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Wikisource:Maintenance of the Month/201209 Help workflow

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Our help pages need to be improved. Many functions on Wikisource are either poorly explained or not explained at all. These range from simple things beginners need to know to advanced subjects that will rarely come up but need to be documented for those occasions when they do.

This page is to help co-ordinate users assisting with the Maintenance of the Month task to create and improve our help pages.

Any user of any experience level can work at any point in this process. Experienced users may find it easier to create pages while novice users, or those with little experience in specific areas, are ideal for the review stage.

This help page workflow is a four-stage process should allow as many people as possible to work together on help page creation. Pages will generally move down the workflow, from suggestions to construction to review to completed pages. At the review stage, some pages may move back up the workflow to the expand and improve section.

Stage 1 – Suggestions

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What needs to be explained? What does not have adequate documentation? Ideas and suggestions should be added here as bullet points. Users may choose to create a stub based on one or more of the comments or suggestions listed here. Strike out bullet points once help pages have been started.
  • Use of {{hyphenated word start}} and {{hyphenated word end}} when proofreading.
    • Maybe a guide to useful and/or important Page namespace-related templates.
  • How to do margin notes (mentioned here).
  • How to do page numbers (mentioned here).
  • How do I transcribe a JPG, or non-DjVu/PDF file?
  • Wikisource:Translations needs work. There is no real guide for creating to translating a work
  • Help:DjVu files: Why DjVu? (This is always confusing to newbies.)
  • Are subpages explained anywhere? I think only Wikisource and Wikibooks use them, so not all Wikimedians may understand the concept immediately.
  • What does the css field on an Index page actually do?
  • How to scan books.
  • Transcripts of audio and video files. Hosting non-text works; should we always transcribe them? Is there a standard we should use?
  • Comics: There are lots of public domain comic books, some already on Wikisource and more on Commons. How do we host these? Do we transcribe them as well?
  • Typesetting guidelines. It is not necessarily explained anywhere how to do everything and the best ways to achieve certain effects.
  • One page which describes everything to be done on en.WS (yes, you Help:Proofreading) is overwhelming. 7 +/- 2 is the magic number. Section off and split off processes into separate pages. Use summary style to tie everything together.
  • There are strikeouts 1.1 above which is an area I was reading not long ago and consider important. We here who work with .PDF Files need to know how to clean them before moving to WS and how to work with text layers which many of us do not know and are constantly asking others to do these things for us. There are administrators and non-administrators here who do not know. There are some who do know. The process often has to consider what programs we at home already have and how to use that particular function, i.e. Adobe Acrobat and which version, &c., &c. —William Maury Morris IITalk 12:49, 3 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Stage 2 – Construction

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These pages are either new stubs being constructed or established help pages in need of more work.

Stubs

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These pages are help page stubs. They need to be expanded and improved. Stubs can be created by starting a page with the default text shown below under Template. Any user may expand any of the stubs listed here until it is completed. Once a stub is complete, it should be moved to Review.

Expand and improve

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These pages are no longer stubs but they still need attention. When adding pages to this section, it may help to follow the wikilink with a note to explain any perceived gaps or confusion.
  • ...

Stage 3 – Review

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These pages need review. Does this page fully explain its subject? Is it clearly written? If not, move the page back up the workflow to the expand and improve section. Otherwise, move it to the completed pages section as a finished help page. NB: If a page in this section has a {{stub}} template, remove it and add [[Category:Help]] instead.

Stage 4 – Completed pages

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These help pages have been completed. Add them to Help:Contents.
  • ...

Example

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  1. User A adds a bullet point to Suggestions that says:
    • Foo is not explained anywhere on Wikisource.
  2. User B sees the bullet point, and starts the page Help:Foo, using the template below.
  3. User B strikes out the suggestion:
    • Foo is not explained anywhere on Wikisource.
  4. User B adds text to Help Foo. Users C, D and E also add bits and pieces.
  5. With Help:Foo in good shape, User C moves the wikilink to the Review section.
  6. User B removes the {{stub}} template and adds the category [[Category:Help]].
  7. User F reads Help:Foo but gets confused at section Bar.
  8. User F moves the wikilink to the Expand and improve section, with a note:
    • [[Help:Foo]], section Bar is confusing - ~~~~
  9. Users B and C work on section Bar of Help:Foo.
  10. With Section Bar improved, User B moves Help:Foo back to Review.
  11. User F reads Help:Foo again and understands it.
  12. User F moves Help:Foo to the Completed pages section.
  13. User B adds Help:Foo to the list on Help:Contents.

Blank page template

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{{process header
 | title    = {{PAGENAME}}
 | section  = 
 | previous = ← [[Help:Contents]]
 | next     =
 | shortcut = 
 | notes    = Guidelines for using {{lc:{{PAGENAME}}}}.
}}

Page text

{{help-stub}}

Notes

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