Talk:Main Page:Archive1

The Idea
The main idea is to create the of as how to create modern things in natural environment beginning from scratch. I think it is the primary goal as well, which, whatever difficulties will happen, should not be changed, and it is the spirit of the project. Difficulties could be the non-willingness to make some of information public, or possible bad effects to society. Therefore, I think that while attaining this exciting goal we should care about the safety of the project, that is, align our goals with, for example, the Long Now movement, which says: The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide counterpoint to todays "faster/cheaper" mind set and promote "slower/better" thinking. --Inyuki 01:06, 31 Mar 2005 (EST)

Comments
 * Oh my! I think this might make it easier to create robots that could replicate themselves --Inyuki 05:30, 28 Jan 2005 (PST)

The Mission
Tell, what do you want it to be.

The Goals
This project reminds me of the Long Now movement.

If nuclear weapons are ever used again, or some natural disaster wipes most of us out, the survivors will need the contents of a site like this (etched on platinum?) to rebuild civilization.

Although, if most of us are wiped out in a nuclear war, perhaps the engineering instructions for how to build atomic weapons would be considered taboo?


 * I agree. I thought of this. However, by explaining how the Sun works, and how the elemnts are made, we would inevitably giving serious hints about how to make nuclear weapons. --193.219.38.188 15:01, 24 Feb 2005 (GMT)

One other consideration - in ten thousand years, English might not even be in use anymore, nor any of the other languages in current use.

Perhaps the steps on this site need to be presented pictographically, so that language-barriers will not prevent comprehension by anyone who discovers this content in the far future.


 * Well, it could be done in the future, but firstly it would need to create it in existing languages. --193.219.38.188 15:01, 24 Feb 2005 (GMT)

Given all the secrecy which surrounds government efforts to archive this type of information, this site could become a trans-national movement to make it possible to "reboot" civilization on a global scale, should it ever become necessary.

By the way, the acid test for this project is to explain how to make a pencil.

Before we try to explain how to build a space shuttle, how about explaining how to make the very tool one needs to write down the instructions in the first place.

Computers won't be available when civilization reboots. So we'll need a few pencils.

I have no idea how pencils are made. I bet no one person possesses all of the knowledge necesary to make one.

&mdash; DV 16:56, 22 Feb 2005 (GMT)

Well, here's the start of a pencil page for ya. --Vishahu 19:59, 12 Aug 2005 (UTC)

Suggest ideas on making the Main Page page more attractive

 * Paste Posters about this Website on notice boards of science institutions and universities. Also convince BBC to have a link on their rough science website.

Suggest ideas on other ways to collect such knowledge

 * Patent descriptions are public domain. I am not saying it would be easy, but one can take a lot of useful content from patent databases such as USPTO that spans more than two centuries (USPTO has online patents from 1790, which means you have information from industrial revolution and to present day). Of course, patents are not perfect descriptions for this project, but it's all in one place and it's better than nothing. 81.211.110.171 02:23, 6 Feb 2005 (PST)

Dave Gingery has written a series of books titled Build Your Own Metal Working Shop from Scrap. Hope this is useful. Paranoid 11:25, 25 Feb 2005 (GMT)

WikiHow is a wiki with user-created how-tos. 81.211.110.171 14:08, 9 Jul 2005 (UTC)

STRUCTURE

 * TOOLS are the most important ones in most processess, therefore this encyclopedia should pay most attention to tools and their history. Actually, the history of tools reflect all the technological development, [therefore if you don't know how a peace of product is made, but only know it, write the name anyway.] PROBABLY THERE SHOULD ALSO BE A MAIN LIST NOT ONLY OF THE "PRODUCTS", BECAUSE THIS DON'T DON'T MAKE US CONCENTRATE ON TOOLS, BUT THERE SHOULD BE THE MAIN LIST OF "CURRENT DAY TOOLS?" OR JUST "TOOLS", OR MAYBE THERE SHOULD BE MAIN LISTS OF "JUST TOOLS", "JUST PARTS" and "JUST PROCEDURES" --Inyuki 08:23, 29 Jan 2005 (PST)


 * "One exact PRODUCT may need a lot of time or people to complete. For exampole, we decided to create these steps for a specific computer model. If we disassembled it, we found thousands of parts. Every part may be manufactured by different companies. So, we will need somehow to identify these factories, visit them and get to know how that specific part is made, and then, disassemble the sector of the factory that manufactures the part, identify the manufactureres of all the parts of it and so on."


 * //Thousands of parts// This is why needs structurization. I think the best would be to mention only subparts. That's why is hyperlinking needed. Also, it should be done by reflecting the practical creation of some product, like, you wouldn't go to explain how to mill the flour if you explain how to bake a cake in a kitchen. But you may always hyperlink the exact kind of flour, so others will write how this kind of flour is made.


 * //visit them// Not always very practical way to get the knowledge.


 * People may be curious about how some sone is polished, and sometimes may be unable to actually identify the product, therefore I think the question list is needed for asking questions. Also, some rules for asking questions would also be needed.


 * PROCEDURES? THE PROCEDURE? Probably on one page there should be explained how one exact thing is made, it seems that "Procedures" might be not the best way to name the list. Perhaps "Tasks" would be better. There still could be hyperlinks for more explanation of more complex tasks. And the whole list would be called "the procedure".

Where to start
If necessity is the mother of invention, a logical place to start would be width basic human necessities.


