Historical:Wikisolutions

HowTo are guides to help you find solutions to specific problems you may have. This page explains how HowTo works.

= Short description =

Initial motivation
The initial direction is to create a practical place where to find software (especially Free Software) that will solve your specific problems.

Presentation
Each page is divided in some chapters:
 * Description of the problem: will include detailed description about what is expected to find as solution and how HowTos should be structured, what comments should each solution have.
 * Presentation of solutions as described in the first part.
 * Links to other pages: include similar HowTo pages and links to external web sites.
 * Clarifications and comments: Clarifications will explain why some solutions were not included and will explain eventually why the solutions are not entirely neutral (NPOV). Comments is a place where people can submit new solutions or make some comments. After discussion on the talk page, they may be included as official solutions.

If people get angry, the only way to solve the conflict is to split the page into two different  pages, each having the same goal but with different expectations regarding the way the solutions should be written, including making more restrictive requirements for the accepted solutions.

It is important to make categories based on functionality not on how people usually label things.

More links
Read about About guidelines, About HowTo pages.

Examples: here and here.

= HowTo Constitution =
 * Complete solutions in HowTo are not welcome because it is recomanded to find or write them elsewhere and only link to them. This is why it is called HowTo and not Wikisolutions witch was the original name.
 * You should write complete guides as a separate Wikibook, and just make a link to it. Don't write complete User Revie in HowTo for example.
 * You may think that there is a problem, and try to apply a solution. In HowTo, each page has a problem that points to solutions, but usually DON'T provide the solution inside the  page or anywhere inside HowTo. It is up to you to find the best solution for you and HowTo will help you by allowing people to focus on various possible solutions.
 * HowTo just help you find for each problem a place were you will find the solution. For example, in software, we do not provide the software itself, but we link to several of them. As well, we do not provide complete guides, but we will link to other guides. However we may offten provide hints if they are simple.
 * Split the page...
 * If there is divergence of opinion, it will most of the time be a difference that can be identified. In this case one possibility is to split the page in two, each of the page will try to go in one direction more than the other.
 * Because pages are small, it is easy to express many points of view. This also means it is absolutely normal to find some redundant information (that is present in more than one page with a different description sometimes).

= Improvements to MediaWiki = An enhancement-bug has been filled on mediawiki developpement

= Role in the world = HowTo will never copete with the other, more specialised How-tos, but try to be a place pointing to them eventually (no nead to write twice the same things, but there is a nead for a central point where everything emerges). A place to find other projects and places that are all around on the internet, with no clear structure.

HowTo and Wikipedia
The NPOV in Wikipedia is nothing more than a single big WikiGuideline applied to all the articles on the hole Wikipedia. We do not think this is a bad idea. It is recommended that people contribute to Wikipedia lists before or at the same time they contribute to HowTo.

Related projects

 * Wikibooks and Wikipedia.
 * We point you to solutions that exists. The Software Bazaar organize the developement of new software and ideas to make more tasks possible.
 * Community Wiki. This is a wiki about communities both online and offline: Management, creativity, teaching, learning, conflicts, mediation, security, freedom.
 * wikiHow and eHow

Short presentation page. Read also About.

BACK TO MAIN PAGE

= Wikisolutions =

HowTo was known as Wikisolutions before, when it was stil hosted as a project of Wikibooks. The original project here, HowToEngineerIt changed name to HowTo with this occasion.

NOTE: many pages are not yet cleaned up, and they still use style from the old Wikisolutions. Please read the about page, and then try to create pages as described in the about page and in the pages about links to (About).

= Contributions = I will not be able to guarantee with constant contributions. If you like it please contribute to unfinished pages.

This is a list of contributors.