howto:get_started is an important article, it's linked right on the home page of the wiki, and it's implied that new users should read it before continuing on to the rest of the site. the problem is that the article in its current state is kind of a mess. here are the major issues:
- it repeats a lot of information that new users are likely not going to take interest in that is already explained, sometimes better, in the specific help page of a feature. consider this example: the guide devotes an entire section towards reiterating the tag naming conventions from howto:tag, sometimes getting things wrong entirely, presumably because it hasn't been checked up on in so long (it claims that there's no standard to whether a japanese or english name should be used for copyrights, when actually the japanese name is preferred with a few exceptions).
- it uses some awkward and outdated wording. things like "Post" and "Tag" are capitalized seemingly at random. i get what the writers were going for, but i think it's more visual noise than signal. also, i distinctly remember having to edit out "posts that turn you on" last time i touched this article.
- it's at times needlessly verbose. for comparison, my draft of the wiki page is a little over ten thousand characters shorter (~2/3rds the size of the old guide) while conveying a similar amount of information.
all this is quite unfortunate, since this article could fulfill a purpose of being an interesting page that can be easily linked to new, curious users, but with the way it is now it's more likely to be skimmed or skipped over entirely.
i've uploaded a draft of the potential new version of the guide to help:sandbox. it may still be relatively rough around the edges and incomplete, but if reception is positive, i'll update the existing guide with the new version soon. open to any and all feedback on this.