Historical:WikiHowTo (proposal-post-original)

This is after modifications on the original proposal by ZyMOS.

For the current proposal go to WikiHowTo (proposal)

In the past year or so we have seen a few howto web sites. None of them was very well designed as to be both wiki-like, simple and easy to contribute.

Old atempts

 * Wikisolutions was my initiative. It was too complicated to understand. I used guidelines that were a lot more complicated than the object/portal system here.
 * original Howto on wikicities, it was at first not really started and only about manufactured things. right now it has the idea of objects, but it does not go so far as too split various usags an object could have, and it will soon begin having complicaed rules i guess...
 * WikiHowTo - it is only an idea started recently.
 * other howtos have not a good organisation, or they are in other licences than GFDL. For example, WikiHow, it does have a good presentation inside howtos, but again, i think the organisation is quite bad,  and this rules inside howtos are also limitating a lot the user. They do not fit well with all the howtos possibe.

Unified proposal


In order to make a universal howto web site, i have came with the idea of objects and portals. Then guides and howtos:
 * Objects are pages on Wikipedia. For exampel "office suite" or "apple" or any other.
 * Mini-portals, or Portals, on the other hand, are not the same as in Wikipedia. Actually you will have more portals than on Wikipedia, and they will be focused around practical neads, NOT around abstrac ideas, like in Wikipedia.
 * Then you have guides. A guide is always related to an object and a portal. It means it is a guide about "that" object inside "this" Portal. A guide will list a few howtos.
 * A Howto is a page where you find a precise explanation or solution to a problem. Usually a guide has a few howtos inside it. More or less, depending on how many people are interested in it.

From all this pages, only portals should be into categories. Why? because objects already are into categories inside Wikipedia, we do not want to crate the same catgries that will not be useful here, because the object is not the most importat, but the portals are...

Let's see how each page should be structured:
 * An object: it should have a like to the page on Wikipedia. Then a list of links to the various guides related to that object related to various portals.
 * A portal: should have a description of the portal, and also a well designed page that will point you to the most important guides related to that portal.
 * A guide: a guide should have a short description of the purpose of the guide, eventually a link to object that are related. It could or could not have links to related guides (since the object already has links to ll the guides related to that object). It should also have a table of contents, or links to all the howtos that are inside.
 * A howto page: it is completely free-style. You can write a howto page how you want.

Basically, an object will be a list of guides, a portal will be like a portal on Wikipedia more or less, a guide will be completely free-style, maybe it will have a decripton and links to a few internal howtos/chapters.

Now here are he naming conventions:
 * an obect will have exactly the name of the object. For example, "office suite" will have the name Office suite. Actually it is best to take exactly the same name as in Wikipedia. This way it will be easy to surf...
 * A Portal will have the name "Portal:name", for example Portal:Free Software
 * A guide will have th name "object:portal", for example Office suite:Free Software
 * howtos will have a name that is inside the guide they belong to Office suite:Free Software/Understand about possible choices. Or even inside the portal Portal:NewbieHelp and related to the object OpenOffice you could have OpenOffice:NewbieHelp/how to make basic editing in OpenOffice. This is inside the guide OpenOffice:NewbieHelp of course.

Naming convention could seem complicated, but in fact they ar simple. Each guide is composed by an object and a portal ("object:portal"). You can edit a guide completely free-style as much as you begin al your pages and howtos with "object:portal/.......".

Objects are a copy of Wikipedia pages.

Portals are relted to various tasks and degree of help. Example of portals:
 * Portal:simple hacks - only about simple hacks a programmer would like to see related to various objects
 * Portal:newbie help - about sipmle guides that only a newbie will nead, no expert guides here
 * Portal:Free Software - about listing various free software (not anything else)
 * Portal:electronic newbie hacks - only hacks about electronics, only for newbies
 * Portal:electronics advanced - complete guides about electronics designed for the advanced user
 * Portal:newbie maths - for people who are in highschool or does not know maths at all
 * Portal:advanced mathematics - only for math gurus
 * Portal:software user guide - this are guides only for the final user
 * Portal:programmer guide - this are general guides designed to help the programmer understand, for example OpenOffice:programmer guide is a guide about programmer who wants to begin contriuting to open office, but it is not for the end user. The en user will choose OpenOffice:software user guide
 * etc...

Some guides could just well be a redirect to other guides. For example "OpenOffice:user guide" could jus as well redirect to "OpenOffice:software user guide". And "OpenOffice:Free Sfotware" will wil not be a user guide, but something else, depending on what the free software portal is about (usually list of existing free software products).

I guess this is quite clear now. I willsay again that inside every guide, there is free-style about editing it, a little like the books in wikibooks. The only restriction is related to the portal. For example a guide inside a portal should follow the rules of that portal. And each portal should have its own rules, of what goes in and what must go elsewhere.

This will allow simple wiki-like linking to objects, but also you will have all related guides grouped inside a portal.

Aproval
The goal is to make only one howto, that everyone agree with.

Please say your name, and what you think about this model (pease specily yes, no, almost yes if you agree but you would like a few modifications):
 * yes User:Moa3333 - well, i came with the idea. for now i think it is great.

Other proposals
If you do not agree "at all", than you can link here to your own proposals (if you only want a few modifications than you can say them in the Approval chapter):