I'm Grace Note, a Community Manager. I’d like to share the approach we took in designing the new help center, as well as some of my own thoughts on fixes that can be applied that might address your concerns.
I sent a newsletter last month to all moderators shortly after the changes to the Help Center. This doesn't automatically make its way to every site's Meta, though, and especially for something as big a change as this, it is fairly important that all of the network is aware of it. We'll be looking into good ways to handle this better going forward. It is not our intention to have worsened the problems on Server Fault so let us work together to fix them.
In a sense, what is present is that the old FAQ was divided into a few different destinations based on what reasons people were sent to it for. For people brand new to the site or who are unaccustomed to how the whole site works (basically, the FAQ as a whole package), the intended destination is /about. Topicality, though, is buried on this page beneath site purpose and functionality. For topicality, reputation, promotion, and all the other jazz, the intent is to link to the specific section of /help. The intent was primarily that, rather than bogging down people with this giant document. Laura explains such in a comment here, which mostly echoes what I just wrote here.
This wasn't a smooth transition, though - on paper it sounds quite nice. In practice we did break one particularly convenient portion of the user guidance workflow. Falcon is right that it was designed so that linking to /help/on-topic would bring people directly to what was formerly the top of the FAQ. /faq#questions, which used to link directly to the section you're seeking out, does actually point to /help/on-topic, but considering people easily accomplished in the past without an anchor since it was the top segment, it's clear that this holdover didn't actually tide as much as it meant to. Thus we lack any directly convenient link for users to point at the actual destination intended as we used to with the FAQ, and the convenient links we do have plop people in a giant wall.
Some initial thoughts on how this could be fixed. sysadmin1138's post made me notice that we actually don't have quite the same hero bar on /help as we do for anonymous user homepages. At the very least, appending the "Server Fault is a question and answer site for professional [...]" on that bar there, before we tell them about taking the tour, might be nice. It won't address the underlying problem but considering the hero bar there is directed at a new user (hence the tour option), I think restating the site audience is appropriate.
Past that, the main thing is to make the appropriate links more convenient to use in some fashion. Especially topicality, as Server Fault isn't the only site that primarily just pointed at /faq to hit the top of the page - I've got a fair share on Arqade that is probably all kinds of wonk now. The original actions aren't "lost", since /help/on-topic covers exactly the section that we all want to point at with convenience, conciseness, and straight-to-the-pointness. It lacks the ease-of-access that the old FAQ had though, and while people can link to it directly, there is no direct route for new users to see nor a quick link for experienced users to provide guidance with. Don't want to make a big rush on this portion here though, so we're still looking at how to work on this part. Something kinda like what is asked for here.
