Help talk:Contents
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A comment [[User:Larry|Larry]] 13:52, 13 May 2024 (UTC) : A reply [[User:Sally|Sally]] 07:00, 5 November 2024 (UTC) :: Your reply ~~~~
Remove from "Editing" section the content that is redundant with the "Getting started" section of the contributor's guide
The content I'm talking about, is everything between "Editing" title and "Essential editing topics" subtitle (which means, everything from "For small corrections, such as typos" to "but we will try to answer any questions the best we can.").
As the text mentioned above doesn't seem to be more useful/informative than Gentoo_Wiki:Contributor's_guide#Getting_started, and is, as far as I can see, only duplicating information, shouldn't it be removed ?
--Blacki (talk) 02:19, 19 July 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks Blacki , I'll have a bash at making it less redundant with my latest reworking of this article and of the contributors guide.
- btw, I still haven't properly caught up with all the changes that went on while I was away, but you seem to have been really busy with great edits - thanks a million ! :).
- Also, I have had a complete rewrite of the link checker for some time now. It now resembles something more serious and maintainable that just a pile of random commands xD. As soon as I get round to it, I will test it and upload it to github.
- This section seems to have deviated from the contributor's guide a bit more now. What is still duplicated is info that it is important for people to see. Think of it like advertisements: the more exposure the better :). Looking to close discussion...
- Hope everything is OK with you Blacki , haven't seen you for a while...
- Closing this, since you were planning to close it anyway.
- — Waldo Lemmer 07:16, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
Proposal to reorder these pages
- provides a proposal that can be merged as is, but as of 2024-05-17,
- that proposal has not remained unchanged and uncontested for 30 days.
Help pages should be arranged in the order that new contributors learn to use/edit the wiki. This page already roughly arranges them in that order, but I found many places where it could be improved. User:Waldo Lemmer/Help:Contents contains my proposal. The history makes it clear that I didn't add or remove any content.
Separating articles meant for readers from articles meant for editors is important, as the real-world example in another discussion on this page shows, so that's what I did. This also prepares the page for another important change: Making "Help" at the top link to help for readers, while "Contribute!" links to help for editors.
Here's what I changed:
- Moved section "User pages and preferences", which contains information about preferences and renaming/deleting accounts, out of "Editing".
- Subpages are not an advanced editing topic. Moved them to "Further editing topics".
- Moved "Discussing wiki content and edits and asking for help" into section "Editing", because:
- It relies on knowing how to edit a page and save changes.
- Contributors should favor making basic edits themselves over writing discussions.
- Moved "Signatures" from "User pages and preferences" to "Discussing wiki content and edits and asking for help".
- Moved the code of conduct there as well (note that it's also at the top of the page).
- Moved some essential editing topics such as formatting and links up to "Essential editing topics".
- Moved the guidelines down to "Further editing topics", since the guidelines only come into play once editors start making more substantial edits.
- I'm really proud of section "Further editing topics". It follows the progression of creating a new page.
- Moved section "Templates" before "Advanced editing topics"
— Waldo Lemmer 17:49, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
New help pages I'm planning
I'm planning to write the following pages. Some of these involve splitting the guidelines into more easily digestible parts for different levels of editing proficiency.
Reading and browsing the wiki:
Essential editing topics:
Discussing wiki content and edits and asking for help:
Basic editing topics
Further editing topics
Contributing to the help pages:
Forms
— Waldo Lemmer 17:49, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
The "Help" button at the top currently links to Help:Contents, which mostly contains information for editors. I imagine many users seeking support currently click this link and are annoyed at how long the page is and how much irrelevant information it has (to them). Click "[Expand]" to see what such a user said in #gentoo-wiki (webchat) after they asked for support there instead of in #gentoo (webchat).
<minion2> well I clicked the big giant help button at the top of the wiki because i needed help. It was not about getting help with g entoo as i expected but mostly getting help with the wiki. I scrolled down untill i saw anything that wans't just a link to the wiki and it was a link to this web chat. <minion2> there are linkgs to get help with contributing, guidlines, fixing howto errors, editing pages, talk pages, behaving, formating text, info about the wiki, info about the gentoo wiki, info about frequent questions, how to improve the documentation, and how to contribute again, but this time in bold. <minion2> my contribution is that the help page shoudl have a link somewhere near the top tellign people where to go if they are lookign for help with gentoo <minion2> :D <minion2> well.. the big green box at the top is a start (read the wiki/handbook) but i would assume that if someone is on the wiki they know about the wiki and if tyhey are lookign for help it would be the 'opther' forms of help they are searching for. <minion2> maybe the support link under it should be the green one.. i dont know how i missed it <minion2> anyways the wikihelp has an easy to lcick weblink that brought me right in... the 'support' link does lots of talking and links to other pages that do lots of talking but none of them directly link to the irc webchat like the wiki help does
I plan to extract the information for readers into a new page (maybe Gentoo Wiki:Help), which the Help button could then link to. Maybe I should add a bunch of links to sections in Support as well.
I think "Contribute!" should link to a page with the following:
- What to do when noticing an error on the wiki
- Where contribution is needed
- Be bold
- Support for editors
- A list of the sections above, like what Help:Contents is doing now.
— Waldo Lemmer 13:20, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
About pages with duplicated content
The following pages have some duplicated content among them:
My plan to deal with this is as follows:
- Include everything about formatting, including rules and guidelines, from Help:Guidelines and Gentoo Wiki:Contributor's guide, in Help:Formatting. Currently, Help:Formatting is just a copy of the page in the MediaWiki docs, so it contains no Gentoo wiki-specific formatting (e.g. {{C}}, {{Package}}) or guidelines.
- Separate Help:Formatting into multiple pages (links, essentials, basics, new page stuff, etc.)
- Add links to those pages to Help:Contents
- Transclude those pages in Help:Formatting and Gentoo Wiki:Contributor's guide#Wiki markup primer in order to avoid duplicated content.
The selective transclusion extension should help with step 4. For now, I'll just use regular transclusion and subpages.
— Waldo Lemmer 13:20, 16 May 2024 (UTC)