Help talk:Contents

Please see Where to ask a question for questions about editing in WoWWiki, questions about WoWWiki content, Warcraft questions, etc.

This page is for discussion of the Help:Contents page and Help pages.

New Help Page Design
''Previously there was an unofficial vote to get opinions on what layout the Contents page should use. The layout has been changed and the vote has been removed.''

Media Wiki's User Guide Removal
There is a subset of help pages in the namespace Media Wiki's User guide, which from what I can tell from the help pages and from Wikipedia's examples, it is just another name for Help:  This vote is to delete any articles in the Media Wiki's User Guide namespace that is redundant with an article in the Help: namespace and to move any unique content to an article in the Help namespace.--Ralthor 18:35, 31 May 2006 (EDT)

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Comments

 * Since you're the newly appointed King of Help, you don't really need a completed vote to do this. I assume you're mostly polling our opinion? --Mikk 03:36, 2 June 2006 (EDT)
 * Yea love opinions and I started this vote before I was appointed the "King of Help."--Ralthor 09:20, 2 June 2006 (EDT)


 * Oh, another thing. Content duplication. I'd use as few links as possible to "community" things. Mostly just point at the community portal and perhaps one or two other choice links. The reverse is also true. Axe anything "Help" related in the community portal and make a well-visible link to Help:Contents once you're done. It really does belong here, not in the community portal. --Mikk 03:36, 2 June 2006 (EDT)
 * I'm trying to figure out how much will go in each category and Community is hurting a bit. I could write help guides on each section in the community portal, but I think most of it would end up being guidelines, or something not all that useful.  I don't know thats going to be the hardest part is planning the category names and organizing the help files.  I may just start out with like the first 5 topics and then figure out what I need after I organize and create those 5.--Ralthor 09:20, 2 June 2006 (EDT)


 * And yet another thing... If you look at how the Community Portal is done, you'll see that it's pulling in the subpages via . I suggest you do the same here to avoid duplicating information.  If you like, you can use &lt;noinclude&gt&; tags in the subpage to change the listing style (line breaks?), and add an introduction that isn't visible when it gets pulled into the contents page.  Conversely, you can use &lt;includeonly&gt; to add stuff that's only visible in the contents.  I've edited the first section in /Dev to show you just exactly what I mean.    --Mikk 03:40, 2 June 2006 (EDT)
 * I saw those used when I was playing with the reference desk. I hadn't really thought of it here, but that will work great.  If I need to add an article or move things around I can do it in one place.  I can also make a 'complete list' by just including all of the content in one page.  --Ralthor 09:20, 2 June 2006 (EDT)


 * Mikk, In response to your comments on Help:Contents/Getting_started, when I created layout 1, I didn't put links on the 'main page' for the very reason. I remember trying to go through the help files in Wikipedia and would never click on the section link on the links below them and then try to find what I needed by going through link after link.  It makes it more visually appealing to have the links there, and quicker to get to the most common help files, but if others are like me the rest may go unnoticed.--Ralthor 09:20, 2 June 2006 (EDT)
 * Yeah, I have the same problem. I just don't click on headings for some reason. But, hey, wait, I have an idea that might help with that. I'll go fiddle with the first section again to show you what I mean (basically a "quick picks" text, and a "more.." link) --Mikk 13:23, 2 June 2006 (EDT)
 * That works good, it will draw the needed attention. Now the one thing I have been trying to figure out is I would like a complete listing page where all the categories are displayed with all their content sort of as a supplement to the Categories page (i.e. layout 3), but I can't just include the content since the content is designed to work with layout 1.  Any suggestions on an elegant way of doing this? (may just have to be manually updated).--Ralthor 17:54, 2 June 2006 (EDT)
 * The only way I can think of, really, is to scrap the include/noinclude stuff in subpages altogether and hardcode the quick picks into Help:Contents. Seems to be the least work to me. Unless you just give up on the "everything on one page" idea; I'm not sure I see the point of it myself?  --Mikk 02:22, 3 June 2006 (EDT)

