h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

One of the pressing things to do this week is to start a review of the h2g2 Help Pages. We need those pages rewritten and updated for the newbies that will come once we're at noohootoo.

The first part of that is collecting them all into some sort of order. Help is needed with finding and collating information about the Help Pages. Someone with spreadsheet skills would be much appreciated too!

I'm going to co-ordinate this initial phase, so if you can help please drop a note in this thread.

After the collating and sorting there will also be the fun of rewriting the Help Pages, so if that's more your thing stick around

I'll post again with an outline of what's going to be needed.


kea

Nice one Kea!

hi

forgive me for being thick
if i AM being thick
but
what is wrong with the Help Pages?



all i can see thats really wrong at this point is the new barlesque
and all the chaos that it has wrought

maybe we should wait until we get to the new home
and then assess what needs to be tweeked
in the Help Pages
and other in situ things here

why make more work for ourselves?
and besides...

if we really want to attract newbies
shouldnt we concentrate on getting along
being nice and fair and adult with each other?

isnt the lack of that that has caused membership to slack off in the past?

just asking

There's a wide range of Help Pages, some official, some not, some for the Underguide etc. Some of those will definitely need changing before we move, otherwise they will give newbies the wrong information, which would undermine the launch of the new site.

the Interim Committee/c3 want to collate them all in one place so that task is easier.

I'd be really happy to talk about why the site is quiet etc, and the past, just not in this thread please

you mention collating, sorting and then rewriting the Help Pages

how can Help Pages be written until that which they advise upon is created?

i mean
how can you write help pages when you dont even know how the noohootoo is going to work?
or do you already know?
and if so, can you tell us what you know?

thank

fkf, I'm not part of the Interim Committee, who are the people who do know what's happening and have asked for someone to co-ordinate this project. The IC are the people who are organising the move. If you have any more questions about the move in general try here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/F21525517?thread=8244456 * I'll be posting more in this thread about the Help Project, which may help clarify how it will work (and why it's useful and important). At this stage I just need an indication of who can help. If you have any more questions for me personally, can you please drop by my PS?

And, I don't mean to be dismissive of your questions, I understand the need to know what's happening I just don't want to do it in this thread. This is a big project and I need this thread to be kept reasonably clear. thanks.

okay

so i take it that you all just want some of us to ferret out all the help pages on hootoo
and then some of us to sort and collate them into reasonable groups
so that
when the noohootoo is put into working order
some people can adjust the help pages to reflect the new working order?

that makes sense

sorry if you think my questions are personal though
theyre not
i just wanted to know what it would be that i would be volunteering for if i decided to volunteer

i have been quiet for 3 months
checking in occasionally to see how things are progressing
and you all have done admirable work

if you have something personal to say to me, tho, kea
feel free to come to my personal space

I think the plan is to have an idea of where the pages are so that when, and if, they need updating we don't have to run around like mad things trying to track them all down!

A lot of them may need few or no changes, but it's handy to have a central place where they are listed so we can check them for changes easily.

It's essential that we've got them all in one place - and ideally categorised as 'awful', 'fantastic' and 'ok' or something.

If we need to update them all we can't do that unless we know where they all are.

Quick question, when do you get access to the Editorial Tools? You can search for them as a type of entry unless they've changed things since I was there.

There's a slight problem in that some of the help pages were rewritten by volunteers and the Eds of the time didn't categorise them (or demote the old entries).
A42623219
A541027

Oh my, this is a big fat mess...

A77393307
A308189
A519662

I think this might be too big a job taking up a lot of time until you can access the tools, if they will still show you the help pages, but here's some of the categories you should start with.

C743
C744
C550

Mina, that's an amazing help.

Thank you!

Ben

Thanks Mina

I was going to use C550 (All About h2g2) as a start point because on the Don't Panic page it says:

"You can also find a complete list of help pages in the All About h2g2 section of the Guide."

Do you think that's true, that it will list *all* the help pages (the official ones)?


I'm going to work with the official Help Pages first, and that includes ones written by non-Eds. Basically anything that's linked off a Help Page that the Eds have written, irrespective of who wrote it.

No, they aren't all categorised, as I showed with my links to a few individual entries. I think maybe all you can do is start with the ones that are in there, and each time you select one have a quick search to see if there is another with the same name, sort out which one you want to keep, merge/update if necessary, and personally I'd have it pasted over the original entry, but you'll need to check what is linking to each version, and maybe keep the one that will need least work updating link, *and* check which one is the Named Entry.

Well, that's how I'd do it anyway. I can't help with updating though, not at the moment, sorry.

Would you want to help with the tracking them down and listing them? That by itself is a monstrous task.

Incidentally, Ottox listed a few more here:
F21525516?thread=8247122?thread=&show=20&skip=20#p109539244

That was me thanking Mina.

But thanks too Ben. I've got a plan happening, I'll get in touch tomorrow if that's ok

Ben, it would be useful to have an A page. I can easily start an interim one that Future can take over later.