Forum:Editing Help pages at Help wiki

Does anyone ever edit at Help wiki? What have your experiences been? Do your edits get reverted? Do find Help wiki useful?

Just curious. Wikia seems to make a concerted effort to mostly neglect the Help wiki, but I was wondering if it is worth updating. -- Fandyllic (talk &middot; contr) 28 Mar 2012 1:47 PM Pacific


 * I've only edited the shared help pages once or twice. Most of the time when I need to find information, I have to go to the Help wiki and search through the page histories from before Wikia staff axed everything. For instance, I recently needed some detailed information about the rich text editor beyond the simple basics of how to use it. I eventually found an old version of Help:Rich text editor from before Dopp redirected it to Help:Editing, claiming that the latter was a "clearer page." In my opinion, the usefulness of the help pages has decreased over time as staff adjusted them to focus on the RTE and removed information about how to do things with wiki markup. I've started moving the useful information to the local help pages on my own wiki so that I can be sure it won't disappear in the future. --Gardimuer { ʈalk } 03:21, March 29, 2012 (UTC)


 * The string of basic editing question that appear in the forums shows how A- Help is usless or B - wikia search is usless (or possibly even A+B). Having recently tried to find suitable pages to direct users to for help on very basic editing issues & failed to find pages i know i've seen in the past i totaly agree with Gardimuer's conclusion. The sooner the RTE is dumped and users were helped to learn basic Wiki code rather than trying to hide it the easier it would be for admins as you done know which method editors are using. I createda few local help pages early on but gave up to create content instead and after the RTE was introduced delete the steady stream of empty pages that appear from IPs. - IHBTD6-Drott 16:47, March 29, 2012 (UTC)


 * Good feedback.
 * @Gardimuer: Can you make a list of locally edited help pages on your wiki and put it here or is it too extensive. WoWWiki also has some local help info, but it really needs to be reviewed since it hasn't been updated since the "great split" for the most part. If I find any good local help at WoWWiki, I will link to it here. -- Fandyllic (talk &middot; contr) 29 Mar 2012 10:48 AM Pacific


 * I haven't actually made many help pages, because I'm mostly focused on content pages like IHBTD6-Drott. I've only created local help articles when other users asked me for information about something and I couldn't find a suitable shared help page to direct them to. So far, that has been Help:Editing, Help:Images, Help:New page and Help:Rich Text Editor. --Gardimuer { ʈalk } 18:40, March 30, 2012 (UTC)

Some conclusions
After waiting a couple of weeks. I've come to some conclusions about Shared Help: So, I guess I will just have to go back to what WoWWiki started doing before Shared Help existed: Try to fill holes in Shared Help with local help pages if possible. Use local help to guide users away from problematic Shared Help pages.
 * Most people don't care to discuss it on these forums.
 * The few that do point out its many weaknesses.
 * There is very little motivation from Wikia or the community to update and make Shared Help better.
 * Users should go ahead and edit Shared Help pages directly to try to improve them without waiting for Wikia's permission.
 * If Wikia notices something they don't like, they'll just revert it or re-edit.
 * Wikia will not give guidance on their specific plans to make Shared Help better or guidelines for the community to edit it.

I will still try to make improvements at Shared Help, but with more impunity, since it is a generally ignored area for Wikia. I'll try to put links to local help pages I find that are better than at Shared Help or cover areas Shared Help does not at the bottom of this post. -- Fandyllic (talk &middot; contr) 11 Apr 2012 4:42 PM Pacific

Local wiki help pages with good general info

 * Please put links to good local wiki help pages with good general info below.


 * Bioshock Wiki local help pages
 * Help:Editing
 * Help:Images
 * Help:New page
 * Help:Rich Text Editor
 * Half-Life Wiki
 * Help:References
 * Help:Rollback
 * Help:Tables
 * Museums Wiki
 * Help:Microsoft Word - macro for converting to wikitext
 * Psychology Wiki
 * Help:Contents - lots of good local help pages
 * Wookieepedia
 * Help:Magic words
 * WoWWiki local help pages
 * Help:HTML Entity
 * Help:Decimal ASCII Chart
 * Help:Hexadecimal ASCII Chart