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"Help" is critical for people to know whether their questions are appropriate for a particular site - but it seems difficult to find the help for the M&TV Meta site.

Do we even have help for our meta site? If so, how can I find it?

Normal, there are three ways I know to access the "help" for a site::

  1. The top-right button on the header menu.

    On SE Meta, the help link takes to to the help for SE Meta. But here, we don't get that link. The help link only appears next to the non-meta site.

enter image description here enter image description here

  1. The footer, under the name of the site.

    But on M&TV Meta, even though the site name is right, the link takes you to help for the non-meta site.

enter image description here

  1. Manually adding "/help/" to the base URL. Again, on SE Meta, this works - but here, it just redirects to the help for the non-meta page.
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  • for a long time, I argue that help page we have is not good enough. it's not detailed and simple as it should be.
    – Vishwa
    Jul 12, 2019 at 5:26

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Child meta sites do not have a separate help page. They automatically redirect to main site's help center. Only main site help page exists. This includes our site too.

Meta Stack Exchange is a special place and it has separate reputation thresholds and scope. Even though it's a meta site (because we discuss policies), there is no main Q&A site like we do. Hence, there is a requirement for For example, Movies & TV has Movies & TV Q&A site but Meta Stack Exchange doesn't have a Stack Exchange Q&A.

There is only one page which we need to read to understand what is a meta site for. That is - What is "meta"? How does it work?. This is common for every meta site. There is a guidance like

  • what is a meta site

  • how is scope different from main site

  • How is voting different from main and meta

  • How tagging is different.

Clicking on "help center" from "off-topic because" close reason on meta also takes you to this page.

Stack Exchange doesn't have a help center page. Only Meta Stack Exchange has "help center" page. For other sites, it's vice versa.

There are four ways to go to help center from the main site.

  1. From question mark drop down

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  1. From hamburger in the list of communities

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  1. From the footer.

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  1. Adding a /help after the site url.

To get to meta guidelines "What is "meta"? How does it work?", there are two ways.

  1. /help/whats-meta after site url.

  2. From question mark drop down

enter image description here

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  • I accept this answer, but also hate it - if we have different meta sites, they should have different rules. Otherwise, why have different sites at all?
    – LevenTrek
    Jul 8, 2019 at 7:24
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    @LevenTrek Different meta sites do not have different rules regarding scope. That's the reason you have the same "What is Meta" page. Only Meta SE has different help page SE doesn't have a separate help page.. Different main sites have different rules. To discuss those rules, we need different sites.
    – Nog Shine
    Jul 8, 2019 at 7:29
  • The accepted answer on this page makes it very clear why there's value to having site-specific meta sites. So why wouldn't we have help guidelines for each one? meta.stackexchange.com/questions/140583/… (sorry for my previous confusing/wrong comments)
    – LevenTrek
    Jul 8, 2019 at 7:36
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    @LevenTrek Did you read the answers posted to that question? The answer is simple. Because every site is different, their discussion topics are also different and site specific. E.g We discussed whether ID should be on-topic on meta site here. This is a site specific issue. Movies Meta is for discussing those issues. They don't require a special help because the major guideline is "The question on Movies meta should be either about Movies &TV or about the software that powers Stack Exchange". I will modify my answer if it's still unclear to you.
    – Nog Shine
    Jul 8, 2019 at 7:40
  • It's not unclear, but I disagree completely. If a question is about the software that powers StackExchange, it doesn't belong on the M&TV Meta - it belongs on the SE Meta. The fact that they have the same help means that we're splitting questions arbitrarily based on what sites users use
    – LevenTrek
    Jul 8, 2019 at 7:44
  • Are you on chat - I want to delete this question but continue this discussion...
    – LevenTrek
    Jul 8, 2019 at 7:45
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    @LevenTrek That's fine. You can continue this discussion without deleting your question. You're not asking a bad question after all. Visit The Screening Room from Movies & TV Chat. I will edit further to make it morec clear. I understood what you meant.
    – Nog Shine
    Jul 8, 2019 at 7:46

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