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Regular participants will be familiar with procedures and practices on Code Review. For example, we have rules against

• asking hypothetical questions
• appending to or modifying the question after receiving answers
• answering in comments, even if the answer is brief

Those practices have been developed by the community, and are written in our Meta site. However, new users are often unaware of these rules until we point out their violation. This leads to unnecessary frustration and embarrassment.

Instead of expecting new users to wade through Meta posts, we should have a Help Center that effectively teaches new users how to thrive on Code Review. Unfortunately, many of our current Help Center pages contain generic text that is incomplete or inappropriate for Code Review.

Could you please help point out any deficiencies you find in our Help Center pages?

For now, we are focusing on identifying the deficiencies. Afterwards, we will work out the desired wording.

Regular participants will be familiar with procedures and practices on Code Review. For example, we have rules against

• asking hypothetical questions
• appending to or modifying the question after receiving answers
• answering in comments, even if the answer is brief

Those practices have been developed by the community, and are written in our Meta site. However, new users are often unaware of these rules until we point out their violation. This leads to unnecessary frustration and embarrassment.

Instead of expecting new users to wade through Meta posts, we should have a Help Center that effectively teaches new users how to thrive on Code Review. Unfortunately, many of our current Help Center pages contain generic text that is incomplete or inappropriate for Code Review.

Could you please help point out any deficiencies you find in our Help Center pages?

This post focuses on identifying the deficiencies. Drafting of the new pages is in this follow-up post.

Regular participants will be familiar with procedures and practices on Code Review. For example, we have rules against

• asking hypothetical questions
• appending to or modifying the question after receiving answers
• answering in comments, even if the answer is brief

Those practices have been developed by the community, and are written in our Meta site. However, new users are often unaware of these rules until we point out their violation. This leads to unnecessary frustration and embarrassment.

Instead of expecting new users to wade through Meta posts, we should have a Help Center that effectively teaches new users how to thrive on Code Review. Unfortunately, many of our current Help Center pages contain generic text that is incomplete or inappropriate for Code Review.

Could you please help point out any deficiencies you find in our Help Center pages?

Note: How this will work

• We will identify which help pages are 'in scope' for changing.
• We will identify places where the help-center pages need attention
• We will then hash out what the actual changes should be to the pages - perhaps using meta posts for each page that needs work.
• Once we have a fresh set of consistent help pages, and once they have been ratified by the SE managers, we will ask that the pages get installed in to the help center.

This process cannot be done frequently, so it is very important to get it right the first time. We will not be hitting all the pages in the help center, we will be limited to just a few specific ones. The list is to be determined.

Additionally, because the help center is complex, I suggest that people who want to be involved with this take some time and really understand what the help pages do, and what they should look like for new-to-Code-Review users.

While changing the help center is a great opportunity to improve the site for many users, we will still have to conform to SE standards and style. We can't go overboard.

Regular participants will be familiar with procedures and practices on Code Review. For example, we have rules against

• asking hypothetical questions
• appending to or modifying the question after receiving answers
• answering in comments, even if the answer is brief

Those practices have been developed by the community, and are written in our Meta site. However, new users are often unaware of these rules until we point out their violation. This leads to unnecessary frustration and embarrassment.

Instead of expecting new users to wade through Meta posts, we should have a Help Center that effectively teaches new users how to thrive on Code Review. Unfortunately, many of our current Help Center pages contain generic text that is incomplete or inappropriate for Code Review.

Could you please help point out any deficiencies you find in our Help Center pages?

For now, we are focusing on identifying the deficiencies. Afterwards, we will work out the desired wording.

Regular participants will be familiar with procedures and practices on Code Review. For example, we have rules against

• asking hypothetical questions
• appending to or modifying the question after receiving answers
• answering in comments, even if the answer is brief

Those practices have been developed by the community, and are written in our Meta site. However, new users are often unaware of these rules until we point out their violation. This leads to unnecessary frustration and embarrassment.

Instead of expecting new users to wade through Meta posts, we should have a Help Center that effectively teaches new users how to thrive on Code Review. Unfortunately, many of our current Help Center pages contain generic text that is incomplete or inappropriate for Code Review.

Could you please help point out any deficiencies you find in our Help Center pages?

Regular participants will be familiar with procedures and practices on Code Review. For example, we have rules against

• asking hypothetical questions
• appending to or modifying the question after receiving answers
• answering in comments, even if the answer is brief

Those practices have been developed by the community, and are written in our Meta site. However, new users are often unaware of these rules until we point out their violation. This leads to unnecessary frustration and embarrassment.

Instead of expecting new users to wade through Meta posts, we should have a Help Center that effectively teaches new users how to thrive on Code Review. Unfortunately, many of our current Help Center pages contain generic text that is incomplete or inappropriate for Code Review.

Could you please help point out any deficiencies you find in our Help Center pages?

Note: How this will work

• We will identify which help pages are 'in scope' for changing.
• We will identify places where the help-center pages need attention
• We will then hash out what the actual changes should be to the pages - perhaps using meta posts for each page that needs work.
• Once we have a fresh set of consistent help pages, and once they have been ratified by the SE managers, we will ask that the pages get installed in to the help center.

This process cannot be done frequently, so it is very important to get it right the first time. We will not be hitting all the pages in the help center, we will be limited to just a few specific ones. The list is to be determined.

Additionally, because the help center is complex, I suggest that people who want to be involved with this take some time and really understand what the help pages do, and what they should look like for new-to-Code-Review users.

While changing the help center is a great opportunity to improve the site for many users, we will still have to conform to SE standards and style. We can't go overboard.