Talk:Community Wishlist/W73

Redundant to already existing features

I strongly believe this technical wish is already granted, but should be furtherly refurbished to make it easier to access in non-major languages of the world. The English Wikipedia has already set Help: namespace with many pages that act like frequently asked questions' pages, for example w:en:Help:Your first article. Thus new implementations of FAQs and newbie programmes are a bit pointless or redundant to already existing systems. Forgot to mention that another way of helping newbies is implementing mentorship program on more wikis (technology already exists, as far as I know it's from 2021), we just need volunteers on local wikis who would be prepared to step in. What we should instead think of is how to improve these help systems and not try to invent something very similar to already existing systems/features, ie. with translating and tweaking help pages to local communities as well as try to make Help: namespace more accessible. Best regards, A09|(pogovor) 08:55, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

I was so happy to find the frequently asked questions like How to edit a page, How to create a new page and other such tutorials, first by browsing my user account page, and then through @A09's suggestions. Thanks @A09. These tutorials are excellent and I am so glad they exist.

The wish I submitted, however, is to surface these tutorial articles from the Wikipedia search results page.

I invite you to think about new volunteer behavior — they will definitely have these frequently asked questions. The design challenge for us is this — what path do new volunteers take to access these helpful tutorial articles? It seems conceivable to me that many new users might type these questions into Wikipedia search, and thus the Wikipedia search results page might be an organic location for new users to receive answers to their frequently asked queries.

As an aside, I fully support @A09's suggestions to implement a "mentorship program" and to make it easier to access tutorials in "non-major languages of the world." These seem like separate and important wishes to me, thus I will look for them in the Wishlist and vote +1 on them. I'd also be super eager to collaborate and help @A09 implement these wishes. WordLunch (talk) 16:26, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

I see what you are trying to convey.

“ The wish I submitted, however, is to surface these tutorial articles from the Wikipedia search results page ”
This is not really feasible per current inner working of Special:Search (example: Vandalism gives an appropriate article instead of the enwiki policy). Some redirects from the main space of enwiki also exist: w:en:How to write an article? redirects to an appropriate page - so it's more about creating such redirects than really modifying Special:Search. An alternative to search tab, and in my honest opinion better and much more scalable version is to make help pages more accessible through ie. special help tabs.

I think I wasn't clear enough in the message above. FAQ technology and mentorship programs already exist, the problem is in smaller wikis which have smaller FAQs and likely no mentorship programs. Instead of inventing new ways we should improve on this problem. I am already a mentor on slwiki however as I am the only one there AFAIK I get no mentorees and the problem of volunteer-mentor shortage is not unique to my homewiki. Thanks for your loving reply and best regards, A09|(pogovor) 18:05, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

Brilliant idea

I love this concept @WordLunch.

I would probably rename the wish title to "Build a search that answers volunteer queries". New volunteers would benefit the most, but it would be useful to experienced users too.

Even on English Wikipedia with its extensive documentation a central search is essential.

For example say you want to insert a photo into an article. Where do you ask? Somehow you navigate to w:Help:Contents (note there is currently no help link in the mobile interface). Then you use the given search box. "insert photo" restricts search to Wikipedia and Help namespaces. The first five results (after to advice to start an insert photo page) are an RfC on a controversial photo, a University of Dayton Wikiproject, Reference desk archive, Mediation Cabal case and an Articles for Creation Help desk post from 10 years ago . On the first page of results there isn't a single link to a FAQ page or anything in the Help: namespace.

So you find the FAQ, it has a search. One result: answers an "On this day..." event order question. I guess you give up on Wikipedia altogether or go to the w:WP:Help desk.

We need a search tool that prioitises, in order: FAQs, Help: namespace, Help desk archives, Village pump archives; and Wikipedia: namespace.

A working search tool to start with would be great. I later envisage a "smart" digital assistant. In the "insert photo" example it could detect that you recently uploaded a photo and suggest steps to add it to an article using visual editor, or show you the syntax to use in source mode.

Google's AI overview for a search of "wikipedia how to insert a photo" is excellent at answering this question by the way. Commander Keane (talk) 05:23, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

Related wish

@WordLunch and Matěj Suchánek: this is exactly half of what related wish W442: Adopt a Wikipedia-trained LLM & make it learn help pages & categories to help newcomers is about. Check it out. The semantic search developments (linked there) are also of relevance. Prototyperspective (talk) 17:37, 26 February 2026 (UTC)