Talk:Main Page:Archive4

New Proposal
After the original proposal, here it is the new proposal. moa3333 05:08, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Supporters of the Proposed Project
Please list you name if you this this project is a good idea. It will help in the Formal proposal to show that there is wide support. Even if you want to sign as Anonymous, at least it will show that people like it. Goto Help:Supporters

Comments/Suggestions

 * I like what you have done. Is it ok if I start helping with the creation of the main site?  I think the new proposal is really good and i would suggest only make minor, minor *modifications.  The main page should probablly have links to some portals(or objects) or links to list of them, at least at first.  It will speed up the creation of the first(hundred) howtos, guides, objects, portals.  People tend to contribute when they see an empty link to something they know howto do, and missing howtos of things they are really into.  I think we are ready to start this going.  Thanks ZyMOS 13:55, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I created a few lists. I think this is enaught for now, since i don't want to see a tree-structure of categories. I don't to make it category-based because it will have much more pages than wikipedia and more difficult to put into categories. And after all, it will not be so usefull to be inside categories, when you realy want to find something you don't have time to look inside all categories... Leter, the portals will alow people to coordinate the howtos they like more, but fr now we are a few people and we should better try to increase the number of objects/howtos/guides witch are important pages. Later we will make a big list of most important objects for example, and even later (2007) we will make more than one partal and we will be able to put portals into categories, but this is not the most important, and we are not yet there. moa3333 15:24, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I've read the archives. I think that only this encapsulation using objects could allow to effectively write on even the the complex things (e.g., in Posting a message to a community blog with LiveJournal, the first 3 steps are encapsulated objects, which were reused to write this short HowTo.), so maybe there is a need to explaining the object concept. Still, there is okay if people write long instructions, as it will make it easier to create objects and replaces the complex parts with the objects. Inyuki 16:25, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I like how things are going. Ive put are few conncers/questions hereUser:ZyMOS/comments.  They are minor but you could comment on them it would help.  I like the new nameing scheme,  It looks really nice on the top of the howto pages, much better than the way i was doing it. Here ar the pages ive been working on rawlist of pages  ~ZyMOS 21:16, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I think we should name objects with the word object in it. for example "Object:Crackers".  I think it would help us to keep organized.  I think it should be the same for protals, guide and howtos.  Guides and howtos inherently have them 'Guide to crackers' & 'Howto eat crackers. and if we keep with that naming style it will be easy to see all the objects,portals,guides,howtos by veiwing all pages in alphabetical order http://en.howto.wikicities.com/wiki/Special:Allpages ZyMOS 00:28, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Stagne pages
I have seen soeme strange pages like Object:LiveJournal and Object:Soldering. Sin't it better to crate only LiveJournal without the Object in the name? moa3333 23:49, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Two paragaphs up
 * I think we should name objects with the word object in it. for example "Object:Crackers". I think it would help us to keep organized. I think it should be the same for protals, guide and howtos. Guides and howtos inherently have them 'Guide to crackers' & 'Howto eat crackers. and if we keep with that naming style it will be easy to see all the objects,portals,guides,howtos by veiwing all pages in alphabetical order http://en.howto.wikicities.com/wiki/Special:Allpages
 * I have only 2 created pages with that format i havnt converted any. I just think its a good idea to has some sort of labling. i dont care what Object:Car or Object Car or Object/Car and having Object as the first word automaticly puts them is the same place alphabeticly.  Also, eventually we will want to script things so that one can list all objects or all object that have the automotive and so on, same goes with portals, I can remove it if the concensus is NO ZyMOS 07:30, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I think that this is because we have both - pages on "howtos" and "things", so maybe ZyMOS wanted to distinguish objects from the howtos from the rather organizational pages, that actually list howtos related with that object.


 * I think that instead of writing Object:Livejournal, we should however just add tag into those pages that are the pages, which list, what you can do with the object (thing).Inyuki 07:36, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Ill convert the ones i made to normal, I am interested in how this template will work.  How will you be able to list all pages with this template.  We should also make one for the other pages ZyMOS 03:24, 10 February 2006 (UTC)


 * The reason objects should be only simple pages, without Object: or anything other is because this way you can go directly to the object that you want and search for an object more easily. Usualy when you search for a howto that you are not sure even if the howto that you are searching exists, you search for an object related to that howto or guide. So it would be bad to have objects that are difficult to search. For example, when i want to know about apt, should i search for "apt" or for "apt object"? I think it is enaught to type apt and then to go directly to that page, it requires one less mouse click, witch is good. Every howto should be at most 2 mouse clicks. (one GO in the sarch area, and the seccond the click on the howto in that object list of howtos). moa3333 15:15, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Object, Class and Method concepts
So, I got a little bit confused on what we call objects:


 * "the real-life objects, that can be used, anything from the abstract to the concrete"

OR


 * "the complete, already working group of howtos, related with the object, that can be reused in other howtos, as classes can be reused in Object-oriented programming?

