Help talk:Contents

Our help documentation is in need of an improvement. Some of the things that need to be done are -

• Make it more comprehensive.
  • Add more sections and pages
  • Make sure that all the help out there is linked to from this page.
• Make it more navigable and maybe more aesthetically pleasing.
• Consider merging the help and the OpenWetWare:FAQ.

Old Comments

• BC 18:32, 9 March 2006 (EST):I've made no attempt to make this look pretty but I have tried to cut it down to the useful information and fix some of the incorrect links. There may be significantly more "help" pages out there that I haven't found yet.
• Austin 16:54, 11 March 2006 (EST): Currently these pages are focusing on help with OWW/wiki. I'd suggest we put all general help, e.g. Questions and Answers under this namespace. For example have pages like Help:Protocols/E. coli or Help:Materials/LB, etc.
  • Jasonk 17:29, 11 March 2006 (EST): I like the idea of having all the help be under a namespace (e.g. to enable seraching just the "help" areas), however, i think we want the bulk of help related to a specific topic, such as LB, to be on the talk page for LB so it's very easy to find for users. However, if someone posts a question to a talk page it would be nice to be able to have that pop up somewhere so that people who wanted to answer questions could see it. hmm, not sure of the best way to do this. Basically, would like the Q and A to live on the talk page for whatever the question is about, but at the same time have the Q be tagged/categorized so that it could pop-up in a central question area where someone will actually see it. Anyone have any thoughts on this?
  • Kathleen 17:45, 11 March 2006 (EST):These are potentially different issues. I agree that Q&A for a particular topic belongs on the talk page for that topic. However, I think the Questions and Answers page is intended for more general questions or questions that are not already covered on OWW, i.e. not a question about a particular protocol but potentially a request for a protocol, or "there are 5 ways to do this, does anyone have an opinion as to which is best?". So, I think a general page for Q&A is necessary for this type of thing. However, we do need to try to generate it in a way that will keep Q&A about specific topics on the appropriate pages. Also, could we set up a system for specific questions on talk pages such that the page is categorized as "needs attention" by the question asker when a question is posted and when it is answered, that category is removed by the answerer? Potentially, this may limit the answers someone will get, but I suppose the asker can just recategorize if they aren't satisfied with the answer they get first.