Talk:Main Page:Archive5

Questions

 * Should we create redirect files for howtos that apply for different names. sometimes people only know or think of one of the names.
 * For example, redirect 'Howto Set the computers clock in linux' to 'Howto Set the computers clock in unix'
 * I think we can do that, if it is the same howto. But we can also link from "linux" to the howto related to unix directly. The question is if we link to it both from linux and unix? I think we should link only from one of them, the most popular, linux. And write in the other page that all links to pages that are not unix-only can be found in the linux page. In fact, real unix does not exists. Unix is a trade mark. Linux and the BSD's are not official unixes. Solaris i think is not a real unix nether. Real unixes are almost never used, usually we use POSIX-compatible systems. moa3333 16:07, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Ya i thought of that, but i doubt half the linux users know the word posix. as a result *nix, or unix seems to take the place. my concern is search engines, people may search "linux set computer clock" and we would want the page to be a hit.
 * a possible alternative would be naming a single page(is no redirects) "Howto Set the computers clock in unix-BSD-linux"
 * I have a feeling this will also come up on other subjects, so i thought we might make a policy(recommended naming scheme)

New moto
I think we should think of a moto for this web site from now on. I suggest to choose one that is very engaging and also that is more oriented to the future, not the present. I think we can be inspired by wikipedia, but we must go much further. "the free encyclopedia" is not the best for wikipedia, it was mainly inspired by the free software movement. So using free into the moto is not a good idea. We can use free in the description.

I think we must emphasis that this must be n up-to-date peer-reviewed in a wiki-style web site. The information that was good yesterday will not be good tomorrow. For example "buy a Pentium1" is not good any more as advice. That is why the fact that the information here is continuously evolving is realy the value of the web site. There are already other books that will tell you how to do many things, but they are not so popular because the world changes a lot. We will have awsome pages that will not change a lot. But most pages either will change all the time completely, either they will include new technicks to do the same thing a new way that might be chaper or better than the previous way...

I thinked about '''We put information into motion: its evolution is owr value! 'cause pure information has no value for us'''. But we can say into move or at work instead.

moa3333 23:54, 17 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I think using up-to-date in the moto is a good idea, or constantly updating tutorials and guides. Most of the Main Page moto's have been confusing, i not sure if its a translation thing.  for Example, the above i belief it would be more fluid to say, We are putting information into use: evolution is our goal! 'cause information alown lacks the benefit of experience even better would be WikiHowTo, an evolution of knowledge with the benefit of experience' ZyMOS 20:24, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Ok, we can start with this one. moa3333 07:56, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Objects
I think ols pages from wikisolutions should be converted to guides, not objects like Anonymous Internet access(What free software exists for). Most of all there is no page on wikipedia about this "object".

What i did is creating two objects: Internet and Internet privacy, and link to the guide. moa3333 15:57, 23 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree, some of the ones that don't have text, just links, may be better suited for the standard form of Objects for example 3D editors, but perhaps not... ill let u decide about um... you would know more about them than me so feel free to revert ZyMOS 00:41, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I do think we should change the name though like Guide to anonymous Internet access ZyMOS 00:41, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

I think we should create guides even for list of external links. Not to crate too many links inside the object page. It will also allow to split in a few guides (free-non free- or whatever). Some if not, objects would have too many links. For example, there should be a guide for different types of dogs by category.If we put all links into one guise tey will be too many. If we put them inside the object dog, they will be too many too. moa3333 09:03, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

I think also t object should be an existing wikipedia page! "3e editor" was not one. I redirected from 3d editor, 3D editor and 3d Editors and 3D editors to 3D computer graphics software witch is a wikipedia page.
 * that sounds fineZyMOS 12:51, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Automated Interlinking

 * i have been trying to figure this one out with little luck
 * i posted this on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help_Forum, but i don't think its very active

I'm working on a new project called WikiHowTo. we want to make something called an object pages, where it would have a similar form as shown below, and would be the page, shoe Object: shoe Howtos: * howto tie a shoe * howto resole a shoe * howto make a shoe But We need to automate it some how, so that people creating new howtos don't have to search and add their links manually to each applicable object. Ideally they would work like categories. each howto page joins the applicable category(object).
 * Why categories are not what we want
 * they are quite ugly for this application and have much unused text
 * we want the search to goto the object page, similar to wikipedia. if you search 'shoe', you goto object 'shoe'
 * Solutions(that i haven't gotten to work right)
 * use categories, create a redirect from shoe to Category:Shoe. In the category use some "magic" words to remove unnecessary text, and make it look like above
 * add transclusion under Howtos: to
 * i cant get it to work. if it did it would nice to not have the View (previous 50) (next 50) (20 | 50 | 100 | 250 | 500)., but is still acceptable
 * any other solutions??


 * Please note by when i say categories i do NOT mean categorize I just mean how the categories can automatically link backwards

I really don't have a solution, but we should figure out something. Or else there will be a lot of lonely pages where the interlinking could be.
 * as of now the only way to find a howto is to look at Special:Allpages or if they are linked somewhere else that you know to look. Objects are even harder because you don't even know by the name.
 * I wrote some scripts to help keep the object list, howto list up to date but this is a bad solution
 * Script to locate all Howtos
 * Script to locate all Objects ZyMOS 00:41, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

=Goals= We now have over 100 howtos, a couple of guides, and a ton of objects. Interlinking between them is ok, but could be better. So the question is... What do we need to work on next?

