:help does not work

Which vim package have you installed? vim-tiny or vim?

vim-tiny is a cut down version with only minimal features.
vim is the normal feature set.

"dpkg -S bin/vim" should tell you which version you've installed.

I've got vim-tiny; didn't realize that was the default.

In light of my mistake, I support either closing the bug or modifying vim-tiny to recommend [changing the error message to reflect why the files are missing]/[including the help file (if small)].

Filed against wrong package

The description for vim-tiny mentions it already but could be clearer:

 This package contains a minimal version of vim compiled with no
 GUI and a small subset of features in order to keep small the
 package size. This package does not depend on the vim-runtime
 package, but installing it you will get its additional benefits
 (online documentation, plugins, ...).

The online help is included in vim-runtime.

I support updating the error to recommend installation of vim-runtime. This change should probably go into debian/tiny/vimrc.tiny.diff.

The packaging problem which caused the help to be inaccessible was fixed in Gutsy.