This page is within the scope of the Wikipedia Help Project, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's help documentation for readers and contributors. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks. To browse help related resources see the Help Menu or Help Directory. Or ask for help on your talk page and a volunteer will visit you there.Wikipedia HelpWikipedia:Help ProjectTemplate:Wikipedia Help ProjectHelp
Bare URLs used as article references (citations) are subject to link rot. The usability of a bare URL depends entirely on the target WWW site retaining its chosen site structure, which it is under no obligation to do.
A full citation, in contrast, gives the author, title, publisher, publication, and date of the work. So, if the web site address changes, the additional information may assist in finding the new location. If the source is no longer available on the internet, then the additional information may assist in tracking down the source if it is in printed form, microfiche archives, article/paper collections, published as books, and the like. Fully dressed citations may be filled in manually, or there are semi-automated tools online, such as: reFILL (can be installed as a Toolbox link or as a Bookmarklet), or Yadkard. For Google Books, try the: Wikipedia Citation Tool for Google Books.
I just went over the intro section at WP:About and made some tweaks, including updating statistics that were half a decade old. That the top section of such an important page (it's linked from literally every other WP page via the sidebar, and receives 300,000 views a month) contained statistics that stale really doesn't seem good, and there are lots of other issues on that page beyond that. If anyone has the inclination, please head over there and make some improvements (just keep in mind that it's a page for readers, not editors, and shouldn't duplicate our help pages for editors). Sdkb (talk) 09:17, 1 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It's interesting to compare the pageviews at the various different pages we have for new contributors. They're in what I would consider almost the exact opposite of the preferable order. At the top is Help:Getting started, a list of other help pages that's basically a product of us not being able to agree what the actual best place to get started is. After that is the outdated Wikipedia:Introduction, with a subset of those users making their way to the equally outdated Wikipedia:Tutorial. And only at the bottom do we get to the more helpful Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia (our best single-page intro), Help:Introduction (our best tutorial intro), and WP:Adventure (our best intro for kids). Is there any tool that helps us see where people are coming to a page from? I suspect a lot of it is the welcome template, but still, it'd be helpful to know so we can try to redirect users toward our better resources. (Of course, some of this will be mute if we're able to get our act together and start merging and using redirects.) (A sidenote: all of these pages are absolutely dwarfed by views of the non-contributor intro pages WP:About and Help:Contents, perhaps in part since those are linked from the sidebar.) Sdkb (talk) 06:56, 10 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Help:Getting started gets the most views as its the landing page for new registered users. What we need to do is cuddle the old style module pages into one set. Despite multiple page modules being less valuable and an accessibility nightmare many old timers will be familiar with the old layout so we should keep one even if its overloaded with info with 67 pages. One Page Website vs Multi-Page Website.--Moxy🍁20:50, 10 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Sharing a request for feedback made by @MMiller (WMF): of the WMF Growth team, who is working on features to increase new editor retention:
Screenshot of suggested edits module in Czech Wikipedia
Over the last year or so, the Growth team has been piloting features in small Wikipedias meant to increase productive edits from newcomers (such as the "suggested edits module" shown here). As our features become more developed, we're planning on expanding to larger wikis, and so I created this project page on English Wikipedia, looking to gather thoughts from English Wikipedians who think about new editors. I hope some of you can check out that page and leave any of your thoughts on the talk page, so that as we think about deploying features to bigger wikis, we'll take your ideas and concerns into account.
The latest idea we're thinking about is called "structured tasks". The idea builds on our previous work of task recommendations for newcomers, but is geared toward breaking down simple editing workflows (like copyediting or adding wikilinks) into steps that are easy for newcomers to accomplish, potentially assisted by algorithms. We are asking for thoughts and opinions on the project here on the talk page. I hope to see some of you in the conversation! -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 01:18, 19 May 2020 (UTC)"
Good to see a post here....as your aware Miller a few of us from here have comment on the parent project page at the foundation. Joint venture will be the best way to get this implemented. We have been in touch with the design team about how pages should be formated for screen readers and those with disabilities.--Moxy🍁21:21, 19 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
First time attempting to add a picture, using template from Help:Pictures#Links, and ran into a roadblock. Maybe I'm just wanting someone to hold my hand, but it seems that instructions could afford to be clearer. The admin who responded at the Help Desk recommended I go here to voice the concern. Please see Wikipedia:Help_desk#Adding map thumbnail using external link for details; my proposed additions to the instructions are at the end of the section I linked to.
Well...just stumbled upon WP:CREEP. Ouch. Instructions do have a way of always getting wordier over time, don't they? Still, I think the issue I raised needs to be addressed, and maybe someone can glean some ideas on phraseology from my suggestions, which for some novice users might be clearer than the text as it stands. -- 2603:6081:8004:DD5:6451:2AC4:EB73:1BE (talk) 14:47, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds like it'd be useful to me! A lot of our help pages are biased against the VisualEditor because the experienced editors who mostly write them tend not to use it as much. {{u|Sdkb}}talk00:31, 1 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
What's the plan with quality ratings on Wikipedia:Help Project/Assessment? Every help page tagged with {{Help Project}} says "This page does not require a rating on the project's quality scale," even if it has been assessed. The new banner shell does not recognize non-WP:PIQA class ratings on help pages. There's also an A-class criteria with 8 members even though none of them have gone through a formal A-class review. I don't see that this is helpful. Schierbecker (talk) 04:36, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Mark historical - Help pages are not articles. Having A, B, C and Start classes for help pages creates confusion with Wikipedia:Content assessment which has a similar grading scheme but different criteria. Alternatively create a non-standard assessment scheme like Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals/Assessment. I would suggest having no more than three quality tiers.
At a bare minimum, A-class should be removed or renamed. Promotion to A-class requires two impartial reviewers on other projects. This isn't an area where an objective standard for A class could be agreed upon. Schierbecker (talk) 23:46, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Shierbecker; I could see some kind of assessment system remaining, but it should be very distinct from that used for articles. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 09:42, 28 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also leaning towards this project not having A, B, C, etc. ratings. {{Article history}} does not support them. Is it worth the editor time and watchlist spam of adding these ratings? I guess the idea is to generate a list of low rating articles for folks in this WikiProject to work on, which someone found useful at some point? –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:08, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It has just occurred to me that when searching the FAQ the results are horrendous ("edit main page" for example does not show "Why am I not able to edit the Main Page?"). One solution would be to move each question to its own subpage allowing a prefix search that should yield cleaner results (example). The problem is that there is no cascading Watchlist function that I am aware of, so short of watching every subpage a Related changes on the Category might have to be viewed regularly. I will cross-post to WT:FAQ. Thoughts? --Commander Keane (talk) 20:28, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I wanted to send a link to a help page to a person who asked how to embed an image from Commons into a Wikipedia article, and I found Help:Adding image, but the screenshot is outdated, and the instructions are confusing even for me as an experienced editor. It hasn't been updated since 2021 and would benefit from revision. Dreamyshade (talk) 02:58, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Help:Pictures is a wikimarkup tutorial. It should be renamed to Help:Images and deal with VisualEditor also. The last two links in my bulleted flow should be simplified summaries of Help:Images.
At some point we need to explain about fair use and why those images are not on Commons.
You are invited to join the discussion at Help talk:Transclusion § Make sense of lede paragraph on parsing and HTML syntax fragments. waddie96 ★ (talk) 15:19, 17 February 2025 (UTC)
and after: 
. —andrybak (talk) 18:29, 31 January 2026 (UTC)