Help talk:Contents: Difference between revisions

For page editing questions please see How to edit a page or ask at the Help desk. To request general information not related to Wikipedia, please ask at the Reference desk.

Please add new questions at the bottom of this page.

Old talk

I've rearranged and changed the Help page with the aim of making it more logical and friendly for new users. I'm also moving a few items, such as press coverage, to the FAQ.

There is still a lot more that could be done to make this page more useful. For example, we have no good instructions on how to log in and set preferences, or on how to upload images. Here's a suggested to-do list:

• Wikipedia:How to log in and set preferences
• Wikipedia:How to include images in articles
• Wikipedia:How to keep track of recent changes (cover recent changes, watch lists, list of new articles)
• Wikipedia:How to include sound in articles
• Wikipedia:How to move articles

Enchanter

Nice work. I will take a look at this and tweak it some later. --mav

Since the FAQ and the Policies are the two main other documents refered to from both Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers and Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia, it seems to me that the policies join the FAQ at the top of the help page. If you don't like the change, hey sue me, block my IP address, or just change it back :) I realize it's somewhat presumptious for a newbie to be editing high profile pages such as the Help and FAQ, but I feel it's needed. The help page has many links, each with many further links, forming a broad and deep tree of a huge number of documents, and the important information needs to be near the top of that tree, otherwise it's not going to be easy to find. -roy

Not sure if this was prompted by my comment (and edit) but thanks. The other frustration I had when I made my first edit beyond a very minor correction was that the Editing help link contains advice solely on the mechanics of editing, with no links to documents advising on the appropriateness of editing. I'm not entirely sure what should be there. Links to the policies (and perhaps the manual of style), I'm not sure. There might be other documents that are more relevent/ An enjoinment to Be bold in updating pages might also be reassuring to new users :) Roybadami

My opinion, FWIW, is that beginners are in a good position to edit help pages, FAQs and guidelines for clarity, because they are in a good position to rate their usefulness. -- Tarquin

I have to admit that I hadn't until just now notices that Editing help is just a link to a perfectly ordinary, editable, Wikipedia page. I might tweak it sometime. Roybadami

Navigation

The link for "Help" in the default navigation box links to Help:Contents rather than Wikipedia:Help. Is there a reason for that that I'm missing? -Sean Curtin 06:33, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Help:Contents is the new location for Help. Wikipedia:Help is the old link. A redirect was used as temporary solution. Its been fixed now. Help now belongs in the Help: namespace. Krik 15:24, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC).

Are you going to move everything like the "how to edit a page" etc.? I lot of the WikiPedia space is arguably help. Is this discussed somewhere? --BozMo|talk 09:22, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Help namespace

Okay, I see the need for a central "Help" page, but what's the Help namespace all about? When I searched that namespace for "editing", for example (using the checkboxes on the search results page), it just returned a lot of the same pages (and articles!) as a combined search on (Main), Wikipedia and Help. - dcljr 06:06, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Bit odd

Bit odd that the "sister projects" link at the top of the page goes to a template from the mainpage listing them. Shouldn't we really have an article about the sister projects under the link? --BozMo|talk 09:20, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Login not preserved across languages

Maybe I've misunderstood, although I have searched the documentation. I am making translations of pages from English to French, but it seems that each language's wiki requires a different login. Is it possible to have a wikipedia-wide login for all languages?

Change in lede

Should I assume that that overly-cautionary note in the lede is sufficiently NPOV (in it's clear attempt to *be* NPOV, ironically) as to merit reversion? I see no discussion of it here, and I'd expect some, since it's policy, not content. Baylink 19:13, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Out of place?

