Help talk:Getting started

1900+ sentences for ... getting started?

Used an online utility to scan readability of what should be an introduction:

Indication of the number of years of formal education that a person requires in order to easily understand the text on the first reading

Gunning Fog index: 20.45

Approximate representation of the U.S. grade level needed to comprehend the text:

29.80 Coleman Liau index

22.91 Flesch Kincaid Grade level

26.81 ARI (Automated Readability Index)

17.19 SMOG:

-31.27 Flesch Reading Ease:

Number of characters (without spaces): 324,404.00

Number of words: 40,646.00

Number of sentences: 1,909.00

Lexical Density: 92.64

... and so on.

Suggestion: Might a better approach include a search box for "How do I ...?" related inquiries? Jasonbrown1965 (talk) 10:14, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Seeing no response I must conclude that, for getting started as an editor, Wikipedia is dysfunctional.

Nineteen hundred sentences!

1900 ^

1.9k ^ Jasonbrown1965 (talk) 06:15, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

@Jasonbrown1965, I'm very much not a fan of this page either. It should be formatted more as a back-end list of different attempts at making a starting page than an actual starting page itself, and it should never be the place we send newcomers. I think Help:Introduction does a somewhat better job, although it's still longer than it ought to be. Overall, Wikipedia has an inherent amount of complexity that'll never fully be simplifyable, but we can do a lot better. Regarding your search box idea, the present search box at the top of each page is capable of location help pages if you just prefix your query with "WP:" or "Help:". Of course, that's only useful if people actually know to do it... {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 06:43, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Had a quick look at Help:Introduction and yes much better job.

Suggestion: Could an interim answer be as simple (ha!) as beginner/advanced toggles?

And/or, more appropriately, simple, well-flagged wikipedia pages.

Suggestion: legacy wordhacks suggest simple draft text, and,

hand-off to more technically competent editors?

Further suggestion: drafting process NOT take place on "Talk" pages.

Why? The full-screen text format 'might' be comfortable for coders,

but information overload for anyone else.

Query: is there an app for ^ that?*

Agreed: "Of course, that's only useful if people actually know to do it"

Exactly. Thanks for the prompt, from whence come suggestions.

Comment: Emphathise with any and all editors/admins/techs,

having to make Wikipedia aircraft carrier turn like a gunboat. I'm

grateful to get feedback.

ps: late reply, still getting over a double-concussion.

Sometime brain work. Sometime nah.

Excuse line breaks,

easier for brain

• e.g. an app that turns a hideous wall of text into something mobile-friendly, responsive Jasonbrown1965 (talk) 08:14, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

@Jasonbrown1965, re the toggle suggestion, we have {{beginner version}} for pairing more advanced and less advanced help pages.

For your second suggestion, if I understand it correctly, you're looking for better collaboration between writers and technical editors. Is that correct? mw:Growth/Article creation for new editors is a project that seeks to eliminate some of the technical obstacles to article creation.

Article drafting should ideally take place in sandboxes, either in draftspace or userspace, not on talk pages, which are really more for discussion about e.g. what should or should not go in an article. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:30, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Pardon me for the very late reply, but even this talk-page is a forest for non-tech people. As for the "beginner version" oh my goodness, thank you for the link, most kind. How may I ask this, most constructively ?

Is. There. A. Wizard. Version ?

No disrespect, but we're pretty busy out here, too ! Jasonbrown1965 (talk) 09:04, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Jasonbrown1965, no disrespect to you, either, but you seems to have found one of the countless help pages that are neither policies nor guidelines, and are quite obscure. This page was created 15 years ago, and is neither frequently cited nor often recommended by Wikipedia editors. I am highly active yet I am barely aware of it. I think I watch it because it got vandalized once. There are many, many, many other pages recommended by active editors every day that are far more important to improve than this backwater. Keep in mind that any editor in good standing can create an unofficial page like this. That's my opinion. Cullen328 (talk) 09:43, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

@Cullen328, this page at least used to be much more prominent than most. It was linked from {{Welcome}} and is still linked from the notification new users get after they start editing. I tried to change it several years ago to Help: Introduction but met some opposition, and these days I think Special:Homepage might be a good target.

It may also still be linked from some other places I haven't managed to ferret out and switch to H:I. Feel free to help out by changing any you notice.

Also, I think renaming this page to something like Help:List of getting started pages might help make it clearer what it contains and that it shouldn't be where we actually send most newcomers. Cheers, Sdkb ^talk 14:59, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Last thing we should do is send readers to an accessibility nightmare page. That said we could trim this page of all the junk....lead readers to our 3 main pages.

why send our readers to a page where only 1/4 of the page is devoted to serviceable info that is all sandwiched

Moxy🍁 15:42, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Should this page get a higher protection level?

This page can be edited by a lot of people. SuperASAX (talk) 22:13, 22 September 2024 (UTC)