Help talk:Getting started

This page is not for seeking help or making test edits.
It is solely for discussing the Getting started page.

Get help at the Teahouse for using and editing Wikipedia.

For common questions about Wikipedia, see Help:Contents. To make test edits, please use the Sandbox.

Editing of this page by new or unregistered users is currently disabled.
See the protection policy and protection log for more details. If you cannot edit this page and you wish to make a change, you can request unprotection, log in, or create an account.

Wikipedia Help NA‑class Top‑importance

	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
NA	This page does not require a rating on the project's quality scale.
Top	This page has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

Archives

1

This page has archives. Sections older than 3 days may be automatically archived by when more than 1 section is present.

1900+ sentences for ... getting started?

Used an online utility to scan readability of what should be an introduction:

Indication of the number of years of formal education that a person requires in order to easily understand the text on the first reading

Gunning Fog index: 20.45

Approximate representation of the U.S. grade level needed to comprehend the text:

29.80 Coleman Liau index

22.91 Flesch Kincaid Grade level

26.81 ARI (Automated Readability Index)

17.19 SMOG:

-31.27 Flesch Reading Ease:

Number of characters (without spaces): 324,404.00

Number of words: 40,646.00

Number of sentences: 1,909.00

Lexical Density: 92.64

... and so on.

Suggestion: Might a better approach include a search box for "How do I ...?" related inquiries? Jasonbrown1965 (talk) 10:14, 21 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Seeing no response I must conclude that, for getting started as an editor, Wikipedia is dysfunctional.

Nineteen hundred sentences!

1900 ^

1.9k ^ Jasonbrown1965 (talk) 06:15, 22 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Jasonbrown1965, I'm very much not a fan of this page either. It should be formatted more as a back-end list of different attempts at making a starting page than an actual starting page itself, and it should never be the place we send newcomers. I think Help:Introduction does a somewhat better job, although it's still longer than it ought to be. Overall, Wikipedia has an inherent amount of complexity that'll never fully be simplifyable, but we can do a lot better. Regarding your search box idea, the present search box at the top of each page is capable of location help pages if you just prefix your query with "WP:" or "Help:". Of course, that's only useful if people actually know to do it... {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 06:43, 22 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]