Sections!!
Alright I have been working on trying to organize the sections. I think the first four are done pretty well. I am not sure I like the naming of the next four. There are some 'types' of help pages I think will be useful. Some form of communication or communication/community help and a section on obtaining more help. I am also deciding between this Helping WoWWiki section. I think it would be great to have a series of articles dedicated to, how to patrol recent changes, how to expand stubs, create articles of type X, revert vandalism, etc. I picture them as a series of help guides that are some kind mold between guidelines, help articles, and community articles? The real question I guess is should they really go here? Or perhaps they would be better as articles as a subset of the community portal page? Any ideas or comments about additional organization will be helpful. I am doing it all on layout 1 because I think that one will win (and if it doesn't as King of Help I may just decide it has won ;), but the categorize will be applicable for whatever layout gets chosen.

Currently Uncatagoried articles from Category:Help:
 * Community portal - I am sure we will link here from something, but should this really be in the help category?
 * I don't think so. --Mikk 13:15, 2 June 2006 (EDT)
 * Help:Edit summary legend - A quick reference for Help:Edit summary, I don't think it needs to be linked from anywhere else
 * Agree --Mikk 13:15, 2 June 2006 (EDT)
 * Help:Automatic conversion of wikitext - Not sure what to do with this just now
 * Help:Section editing demo - basic editing, or maybe just delete this one
 * Shove the gist of it in "How to edit a page"? --Mikk 13:15, 2 June 2006 (EDT)
 * MediaWiki - Not sure why it is labeled as help, could go in a 'technical information' category, or maybe in the 'New to wowwiki' category and talk about which version we are using or something...
 * Just axe it imo. The help page could do with a link explaining that "WoWWiki runs MediaWiki. A lot more help is available ---> over there at their page", but not much more. Oh, and more links to their pages from various help pages wouldn't hurt. They go into a lot more detail on some things than we care to, I think. --Mikk 13:15, 2 June 2006 (EDT)
 * Help:Page name - Technical information about pagenames
 * Contact us - Stub, this may be redudant with other articles that will go in or be created for Communication/Getting more help
 * The FAQ pages need a lot of work
 * Glossary - stub, not sure if it is needed or where to put it
 * Peer review - This should probably be guidelines not help
 * I'm thinking that all the "article management tags" need an aptly-named page that explain when to use them, and what they mean to others, and how one can help out. Dunno if that helps you right now though :-) (This would be one of the pages that deserve to be linked from both Help:Contents as well as Community Portal, I believe) --Mikk 13:15, 2 June 2006 (EDT)
 * Naming policy - not really help either
 * No, but linking to it from a related subpage makes sense, perhaps? There's something called "How to create a new page" or something, I believe? --Mikk 13:15, 2 June 2006 (EDT)
 * Where to ask a question - Communications

There aren't a whole lot of articles that aren't categorized. Although we can create articles that are needed to fill out more sections and many articles already categorized will fit well into multiple categories (i.e. talk pages are under Getting Started, but would work well in communication). From the uncategorized material the only thing that really jumps out to me is communications...--Ralthor 11:24, 2 June 2006 (EDT)


 * Hmm thinking about it we could probably do with two categories, "Commicating with others and the WoWWiki community" which would have communication, community and helping WoWWiki section; and and "Additional Help" section. Or maybe just call it, The WoWWiki Community and include communication information with it.--Ralthor 11:49, 2 June 2006 (EDT)

A final word to the wise: Just take care to not fall in the "SilverSide trap", where you end up with three dozen aptly named pages which are just stubs and do nothing but annoy new people and make yourself feel hopelessly alone and overworked :-)  (But then again, planning ahead doesn't hurt either ;)) Just start out by showing what we have, and let it evolve. That's what Wikis are about. We all know you rock anyway :-) --Mikk 13:15, 2 June 2006 (EDT)


 * Hopefully I can get some people to join the Help team so I can make them do all the work, err have them help out.--Ralthor 17:56, 2 June 2006 (EDT)

Category:Editing
I stumbled across Category:Editing a while ago and thought it to be a good idea. Added a few pages to it, but realized "Hrmphs, this is what Help: is supposed to be". Talked it over with Fandyllic. He wasn't sure either. One idea he came up with though was making it a subcategory of Help:, and expanding on the idea, I'm starting to think along the same way.

