Looking at Italian Wikibooks' FAQ suggests merging them all might not necessarily be a bad idea, if people think cutting down on questions is acceptable. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  20:15, 7 December 2010 (UTC)


 * The Editing FAQ has many points that are redundant with Help:Editing and just fixing some links in a few of them I notice they are very outdated. Keeping them separate is fine for now though Editing getting merged with Contributing and the duplicate content with the help page being removed would be good.  The content on them is the bigger issue. – Adrignola talk 03:58, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Editing Help
I noticed some more links to pages that don't exist yet were added which I think relate to editing. The new edit toolbox includes built in help already for a lot of the editing topics. I think we should be able to forgo repeating it and focus instead on things specific to Wikibooks and on how to use the toolbox's built in help. I have also been reading up some on how to extend and modify the new toolbox for possible additions and improvements. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  14:54, 7 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree we should forgo w:Help:Edit toolbar now that I look at it, since it's still referencing the Monobook version. However, looking at the edit toolbar help for lists, for instance, as compared to w:Help:Lists, it would seem that topics such as lists-in-lists and other nuances are not covered.  It's good for basics and I like that they added it, but it may not go into enough depth. – Adrignola talk 15:01, 7 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Lists-in-lists is covered by Help:Editing currently. I think keeping what isn't covered makes sense. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  19:07, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Possible mergers
I noticed that at Commons, the bottom link on pages goes to Commons:Welcome. Thoughts on combining Welcome and About and changing the link to point to Welcome? The about page has a lot of links that duplicate the current navigation template. – Adrignola talk 17:08, 7 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I think the only part of Help:About that might be worth keeping is the top part (section 0). The rest either duplicates the current navigation template, whats on the main page, whats in the site navigation, or whats at the community portal. You can take that as a sign of support for merging or deleting, whichever you prefer. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  19:05, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Help:What is a module is pretty slim. Most of its content is at Help:Namespaces. I wonder if we could simply expand the glossary entry for it and redirect to it instead. – Adrignola talk 04:12, 8 December 2010 (UTC)


 * "A module is a page of a book to be read by readers. Chapters and books are separated into many modules." Of course if you keep getting rid of the term module everywhere, the need to define it continues to decrease as well. My intent in proposing a merger with how to contribute is to allow contributors to understand its meaning a bit better than what a glossary definition may provide. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  13:27, 8 December 2010 (UTC)