Ideas

 * portals?
 * Policies?
 * appearance?
 * Help pages to help people understand our system and how to get started?
 * more howtos, guides, objects?
 * formalizing proposal?
 * advertising?

Backward linking??
I do not think we ever need backward links. The reason is that with backward links we cannot decide on the style of a page, how they will be presented.

And i think that if we want to find fast any howto and guide we raly need to have object pages that not only look nice, but also are well structured, there is an order on witch the pages are linked, we can use bold for important or pages that are often used, etc.

If this links are only ordered alphabetically it will be bad. So i do think we need forward linking because it is more important to have a nice object page (custom page) than a generated one. And we do not really need to go backward, from the howto to the objects.

The direction fo surfing is from the object to the howtos, not the other way. On Wikipedia, the direction of browsing is the other way: from the pages to the categories, and then back to otherpages.

In the worst case, we could have backward linking from the object to the howto, this means we will make a link in the object page to the howto, and then we will be able to have a list of all objects tha link to a specific howto. In this case, the howto/guide page is the "category", and the object is a normal page.

The hole problem is to see what is forward and what is backward? Everything is relative. moa3333 20:22, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I believe there is a bit of confusion about the word 'backward'. This is probable the wrong word.  I want the objects to link to the howto, but to be automated.


 * For Example:
 * A guy makes a howto 'Howto paint a self portrait with oil paint'. this is related to 'Oil painting' and 'self portrait'. I don't think that the guy should have to search for these objects and place his link on them.  It would be allot better if he could put a function on the page that would automatically put links to his howto on those object pages

Place this on the Howto

This automatically apperes on the object page

Object: oil painting

Howto:
 * Howto paint a self portrait with oil paint

and the same for the 'self portrait' object


 * I like the object format, im not saying we should change the appearance. I just think we should automate it. I however don't see a problem having a list of links at the bottom of the page for what objects the howto is a member of. It will be a short list and very related to the subject so people may want to check out the other object.  For example, say i searched 'self portrait' and went to the howto, i may want to check out oil painting. ZyMOS 01:12, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

This will imply the object page is auto-generated. I do not think we should do this. But there is some other way to do: use the "what page links here"

In addition it would be possible to do this:
 * Put objects into the default mainspace, howtos into the "Howto:" namespace, guides into "Guide:" namespace, portals into "Portal:" namespace.
 * Then you will have "what pages from default namespace link here", "what guides link here", "what howtos link here", "what portals link here".

This will requre changing the mediaWiki, and will alow the object page to be manualy writen in order to be usefull to browse.

It will not alow backward linking. Other solutions will be to attach to each howto the objects witch it should belong to. Then to have inside the object page a link to "what pages request integration", that will have all the howtos that belong to the object. You can then ntegrate them into the page manualy, or, optonaly, the object page will have the list of the howtos at the bottom of the page (just a list, with no order, or the order they were aded). This will require mediawiki to look at what pages belong to the object and are not linked from the object page. I think it is a little complicatd, and requires some changes into mediawiki also.

I don't know exactly how to do it, but we should not try to make the object page automatically generated. It will be much easier to navigate with a page that we can write manually, and put the links in the order we want, using how many chapters we want, etc...

It would seem we do more work, but we obtain much more flexibility. moa3333 04:35, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I would choose a solution that is easy to implement, and will not require puting the pages into templates. The solutions would be to attach to each page its "type". You can then define a few types for pages, like "object", "guide", "howto", "portal". Then implement the "what links here with type XXX". This will be possible to implement in php/mysql, as much as the number of types remains limited to only a few. Anyway, even with this system, you will have to manualy edit the object page. moa3333 04:35, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I dont know how to do it ether, thats why i raise the question. mediaWiki does lots of things similar, so i was just investigating if there was a way to do it(within the code we have).  ZyMOS 06:19, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I had another thought about object that may be useful. under the Object: Integrated circuits line we could have a Aliases:ICs, microchips line, or something like that so it would look something like this

Object: Integrated circuits

Aliases: ICs, microchips

Howto:
 * dsfsdfsd

something like that. Just an idea.... ZyMOS 06:19, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

=Site Statistics= These were aquired from my poorly writen scripts
 * Number of Howtos: 108
 * Number of Guides: 12
 * Number of Objects: 169
 * Number of Empty Objects: 69 ie they have
 * Number of Wanted Howtos: 12
 * Number of Wanted Guides: 0
 * Number of unknown/broken pages: 466

as my scripts get better these will be more accurate

Supporters
I thanked the guy who signed our support list and he responed to me
 * Sure for the support on wiki how to. I really like the "object" idea. Objects related to how to's and connexion between objects can make a really good how to network.

So thats good ZyMOS 06:53, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Optimix is my brother :), but it is better to count him also as contributor. moa3333 18:37, 28 February 2006 (UTC)