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Wikidata:Requests for comment/Which road to take for help pages

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An editor has requested the community to provide input on "Which road to take for help pages" via the Requests for comment (RFC) process. This is the discussion page regarding the issue.

If you have an opinion regarding this issue, feel free to comment below. Thank you!


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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

No consensus, discussion died. --4th-otaku (talk) 03:08, 13 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"What matters are the contents and the easy update." "For now, the English version is minimal, it would be better have anything more practical."

Above there are Restu's words about the following issue. I have noticed that in fact exists some differences between certain languages ​​in some help pages on Wikidata. (Help:Contents vs. Help:Indice, Help:FAQ vs. Help:FAQ/it Help:Editing vs. Help:Editing/it, Wikidata:Tools vs. Wikidata:Strumenti)

To increase the number of participants in this project we have to make things more simple, understandable and attractive as possible. Each user of any level (user without past experience in wiki, wikimedian, expert) should be able to contribute to Wikidata and succeed in understanding at first sight what  a rule says or how you can do an action.

The information contained in policies, guidelines or help pages should treat differences in language with care therefore they should be written not in a too theoretical manner but user friendly. For this reason I think it is useful to use screenshots to facilitate the understanding of rules, pages and tools. Likewise representative icons are necessary for many important functions and pages.

What I'm proposing edit

  1. I propose to change (via Special:Translate) the help pages to make them user friendly.
    1. In Help:Contents would be better use the graphics of Help:Indice and sort content by topic.
    2. In Help:FAQ we need to add more frequently and interesting asked questions as, for example, I have been done in Help:FAQ/it.
    3. In Help:Editing we need to use a better picture than that proposed about first phase and link the possible questions concerning this topic from Help:FAQ, as, for example, I have been done in Help:Editing/it.
    4. In Wikidata:Tools would be better use the graphics of Wikidata:Strumenti.
    5. Some pages would be connected with the {{Nav/First}} and {{Nav/Insights}} navigation templates.
  2. We need to create some pages in Mediawiki related to {{LangSwitch}} template to make sure that all templates and notices can be displayed ​​instantly in multiple languages.

Raoli (talk) 16:41, 18 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with all of the points above. It would be great, though, if people could set up these pages with the translate extension and not by conventional means, because it is harder to migrate them. We do have a couple of translation admins now, though, so we can do the work. Ajraddatz (talk) 16:59, 18 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I have not told it but I agree with Special:Translate. I add it now. Raoli (talk) 17:09, 18 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
We should give all help pages (in one language/all help pages?) an uniform design, so that new users can simply orientate on our help pages. I agree to your points, Raoli, we should begin to think about these matters before too much different pages are created. If anybody has a proposal for a uniform help design, it would be nice if he introduces it. IW 18:39, 18 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
First of all, hats off to Benoit and Raoli. They have done a great job with the help pages and others should follow their example. I am going to answer Raoli´s suggestions below.
  1. It would be easier to migrate them with the translation extension, but I don´t see how that makes them user friendly.
    1. I would skip the icons. That page would then look more like the german version.
    2. Agreed.
    3. Benoit has made an video for the Help:Editing/fr page. I suggest that we dub that or make timed text into other languages. That would be even better than an image. If we use the image, then I would skip the effect it uses. The picture captures all the attention as it is.
    4. Agree with the graphics. The italian Wikidata:Strumenti points users to enable the tools in common.js. Some of them are allready implemented as gadgets, and we should rather point users to enable them in the settings. It would be excellent if we could have an video on this page aswell.
    5. Yes, but preferrably all of them.
  2. No opinion.--Snaevar (talk) 21:55, 18 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Or should we mark pages for translation more, just like those template on commons?JC1 10:18, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No, we have not found a proper way of making the translations work for templates.--Snaevar (talk) 20:51, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
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