What does this: "I have a child of 8 years old. A beautiful son and had to have Invitro-Fertilization. I have been going through custody battles for the last 5 years. I am so tired and feel so helpless now, as it has been over 100,000.00 so far and now I can't afford a Lawyer. They always say the poor never win. 0" have to do with anything? Who is that? --Muhgcee 06:39, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

A question on fonts, please

Ok. I'm trying to understand why my browser doesn't display some Unicode characters. Maybe it's that I have IE, maybe I don't have the correct font. Anyway, I then came across a new quastion: how do you change the font type? I thought it would be something like

<p font-family="Font here">Text Here</p>

as I thing is in HTML. Can someone help me, please? Thx Jotomicron 22:18, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Golf History

Whoever made the oglf history page, or at least updated it, really seems to have screwed up. It arbitrarily skips all kinds of dates, such as 1850-1944. That's realy excellent for me, as I am looking for info for a school project. Thanks.

Category Creation/Finding

I was wondering if it's possible to search for Categories, or to create them.

Who's helping whom?

Seems like the title of this page is a bit ambiguous. Seems like this page should either fork immediately based on whether the person clicking to get here wants help, or whether they want to help. The vast majority of visitors will be wanting help of course, so adding a forking step makes no sense. But maybe while keeping this page geared towards those who are looking for help it would also be worth it to mention somewhere prominent but not primary something in the vein of "Ways to help." Maybe in a callout box at the top right somewhere? Tangentially, seems also like it might be worth having a "Ways to Help" link between Help & Donations in the main navigation that spoke to those who might want to help. Project starting in that direction: [Click here].

File:Homepage add waystohelp to nav copy.jpg

Atomic mass

why is the atomic mass of an element not a whole number?

Because atoms have isotopes. It like the average american family having 2.5 kids. For example, the atomic weight of hydrogen is 1.(some small number) because the majority of hydrogen atoms have just a single proton in their nuclei. However, a few hydrogen atoms have one or more neutrons; because of this, the average atomic weight of hydrogen is a little higher than one. The atomic weight is a statistical average; a given hydrogen atom usually has an atomic weight of one, but occassionally has an atomic weight of 2 or 3. If this is confusing, click on the links in this paragraph. Samboy 19:42, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

New images

How does one creat a new image?--^~^Morgan^~^ 01:16, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Upload it. See on the left side it says "upload file" Click on that --Michael180 14:33, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

New templates

How can i make a new template? And when you answer this, please make it easier for newbies to find a How to make a new template article. -- Uncle Ed (talk) 20:57, May 20, 2005 (UTC)

Adding link to WP:BB and WP:NOT

I believe this page should also link to Wikipedia:Be_Bold and Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. From my experence we need to let the novice user know what Wikipedia is not. We also shold encourage them to be bold --Michael180 14:41, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Help / Contact Us

Why has "Help" changed to "Help / Contact Us" on the toolbar on every Wikipedia page? Contact whom? Wikipedia is made by those who read it - "Us" is the person reading it. --81.146.47.6 14:15, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Help Me!

Is this the right place to ask for help? I NEED HELP! I need to know how to create a sub-artical. Their isn't an artical about how here, but I saw a userpage with sub-articals listed on it. Somebody help! --Wack'd About Wiki 23:28, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't know if this is the right place to ask the question (or answer it), but I don't know where it should go, either. But to answer your question, you can just add the name of the sub-article in the edit string. For example, follow this link to create a subpage of your own user page called "Sandbox". You can just click on the URL in your browser and find the part that says Sandbox and change it to whatever you want. Hope that helps! —HorsePunchKid→龜 00:48, 2005 Jun 22 (UTC)

Ah, it turns out that at the top of this page there's a link to the Wikipedia:Help desk. You may want to try there if my answer wasn't sufficient. —HorsePunchKid→龜 00:51, 2005 Jun 22 (UTC)

.css files

Where can I ask for help about my monobook.css? Jotomicron | talk 09:35, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"Upload file" page

Had no idea where to bring this up but on the Upload file page, there's this message:

You must be <a href="/wiki/Special:Userlogin">logged in</a> to upload files.

With the HTML showing just like that... fairly ugly. And the page is uneditable...?