Wikipedia:Help Project/Overview: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 20:03, 13 November 2009

Revision as of 22:27, 13 November 2009

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The original concept was to have main help pages on MediaWiki. Using templates, the MediaWiki content would be transcluded onto the various Wikipedia pages, then content specific to that Wikipedia would be added to the end of the page. Various other extra help pages where created on Wikipedia that had no equivalent on MediaWiki like how-tos and essays, wome of which developed into guidelines.

Unfortunately, the MediaWiki pages were never updated and the different language versions of Wikipedia began to diverge in many ways. This led to the material being regularly copied across and merged into Wikipedia's help, but sometime in 2008, the final merge was performed and this concept was abandoned, with the templates removed and deleted. Help pages have then been updated without regard for the other Wikipedias, but now includes help that is more relevant to en.Wikipedia.

sometime in 2008, the final merge was performed and this concept was abandoned, with the templates removed and deleted. Help pages have then been updated without regard for the other Wikipedias, but now includes help that is more relevant to en.Wikipedia.

There have been many attempts to bring sense to the Help System, but in isolation and faced with the complexity of the task no general structure has yet been agreed upon. Several areas or set of pages have developed well and there are several projects that work on a subsets of Help effectively.