User talk:MrN9000/G1

OK. What the hell am I doing?

When I joined (the 7th November) I read the Beginners guide but did not find that it told me everything which I wanted to know. It appeared to be rather dated, and not really in keeping with the quality of the other Help related articles. Considering that this is probably our most important help page I found this rather odd.

I would have preferred to edit the guide in place, but obviously this was not possible as the pages are protected. I copied the existing pages to my user space and created this.

My reservations with the guide as it stands

In my time here, I have noticed rather a lot of people who could potentially become very good Uncyc users get scared away, basically because they do not know some of the intracies of how we do things around here.

My biggest reservation with the beginners guide was that it did not discuss working in user space, and did not emphasise the {{WIP}} tag enough. We need to stop scaring away new users. Rather than Huffing every short new article a judgement as to weather or not the user is likely to return before simply huffing their work. Just because it's short, and not finished is not always a reason to huf it. If the admin/experienced user considers the new article to be 'in good faith' a construction tag could be added and the person contacted telling them to read the beginners guide. Not simply huff it and then wait to see if they bother contacting the admin when it gets huffed. A lot will not bother and leave the site.

As a new user, I had no knowledge of working in user space, and did not understand about using the preview button correctly.

Writing the beginners guide is obviously a difficult task. The tricky thing is to decide what things to leave in, and what things to take out. There is also the issue that we don't want to go telling everyone about some of our more sensitive pages. Giving a link to Ban Patrol or QVFD in the Beginners guide might not be a good idea. We don't want people messing with some pages until they find their feet, and have more idea what they are doing.

The link to the "beginners guide to redirecting was done wrong. A joke I guess, but not very helpful. Do we even want Noobs to know about re-direct?

Guide appeared to assume some knowledge of using Wikipedia.

Problems

Some of the pages are linked to by rather a lot of other links. These need to be kept basically the same in terms of their content. Pages which need to be kept have been market with the blink Template.

• Advise to use firefox?
• spell checker...

Alright, little input

• Make lists to make your OCD daughter proud:
  • What n00bs need to know.
  • What n00bs should, but don't have to know right away.
  • What n00bs don't have to know. Maybe ever.

.js for sure.

• Make a full list of things that come to mind that could even vaguely be considered to be included and rate them according to relative importance.
• Are there things that need mentioning that come to mind?
  • What needs to be known to get started - rough basics.
  • What needs to be known to get some formatting done?
  • What needs to be known to get the details, such as pictures in? (I needed to ask for help in this)
  • What needs to be known about what NOT to do?
• Talk page and edit etiquette. (you do remember I needed a telling off on the talk page edit thing?)
• Make sure I've slept at least ten hours before asking for proper input...
• What features should be promoted?
• Ah, this is an important one. Layout and how much info a page can take without becoming intimidating for new readers.
• When I've rested a bit (or a lot), remind me to tell you about what "baits" are in a text.
• Note to self, get more caffeine...
• Ah, Recommend 'Preview' and using a spell checker. Firefox has a built-in one, or then copy/paste to a text editor with a spell checker and check it there.
• Make sure Luvvy gets her caffeine fix.
• Something else... Coffee...

-- DameViktoria - (Contribs) - (Talk) - (Block log) 04:25, 8 Mar

Take 2

What n00bs need to know?

• Basics - how to get started with edits. Most are probably quite hasty with getting started and too lazy to read the whole of it, so we need a good grasp of what the first page or three can contain. As the beginner's guide looks now, it's rather flimsy. You could double the information on the pages, almost, thus cutting down the page count...
  • How to Edit - The essential basics and links to more information.
  • Etiquette - could come quite high up on the list. For example the edits Maff made in my userspace, I knew I had asked him to take a look, but imagine a n00b going in and doing that in the main space on I dunno... a Feature? Especially with that C.O.C.K.S. and Al Qaeda type of jokes. They'd be labelled as vandals and blocked, possibly banned.
  • 'Preview' and spell checker!
• What NOT to do.
• More to come...

What n00bs should, but don't have to know right away.

• There's likely going to be a few things that are cool to know, but not necessary.
  • Signatures are a sample of this kind of information. You can get along just fine without having a cool and pretty sig.
• More to come, likely...

What n00bs don't have to or shouldn't be told

• There are things that n00bs don't have to be told about, even might be wise to never tell them about it.
  • The .js thing.
  • The .css thing... (yes, I know about it. *gasp!*)
  • About how this thing is REALLY run (Weee! Conspiracies...)
• Anything?
• More to come...

Things that come to mind that could even vaguely be considered to be included

Make a list, Damnit!

Are there things that need mentioning that come to mind?

What needs to be known to get the details, such as pictures in?

(I needed to ask for help in this)