Forum:Main discussion

This forum is for discussion about Wikihowto. Please, date your entries.

Describing and conveying procedural information, A video showing how to make your own 'vacuum tubes' (triodes)
I think this video is pretty good at conveying the production process. We cannot make out certain important details just from this video, but I think it makes clear that video information is very good at telling the story and showing how to move hands.

Any ideas how we could improve our general ability to convey creation procedures at Wikihowto?

--Inyuki (2008 01 15)

State of the Art Biology Lab reference online (an information source)
Recently had been suggested by my girlfriend to look at this http://www.protocol-online.org/. There are links to explanations how to accomplish complex biotech tasks. An example: Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction: Summary: http://www.protocol-online.org/prot/Molecular_Biology/PCR/ Details: http://dorakmt.tripod.com/genetics/realtime.html

--Inyuki 08:38, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Featured Wikia wiki
I think we should also apply for featured wiki and nominate our wiki. ( see http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Featured_Wikia ).

I think of the following reasons, but you could try to improve the text:

Our goal is to find out how mankind achieved sophisticated level of technology through learning and sharing the 'howto' experience, collecting it into a useful procedural information manual -- a blueprint for rebuilding the civilization from scratch after a global catastrophe.

Our motives vary from purely satisfying the curiosity to learning useful practices.

Having exciting goals which we begin to actually realize, we believe our work may be of interest to more people. --02:09, 27 January 2008 (UTC)


 * We can apply for it, but i am not comfortable with self nomination. But thats just my belief ZyMOS 04:09, 27 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, neither do I feel comfortable with self nomination. Perhaps a better way to go is just to continue to improve the site, think of how to make it more interesting for a newcomer. Nomination should come as a result of that. --Inyuki 10:56, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree ZyMOS 18:01, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Inventions wikia - a wiki for the unfinished procedural information
Sometimes you have some idea that needs finding steps for it's realization.

For a wikihowtoer who is used to writing down the steps, it might be convienient to have a place for writing these steps down even before actually having the result.

An idea is to have that wiki as a complementary project to Wikihowto, for creating new howtos through writing down notes while inventing/creating. When an invention is finished and the steps are actually done once, it would then be possible to transfer that information to Wikihowto.

What do you think about it? Should we embrace that wiki for this purpose?

--Inyuki 2008.02.26

Added templates
Added templates called "createPage" to all red links. You can have multiple templates if you want... see this link for examples: http://communitytest.wikia.com/index.php?title=Xfgdfgdfgdfg&action=edit  http://howto.wikia.com/wiki/MediaWiki:Createplate-TEMPLATENAME is a URL that lets you create individual templates http://howto.wikia.com/wiki/MediaWiki:Createplate-list is the url where all the templates are managed to see which order they should be displayed in on the red link edit page

Contact me if you want help getting other templates created, like for guides color="Blue">Gil (color="Blue" size="1">talk) 17:11, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Knol and wikihowto's objects
Hello. I see now that Google has lauched Knol. It is presented to the public as a Wikipedia alternative, but in fact it has one of wikihowto's benefits. The entire press has presented knol as a Wikipedia killer. It ain't nothing. Just look at the one and only official announcement. I am citing this from the anouncement, read it carefully: The goal is for knols to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions. What the how to? Then remeber the discussios about the importance of having on Wikihowto multiple howtos and guides on the same subject just because each of them might be good in a certain context or for certain individuals? Then i am citing again from this google announcement: '''For many topics, there will likely be competing knols on the same subject. Competition of ideas is a good thing'''... very intresting. Then remeber Why do we have Howtos and Guides? Howtos are supposed to describe things while Guides will offten link to other howtos and external pages (this was the idea from the begining). Now i am citing this from the same announcement: Knols will also include references and links to additional information. Then remeber the purpose of Objects? They are just a way to put forward the bast howtos related to a specific subject or point of intrest. This provides a mean to users to decide what howtos are promoted and witch howtos are ignored (but not erased). Now i cite from the same anouncement: Anyone will be able to rate a knol or write a review of it.... intresting. I still belive that the idea of having a group of people editing each article (instead of a single individual) is a better approach. Also i think having a wel organized Object page is better than simple tags that are "rated" by users (but i am not against rating howtos). This is why i belive Objects should remain manually edited in the long term and not be generated automatically like categories (it gives people more control on the howtos that are put forward at the top of the page or highlighted). knol is not a danger to Wikipedia. But it is indeed a real danger to Wikihowto. Advantaged of Knol: it has more press coverage and the software is more intuitive to use and adapted to this kind of work. Advantages of Wikihowto: the basic ideas and phylosophy is much better and collaborative and the licence too. Weak points of Wikihowto: low media coverage and the software is not yet well suited (we need a new software or a new version of MediaWiki with objects and rating or splitting articles in two and all that stuff) but this two aspects can change very rapidly if AND ONLY IF we become an official Wikimedia project. Also other languages like french does not use Objects at all sadly. Anyway, what is the Wikimedia application status? I think we should present Wikihowto as a Knol killer. This will get us promoted more easily on Wikimedia because many of them are afraid of Knol. moa3333 15:44, 24 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Knol seems to be able to compete with Wikihowto, but it is not for howtos. It may have some procedural knowledge, but it's knowledge is still rather descriptive than procedural.
 * I tried to find weather http://wikihowo.com is discussing this problem, but instead I found a citation of a part of Knol article in a Wikihowo article.
 * So, it seems to me that Knol is rather a repository of all kinds of knowledge for a Wikihow.com user (and is therefore not a competitor of Wikihow), but we would have difficulty of doing the same here (because of different licenses)...
 * I think therefore that in order to have the same benefit for us, we have to somehow enable the choice for a writer to choose to use CC license if he or she wishes to do so.
 * By the way, if we really manage to become a Wikimedia and portray ourselves as a Knol killer, it would really be good both for us, and for Wikimedia I guess. A good idea. --Inyuki 17:55, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I think all main pages should remain GFDL. All objects, help pages, portals, should be GFDL. All new howtos and guides should be GFDL. All old howtos and guides should remain GFDL. But i think we can alow creation of Howtos and Guides that are copied from elsewere to be under CC licence. In this case there should be a box on top to warn the person that the page is not using the deault licence (in order to avoid contamination to pure GFDL licenced pages). If wikihowto becomes very popular, we will be able to switch back to GFDL only... moa3333 21:07, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I think all main pages should remain GFDL. All objects, help pages, portals, should be GFDL. All new howtos and guides should be GFDL. All old howtos and guides should remain GFDL. But i think we can alow creation of Howtos and Guides that are copied from elsewere to be under CC licence. In this case there should be a box on top to warn the person that the page is not using the deault licence (in order to avoid contamination to pure GFDL licenced pages). If wikihowto becomes very popular, we will be able to switch back to GFDL only... moa3333 21:07, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Cannot create new pages
I cannot create new pages even loged in: "HowTo Wiki has restricted the ability to create new pages. You can go back and edit an existing page, or log in or create an account." I just created a new Howto just here and it should be moved to proper location. I hope this howto is useful for most people. moa3333 22:38, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Switching to the new parser
Hi,

We are currently making preparations for the next wiki software upgrade. While we expect this to have little or no effect on most wikis, it may cause some pages on this wiki to render poorly. To help reduce or eliminate these issues, please see the Central Forums for more details.

Thanks - sannse (talk) 10:51, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

growing amount of commercial howtos
I getting concerned about the amount of howtos that are based on a specific commercial products. They are legitimate howtos with steps and the usual, not like most spam. but they require the purchase of a product, and the article is based on that software. see the ZyMOS 01:25, June 24, 2010 (UTC)