 * Air. At some point (Space Shuttle Atlantis) it will be necessary to store/transport/clean/produce it, but for now nature provides.
 * Water. Same as above. Information on how to locate freshwater resources in different kinds of habitat would be useful.
 * Food. How to find and identify edible food sources would be important. So too would be to know how to prepare/cook it so as to minimize biochemical risk. How to cook brings us to our first necessary tool..
 * Fire. Some basic uses for fire. Cooking, Fire can also be used as a tool to make..
 * Spear width fire-hardened tip. Makes hunting more efficient.

We are now at a point about 1 million years ago.
 * So, according to your suggested way, I have started the inventions list. I think that the list is a very good solution for organizing the knowledge for that sake. However I forsee the problems in the future.

Inventions list problem
Some day the list will become really huge, and there might be difficulties in editing it. Also, the inventions will have to be moved up and down to change their sequence with the goal to find the final logical sequence, and for this process to be effective I think we need list management system of some kind.

Site's name in the future
In order to make a project more popular, I think one of the things necessary, is making a separate domain for it now. I can think up with the several following names: Technopedia, Techpedia, Wikitech, Technowiki, Techiki, Howtopedia, Inventionary. Which one to choose? Projects like Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikiquote gained popularity because of the popularity of Wikipedia. However, it seems the other projects are not so popular as the Wikipedia. Why? Perhaps because they don't have so important goals embedded into them as Wikipedia do. There is no underlying great goal to achieve. To make a dictionary is not such a great goal than to organize knowledge. To collect quotes is either. Another reason might be the name: only the wikipedia is "pedia", which implies encyclopedia, and encyclopedia is a great thing. The other names of projects are only derivatives from Wikipedia. It's wiki[something] : wikibooks, wikiquotes etc. So, even if it would be the shortest way to name it "Wikitech", I don't see it being such small project. It should be "pedia", as it's encyclopedia (of technologies). Hence, best name would be "Technopedia", but it is already registered. Deriving from "How To Engineer It", it could also be "Howtopedia", but it's not an international word, as well as the word "invention". I see only "Techpedia" remaining. Even though with emited "no", it carries the same meaning (hi-tech, tech-pedia?), and - even better - it has not more letters than "Wikipedia" has, it can easily be pronunced at least in English and Japanese. So, even though "Technopedia" would be the best name for it, it will perhaps be "Tech-pedia". Any ideas? [need to post it to ml later] --Inyuki 16:17, 26 Mar 2005 (EST)
 * tech-db.org would also perhaps be a good name for it, especially for the shortness and meaningfulness, however, I think the Wiki spirit should be retained, so I have recently registered a domain name "wikitech.org". Though, it's not a final decision. Recently I've been trying to put the project site under this domain, but there are problems with Wikicities to be solved in order to do that.--Inyuki 00:47, 31 Mar 2005 (EST)


 * I wanted to create a Wikicity that was a general purpose howto wiki. The category structure would be (or would potentially be) as vast as that of Yahoo's or Wikipedia's. Engineering would definitly be represented in my purposed wiki so when I first saw this wiki I assumed that it should be a subset of my idea. After reading this discussion page, it's goals (rebooting civilization, structure, etc...) seems much loftier and complicated that what I had invisioned so in that respect it should not be a subset of my idea. Anyway, I hope the name does change because the word howto is clearly too generic for this wiki and I would like to use it for my general purpose howto wiki. I look foward to heaing response to this so I can determine the best direction to take my project in. Thanks. JesseHogan 18:39, 2 May 2005 (UTC)


 * I see. I've chosen the name "howto" for its shortness. But If you want the name "howto.wikicities.com", I could agree with that. I'm not sure what the name should be at all. I have registered a domain http://www.wikitech.org for this project, however, I'm not 100% sure it would be the perfect name for it. At any rate, the goals are much more important than the name... And, for instance, I would agree renaming this site to something like technopedia.wikicities.org or something if you want this name.--Inyuki 19:21, 7 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Making a general purpose howto is intresting. I started Wikisolutions for this. It is supposed to solve problems related to "Where to" or "What about" or any similar questions. I want to move it from wikibooks, and i would like to have a wiki for it (see here and here and here). I like the name Wikisolutions, because it has a more general meaning and it can be translated into various languages. Wikifind and WWWiki are less intresting (WWWiki = Where What Wiki). Other names like wikihowto or howtowiki or wikiguidance are also possible. moa3333


 * As Angela said, there are two similar projects already. One is WikiHow, recently converted to an open licence. One think that neads atention is what kind of company is behind it (it is not an open company at 100%). Seccondly, i don't know if Common Creative is as good as GFDL regarding the compatibility with wikipedia and with the documentation of various free software projects (since wikisolutions has many pages about computing). The seccond project is this one, but it seems it is not realy a place where to put general purpose how tos. moa3333


 * Question: Should i emerge wikisolutions into this howto, ask for a new wiki on wikicities or just use WikiHow? If i should ask for a new wiki, what should be the name? moa3333


 * UPDATE: i've decided not to use WikiHow because of the licence that requires you link back to the opriginating site and also it will be impossible to include documentation under GFDL from free software or wikipedia (or use the content as man page into a linux program). This means i should use this howto or ask a new wikicity... moa3333


 * UPDATE2: I do think howto is good for Wikisolutions. In fact i do belive Wikisolutions will change the world in some way. It all depends on what is the real goal of howto. Other posibility i like even more is to create wikisolutions.wikicities.com and to call it a wwwwiki web site (a what where who wiki) moa3333


 * UPDATE3: I asked a new wikicity caled wikifind. This will give the proect a better name, and howto can remain about engineering or even change the name to http://www.wikitech.org or whatever. moa3333