> > Under what criteria does this take place? It has gotten to the point > where you > just get tired of helping -- why bother? The main criterion is this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Help:Style#Hypertext_metaphor Specifically, "Before writing a specific procedure in an article or describing something in particular, always check if there is already an article that treats that part in detail: in that case, link that article instead of duplicating its content." This is not some conspiracy to "obfuscate information as much as possible", it is a matter of practicality for maintaining the wiki. I see the usefulness of all-in-one tutorials that users can simply read from start to finish, but such tutorials come with their own problems: - They often duplicate content from multiple articles. That means that they can quickly become inaccurate as other articles are updated, making wiki maintenance much harder. - They have to balance between simple/general and complex/specific. A general tutorial is most likely going to omit important information for some users, leaving some users struggling with errors or missing functionality. However a more specific tutorial becomes bloated as it tries to address corner cases, making it harder to read, and even more susceptible to the problem of article duplication. - By providing a "one-stop shop" they discourage users from reading important articles. The fact is that some aspects of Arch Linux are just complicated: they might require reading multiple long, complicated wiki articles in order to understand them. Every time you say "Just do X, Y, and Z" without giving the full context of these actions, you are sacrificing short-term readability for potentially more confused users in the long term. See also https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Linux#User_centrality. For example, take this discussion prompted by one of my big reverts of the AUR article: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Talk:Arch_User_Repository#Uploading_AUR_Packages.2C_AUR articlclear_and_consise.2C_reverted_edit: <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Talk:Arch_User_Repository#Uploading_AUR_Packages.2C_clear_and_consise.2C_reverted_edit:>. Someone wanted to make the AUR article easier to read for new maintainers by adding a quick git intro for AUR4. Being an AUR maintainer means you need some familiarity with git, so this quick intro objectively made the article easier to read. So why did I revert it? Having worked with git professionally for years and having taught git to many, many people I know that it can be an extremely confusing tool even for people already familiar with other version control tools. Looking at that intro, I could picture the hoards of confused new AUR maintainers in the AUR subforum with horribly mangled git repositories on their hands because their only introduction to git was a tiny subsection of the AUR article. Being an AUR maintainer means using git, and git is complicated, so you need to take some time to learn it. Is that bad writing? Is that obfuscation? Is that elitist? I think it's just the way things are. All of that being said, I am not against including tutorial-like articles on the wiki. As long as they are clearly marked and kept separate from the main reference articles, I see no problem. I particularly like Kenneth's idea of having a Tutorial sub-article e.g. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_User_Repository/Tutorial. It would be even better if we could add a Template:Tutorial to such articles like "This tutorial may not cover every use-case. Consult the main article for comprehensive information and troubleshooting." Max
