Steve Krug, my hero, has the following to say on page 47 of Don’t make me think:
The main thing you need to know about instructions is that no one is going to read them - at least not until after repeated attempts at “muddling through” have failed. And even then, if the instructions are wordy, the odds of users finding the information they need is pretty low.
Your objective should always be to eliminate instructions entirely by making everything self-explanatory, or as close to it as possible. When instructions are absolutely necessary, cut them back to the bare minimum.
He then gives an example of a website which had lengthly instructions on how to fill out a survey and how he shortened these instructions from 103 words to 41 words.
I completely agree with this. On ordinary websites you do not want to read an instruction manual! But a wiki is a bit different. Like I said before, when editing a wiki it is not 100% obvious how to achieve the desired editing effect, where to begin, and so on, so unfortunately there have to be instructions, and not just one page of instructions, but a complete help guide to cover everything that you could possibly want to do!
What I have decided to do on WikiStudent is write my own help manual, rather than import the one used on Wikipedia, which is so overwhelming it would scare anyone off! I’ll give some basic editing guidelines and try to keep them as short as possible, and provide links to more complete sources for students who want to move on to advanced editing techniques.
Tags: Usability
[...] Anyway, I spent over an hour this evening finishing off the Jobs page (16 feeds in total are being used) and I’m thinking of including text that says you should place your ad on Gumtree if you want it to appear on WikiStudent. I really hate giving instructions like “Click on the link to view the job and contact the advertiser directly” because instructions must die! [...]