Forum topic: The new help pages.

Hi all, as you've probably realized Frank has updated the help pages. He's asked if it can be updated to be as useful and informative as possible. I've offered to help get this written up so he can focus on any other parts of the game he chooses. This forum thread is somewhere for us to discuss and organize how to get it up-to-date.

Frank said that the format/layout of the help pages could be changed. Currently the pages are linked to pages on the main website. For example, if you're on the sponsors page and click help, it takes you to the sponsors help. If you're on the standings page and click help, it takes you to the help page for standings. Personally, i think this is a great way to do it, but other suggestions are welcome. There is one main drawback - Some things that could do with help pages by themselves, aren't really available. For example, clicking "help" when looking at a drivers skills just takes you to the personnel page about all staff. If there's any that could really use a new page (driver, maybe), then they can be made.

Myself and Dan Silver had offered to update the wiki, so we're going to move onto this instead. Anyone else is welcome to join to help us update it, even if all you do is just post her to tell us of a page that has bad/missing information. We can use this thread to probably divide up the help pages to choose sections we want to work on and i will edit this top post to show who is working on which bits. I'll probably start on something simple and small, but if there's any systems anyone feels like they know well please feel free to put your name forward for them!


To work on list
For Frank
-The ability to add new pages to the help list could be useful for translators (or non-translator could "suggest" new pages which are then approved by translators?)
-Having proposed changes show up in a different colour would be easier for the translators (currently I would have to compared 2 nearly identical pages to find any differences)
-The ability to look at previous versions of pages could be useful if any information goes missing.

The community
-Find any pages that are either missing, or have very little information so we can make sure everything has some help page attached.

Priority work
Pages that are known to be incomplete or have bad information
-4.1 Development - This seems to have information about a previous version of the design system and i'm not confident enough with the current system to want to do a full re-write of this.

Completed work
These are pages that have been updated and checked. Please feel free to give feedback if you have criticism or think something is missing.
-6.3 standings

Good idea.

Tried to do some formatting of the beginner's guide. Thought that it would submit a proposal but it saved the updated page instead so sorry for that.

As written on the Chat (did not see this topic), best thing to start would be adding help pages for the missing game pages so that each game page has its equivalent Help page (some pages have no ? content).

[quote]There is one main drawback - Some things that could do with help pages by themselves, aren't really available. [/quote]
Looking at the Development help page, had the same idea. However, each section also has its help page (so there is one common page for R&D). Would like to suggest - can contribute if you want help but not immediately - that this page is used to put the whole 'Concept, Development, Research' user story and then the individual pages get the information specific to the page.

With regards to the Beginner's Guide, would suggest to organise it like a tutorial geared to be read by the new user. If you want, can give some more ideas but would prefer to post before saving so if there is a place to contribute please advise.

Further to the above, drafted a part of the Beginner's Guide (inspired from the text currently in the Help - sorry don't know who wrote it) for feedback of all below.
This is just an idea so free to throw it out of the window if it is not good. If the general idea is good and no one else is working on it, can help with the Beginner's Guide.

Just a heads up, treated it as a guide not a full blown tutorial so, by design, it is not click there, type here, type of text.

Feel free to comment here or edit it (no Google account required).

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FhZwAjAHWLwAal3IAgkSuTrhQXpmpSf87iBwXeqrEHE/edit?usp=drivesdk

Don't worry about it editing the old one instead of proposing. Can you try making a small change on a page to double check it does proposals and allow me to see/approve it? Frank has made me a translator for the help pages i think and i'm able to go in and edit things etc. I haven't looked in detail how it works as i haven't had a chance.

Making pages for ones with no entry is a great idea, let's start collecting any pages that could do with being created. I don't think i am able to add new pages, so i will edit that into the top post of this page too.

I like the idea of redirecting people from car development to the cars page, i will edit that in right after this post.

So there is already a beginners guide on the help (section 9) and if you'd like to write a second one with that google doc i think that might be helpful, that one seems maybe a bit out of date with some information, but i'm not sure. A tutorial is something being discussed in the new player thread, so let's not add that onto the help pages, we can keep the help pages as more like a reference/wiki. I do have some work regarding a checklist/tutorial anyway, but Frank may choose to do one that is intergrated (like popups telling you where to click etc when you sign in), so there's no point in doing that until we know what he wants.