Editing Help:About help pages (section)

==About the help system==
{{seealso|Wikipedia:Project namespace#Wikipedia how-to and information pages}}
[[File:wiki-help.png|frameless|right||link=Wikipedia:Help desk]]
The help resource system of Wikipedia consists of a wide variety of [[WP:HOWTOPAGES|how-to and information pages]], written to differing levels of technical expertise and in widely varying styles. This variety however has its flaws: it is easy to navigate to a page that regurgitates the same information, contains concepts that have not already been covered, is overly complicated for one's needs, or pages with a listing of links to other pages with listings of links.  Information is also spread over a variety of namespace prefixes.

The  ''[[Wikipedia:Wikipedia namespace|Wikipedia namespace]]'' (prefix ''Wikipedia:''): contains many types of pages connected with the Wikipedia project itself: basic information (e.g., [[Wikipedia:Administration]]), policies (e.g., [[Wikipedia:Editing policy]]), guidelines (e.g., [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style]]),  essays (e.g., [[Wikipedia:Reasonability rule]]), how-to pages (e.g., [[Wikipedia:Purging]]). The ''[[WP:Help namespace|Help namespace]]'' (prefix ''Help:''): contains pages which provide help in using Wikipedia and its software, both for users of the encyclopedia and for editors (e.g., [[Help:Footnotes]]). However the ''Wikipedia namespace'' also contains many help style pages that in some cases contain repeated information or more detailed information.  For example, [[Wikipedia:Media help]] and  [[Help:Files]] are  help pages located in different prefixes covering some of the same information presented in differing levels of technical expertise.{{update inline |date=November 2024}}

There are also pages that have completely different styles of presenting the same information (e.g., [[Help:Referencing for beginners]] and [[Help:Introduction to referencing]]).  For this reason [[Help:redirect|redirect]]s and [[WP:hatnote|hatnote]]s are often set up between these two namespaces. Aside from the static pages there are a multitude of interactive assistances pages see, [[Wikipedia:Requests]] for a listing of those.