There's a lot of functional redundancy between the Help section and the Wiki.  I'm going to estimate that it's getting to the point where the wiki has 80% of the Help info covered, and the Help section has about 80% of what can be found on the wiki. Newer factory types and the achievement system are examples of info found on the Wiki but not on Help.

A recent post suggests to me that finding info is getting confusing because the Help button is easier to find. I'm thinking it's getting close to time to simply change the Help button to a wiki button and/or somehow phase out the help section by putting a wiki tab next to the help tab to ease the transition..  Someone should probably take an inventory of the what else needs to be moved.. etc..

I agree the Wiki should replace the Help. It's just a question of copying everything over which unfortunately due to the nature of both systems will be a manual job.

The problem with having both a Wiki and Help tab is it's already close to full width for smaller screens and when the tab bar wraps it looks pretty ugly.

If someone (or group) are up for copying the data over I would really appreciate it. I can provide a dump of the Help data if that helps!

Let's split up the work.  1st we need a list of all help pages missing from the wiki.  Then we can each claim a page or two to move and then once it's all done we can get rid of the help pages.  I don't have time to help right now, but I will have time tonight, if anyone wants to get started before that, great!  Otherwise I will get the ball rolling tonight.

i can go thru and see what's what later today. need to divvy up some meat here in a few (our quarterly bulk meat trip). after that i should be able to get to it. shouldn't be too hard to get all the help info to the wiki, then we can pretty it up.

Awesome let me know if there's anything I can do to help :)

I have started on a replacement to the help pages on the wiki here:

http://www.wargear.net/wiki/doku.php?id=general:help

I just copied the structure of the existing wiki, but haven't filled in individual pages. 

Whoever (Yertle?) set up the old help did a pretty good job, and although it could probably be updated in some places, I suggest we just copy it to the wiki, and then think about improvements.  If all the regulars did a page or two we could be done pretty quickly, so maybe post here to claim a page and then do it sometime in the next week?

We already have very good wiki pages for help designing boards  (largely thanks to M57!), but someone should at least review the old "Designing Boards" section to see if there is anything we missed.

We had a FAQ on the wiki, but it doesn't resemble at all the one on the help pages. 

I'll do the 'Rules' page.

Ok - I found a fairly easy way to do this. It requires you to download this html2doku tool:

http://www.yunqa.de/delphi/downloads/Html2DokuWiki.zip

(I heard about it on the doku wiki: https://www.dokuwiki.org/tips:htmltowiki).

1. Go to the relevant help page. 
2. Highlight the content.
3. Right click -> View Selection Source (firefox)
4. right click on source -> copy
5. run html2doku app above.
6. Paste into top window.
7. Copy from bottom window into wargear wiki.

Took me about 5 minutes to do this entire rules page:

http://www.wargear.net/wiki/doku.php?id=general:help:rules

It's not perfect (I need to redirect links to old help pages to the new wiki ones, and I'm not sure what else), but it's close.

tom wrote:

 I can provide a dump of the Help data if that helps!

I just noticed this.  What would the dump look like?

Ozyman wrote:

tom wrote:

 I can provide a dump of the Help data if that helps!

I just noticed this.  What would the dump look like?

It's all the HTML. I've dumped it here - hope it helps.

looks good thanks.  I'll run some more pages through that html2doku tool when I get a chance.  

tom wrote:

Ozyman wrote:

tom wrote:

 I can provide a dump of the Help data if that helps!

I just noticed this.  What would the dump look like?

It's all the HTML. I've dumped it here - hope it helps.

Beautiful!  I think it makes sense for the Help to be in the Wiki, the only concern would be that it is potentially slightly more hidden for new players, even if the current Help is or isn't used much I think there is a comfort to new players to see it easily accessible if needed.  I may suggest there could still be a direct link to the Wiki Help pages on the bottom navigation bar (ie next to Wiki).

...be that it is potentially slightly more hidden for new players...

I think there is a comfort to new players to see it easily accessible if needed

Just make the current help tab open the wiki - or wherever the help will live. 

ratsy wrote:

...be that it is potentially slightly more hidden for new players...

I think there is a comfort to new players to see it easily accessible if needed

Just make the current help tab open the wiki - or wherever the help will live. 

Ahhh, I was thinking 'Help' would be replaced with 'Wiki', perhaps I was mistaken and it will remain 'Help', in which case you're right and my concern isn't valid.

Yeah, it's not clear what Tom was thinking, but I also thought it might be good to just have the help tab go to the help page on the wiki.  That will also help people find the wiki, and since Tom doesn't want a 'wiki' and 'help' tab, I think it's preferable to have one labeled 'help'.

I got the automated translation of most of the help pages done.  For the most part this worked pretty well.   Here is what still needs to be done:

• Review each page in the help.  The only fixes I noticed that need to be done are changing links from the old help to the new wiki help.
• Figure out what to do about the map design section.  Do we just want to link to the Designer Workshop?  We should probably review the old help and make sure it is all in the Designer Workshop somewhere.

I think we need to rework them -- and the structure/layout completely.  Maybe as simple as bringing the entire help up a layer so it's on the top level? I'm taking a look now, will post a suggestion when done.

Yertle wrote:

ratsy wrote:

...be that it is potentially slightly more hidden for new players...

I think there is a comfort to new players to see it easily accessible if needed

Just make the current help tab open the wiki - or wherever the help will live. 

Ahhh, I was thinking 'Help' would be replaced with 'Wiki', perhaps I was mistaken and it will remain 'Help', in which case you're right and my concern isn't valid.

I was planning to rename the Help tab to Wiki but I think Yertle's right, it will be less obvious for newbies so perhaps best to leave it as 'Help' but just redirect to the Wiki.

Allllrighty, here's what I propose for the 'home' page of the wiki; which, I think, the Help tab should direct to. Within the sublinks, we'll need to cull the information as there's a lot of redundancies (see 'welcome to wargear' example below).

WIKI HOME

Welcome to WarGear - a basic intro (which is mostly there already) -- the information in the current hotlink for 'welcome to wargear' is mostly redundant

The Basics

• How to play
• Game types
• Joining or Creating a Game
• Playing a game
  • Turn Based
  •  SimulGear
  • The player bar
  • Rules
  • Cards
  • Fog
  • Turn-Timers
  • WarGear Glossary
  • FAQs - This includes information about known bugs. You may want to check this out before posting a question to the forums.

• Proposed General Site Features

Tournaments

• Tournament Basics
• Joining or Creating a Tournament
• Tournament Rankings

Designing Boards / For Designers

• Designer Workshop - Everything you need to know about making boards on WarGear.
• The Advanced WarGear Map Editor - For your bulk editing needs
  • Modeling Language - The standard for describing WarGear board designs.
• Proving Grounds 

• • Development Board Roster

• Review Board Info

•  
  •  Review Board RosterMap Making Contest

• Proposed Designer Features - What do YOU want?

Information for Players  

• Rankings ?? how to tie this in with new ranking/achievement ??
• The Complete Board List
• WarGear Personalities - Member pages, or just short Bios
• Dice Probabilities
• Luck Stats

About Wargear

• Premium Membership
• Contact Details
• Privacy Policy
• Terms and Conditions

Putting this Wiki Together

Discussion

Looks good.  I went ahead and cleaned up the front page a bit more.