I'd sort of like a "cheat sheet" category where the experienced editor can go to find things that he needs once in a while during the editing process. It's not the Help: category. He'll know how to do regular edits already. I'm thinking more along the lines of renaming the category to "Editing resources", and linking in stuff like How to vote... How to delete pages... Templates, Category:Templates... I'm also thinking that most pages in the category would have a nice ToC displayed off to the right with links back to the category page, and to all the other pages in the category. (Yes, this means that it won't be a big category. But that was sort of the idea to begin with!) Input? --Mikk 14:07, 2 June 2006 (EDT)


 * Obtw. Delete and Terminate belong in Help: imo. There should also be a page for voting similar to them. These three would then be such "Editing resource" pages with a nice ToC on them. I just need a reality check first; if you think I'm right, I'll just go ahead and do it.  --Mikk 14:16, 2 June 2006 (EDT)


 * Those should definetly go in there, they look nice, somehow I missed those edits. I like the idea of a cheat sheet, I know I end up going to certain pages to look up things that I don't have memorized (or just want to make sure I am doing it right)  but use often enough to be frustrated that I have to go search out the article.  I'm wondering if Categories isn't a bit overkill.  What about just like an editors quick reference or something.  Like Editing only it doesn't really explain anything and isn't quite as basic (or the basic stuff gets really quick mention).  Mostly it could have links to the proper article for more information, but other than that it just shows proper usage of those semi-common items we do all the time (likely centered around templates).--Ralthor 18:07, 2 June 2006 (EDT)


 * Ya know, you're absolutely right. Just making it a regular article that lists the editing resources, with a nice ToC that also gets used on linked pages is enough. I'll let Category: Editing live on for the moment just so we know what pages we're talking about, but let's move them into help and fix the ToC menu. --Mikk 02:37, 3 June 2006 (EDT)


 * I've created Help:Editing quickref which lists all those pesky tags that we can't quite remember. It's pulling in "/quickref" pages from various places so it doesn't get outdated quite so quickly. I've tagged Category:Editing for speedy deletion. Also, with the way I created the quickref, I didn't quite see the point of creating a toc for linked pages so I skipped that bit. --Mikk 06:58, 6 June 2006 (EDT)

need help--Wow wad error
Error Info:

17:51:32:C:Exception in WS15::cConnection::Process<> 17:51:32:C:Error exit Program,code 0 ,dump file [error_dump.log] created,please,send it to devs. [E:\Wowemu\wowemu\]


 * You're not going to get help for pirated+hacked WoW server software on this wiki.  -- Mikk  (T) 10:30, 29 September 2006 (EDT)

Help TOC automation
I want to help improve the Help:Contents TOC, specifically the subpages like Help:Contents/Getting started and others. However, the wiki code is really, really confusing. I can tell that Help:Contents pulls in information from these pages, and that the pages tell Help:Contents which ones to pull in, but it makes it really difficult to edit and almost impossible to reliably do any formatting work on.

I'd like to suggest removing the automation and manually adding links to Help:Contents instead of relying on the subpages to do it instead. Since the subpages are actually visitable, they should look nicer, and it'd be easier to make them look nicer without having to navigate a lot of and tags. 04:13, 6 January 2007 (EST)


 * Hell yes, I have no idea why it's been made so complicated. The whole thing is a mess :( -- 10:01, 6 January 2007 (EST)


 * I've overhauled the contents, now we need to go through the articles and get rid of everything that isn't useful (i.e. everything not directly WoWWiki related). Much better to link to Meta-Wiki help pages than our local (out of date, ugly) copies. -- 13:38, 7 January 2007 (EST)

How
''Question moved to the Village Pump. -- Fandyllic (talk · contr) ''