I'm not sure what you guys plan on doing with the help page
We removed it entirely. It's been a matter of some considerable debate both for us and for SMF during their migration to it being a placeholder page.
Fact is, it's not that commonly used.
For most sites, it's also incomplete, as I don't know any mods that actually puts information into the help area. Even the largest mods do not do that (SimpleDesk talked about doing it but by the time we got round to considering it, SMF had already pruned their own.)
All things considered, it's actually more practical in a lot of ways not to bother, of which the two most important are:
1. If the interface needs an explanation in how to use it, it's broken and should be fixed. Glossing over the problem with a manual is all well and good but you should only need the manual in specialised/rare circumstances, not general ones.
2. Most users can navigate round to post something, and in every single community I've ever seen that offers any kind of features other than the most absolute basic, people talk to each other and ask each other questions, which is a subtle way of getting a community interacting.
There is a third quite important reason too:
3. Most people don't read the manual. I know I already mentioned this, but it is quite important, important enough for me to bring it up again. sm.org, for example, is replete with information. Many aspects are well documented but yet most people just don't even try and find that information.
Far better would be for us to not bother doing anything like that in the core and making it a good mod where its functionality can be consolidated rather than us doing a half-assed job in the core. Especially since that allows the administrator and similar contributors to set the tone and content to suit a given community.
