So, target user, based on your post we've got someone new to the wiki, maybe they've read a few things and are excited to read more asap, but they don't know what anything is or how to get around.
So, yes, the user wants to know the different article types and how to navigate, but they want to know that so they can get on reading other cool stuff. Some may be happy to read a long conversational guide, some will want to hunt-and-seek/selectively skim, but many will just want the tl;dr
(Including the rules is important to y'all as staff even if the reader isn't looking for that, so that's also a goal to keep in.)
Now with that known, design issues:
- Right now everything is currently bulk paragraphs in a running conversational tone.
- There are headers spread throughout to break up the monotony, but these don't clearly align with the categories of things-you-wanted-covered listed above.
- Some important items are sub-headed as questions despite this not being an faq
- The tl;Dr is all the way at the end.
- It's really not clear why the items are in the order they are in (for a specific gripe, I don't understand the purpose of the IC/OOC/Forum/Chat definition or why that comes first. Why does it get an early bullet-pointed list when it feels like the article types are more important?). I talk more about this and "below the fold" under solutions.
Of the three interaction styles I mentioned above (guide-reader, selective skimmer, tldr-ers), this only really serves one, is probably a bit confusing even for them, and the tldr-ers are long gone before you appease them.
So, how do you fix that? Well, option 1 takes rewriting.
- A better method would be to use the text bubble style as used in the GOI or MTF guides: have a conversational welcome, and then have big clear headers and visual separation that people can move between.
- With article types, it would help to have a clear one sentence definition, paragraph(s) with more detail, links, and on to the next box. Now you're serving all three reader types!
- A navigation box/guide would work better with links AND images, or at least arrows pointing to the appropriate part of the screen.
- In terms of length and priorities, just keep in mind that most readers will never get "below the fold." (E.g., any level of scrolling down), so it would be helpful to get the reader the best bang for their wiki-understanding buck within the first visible page.
- Related to the above, you should consider the order of items based on goal priorities. E.g., are rules important enough to staff to override reader goals? (I'm not implying an answer, that's an open question.)
An important note, your current conversational hand-leading script could work very well as-is if you change the modality: Walking them through casually like that from topic too topic would really work better in a video. Then you could include images and examples at the appropriate points. I totally understand that the video would be a lot more work and I'm not trying to pile more work for you, but that's what you're current writing would much better serve. Honestly I think a video would be really good for this.