To distinguish this, I suggest calling the LiveJournal and any real-life entities "objects", OR "superclasses".

When we will move forward, we may see that some actions with more complicated objects are more complicated, and doing some action may require many small steps to be done. There are the LiveJournal login, registration, and such preparatory actions before doing the a more complex action. These could be grouped, and called by some name, that in every howto you wouldn't need to repeat the four or three howtos, you could just write the " # prparatory([params, eg.: do methods 1(do not do 3,4), 3, 4]) " link, where all this would be encapsulated. I mean, we these "classes" should be universal enough that we could reuse them by not rewriting them, but just adding the comments, like we add parameters in functions. It would be of course great if wiki software would allow to add values to pages, which would depend on the link you are accessing the page, but as far as this functionality seems to be absent, people would have to think of the things manually.

Still, I don't know if these things that I am telling, would become applicable. If we rely on numbers of actions, howtos could quickly become buggy just by shifting a sequence of numbers.

Anyway, finally, the smallest part - the howtos, that put that object into use, would be methods.

Still I doubt if we need Objects-Classes-Methods. Maybe it's enough just Objects-Methods (aka, Objects-Howtos) schema, as it's simpler. Grouping of Howtos into classes could be considered later. Inyuki 07:37, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Do we have a central page for templates?
HowTo_Wiki:Templates < a suggestion. Inyuki 08:39, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

The real value of Objects
The most important about the flat-objects model is that it is the most simple to browse and find pages. You only require 2 mouse clicks in most cases, some time 3 or 4 if you go to related pages. In any case, the time you spend to either find or go to a page you have already seen in the past is minimal.

The idea is not to have something that is matematicaly correct, or "politicment corect" like we say in France. We do not nead it to be perfect, we nead objects to alow for 2 clicks browsing of pages. 99% of people that will come here in the future will not stay more than 30 secconds to find a howto. And most of then they want to be able to re-find a how-to they already visited in 10 secconds, without knowing his name. With the object model you can just search for the object then browse that page and go to the howto you are intrested in.

Actually portals will be more complex. Portals will be for making real categories, and grouping all the pages, etc... Objects is only a simple way to find a howto in a minimum of time (if you are lucky). That is why we do not have strict ruiles about what howto should enter in witch Object, etc... this should be done as to alow maximum browsing speed and minimum number of clicks and keyboard use for anyone who wanrt to find a howto. On the contrary, portals will have the role of organising pages. This is not something objects should do, but portals. That is why only portals will be inside categories, not objects.

moa3333 11:54, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I like this model, it makes sence. One thing i am not sure we have solved, is howto seach.


 * Will object be like wikipedia. You type the thing you want to find and that gives you your object.  i.e. search is for objects only.
 * Will this require us to create every object, even with out any relevant howtos... just a link to wikipedia.(I really dont like this idea)
 * I think that's okay to create these organizational pages. Because. Finally they will have to be created anyway. Also, what if I just think it would be cool to know how to create a general car, and what technics are used for its creation? I don't have any howto. I have to start from making a name for the howto, and adding it as a link to some object. Otherwise we would have to write every howto to the howto list, which eventually not happen, because people won't trouble themselves editing the huge list, and adding the howto somewhere there. The most what they would like to do, is to add a category to every page. Again, what if I want to start a page on how to create a Strong AI, which is not created yet, but may eventually be created just because of existence of the start of howto. Because people, can discuss on discuss pages, and eventually create steps, not all at once, but gradually. Inyuki 07:33, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
 * My concern about this is that initialy people will come to the site and will only see hundreds of blank pages and think this site is empty. When i first went to the old site i was frustuated because i searched around to find some howtos and all i found where dead ends.  Just my opinion ZyMOS 17:54, 12 February 2006 (UTC)


 * If say we left it as is. if you search gets an object then your set, if not it will try to list pages the seem relevent.  This may work... but i think the search only searches the "summary" of pages. (correct me if i am wrong)  If so we may want to come up with a format for entering summaries


 * also we are starting to get a number of howtos, so i think we sould start to make some portals. I have been hesitant, because i think you have a better understanding of want is desired.ZyMOS 01:56, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Something i came up for me. object names and disambiguety. Do we want to have the object be more specific.  For example 'soldering' could be 'soldering electronics', 'soldering stain glass windows' or even 'soldering jewlery' ZyMOS 02:01, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

If you have many links inside an object, you can group them by chapter. Each chapter will be a variation of the object. Then you have the sub-chapters, that can be Create/Do/Get/etc... and so on. I think with sub-chapter we will be able to avoid the creation of un-natural objects. I think that natural language is enaught evolved in 99% of the cases to give a name to each important thing, but it will use adjectives only for little variations. I think we should trust the natural language and not create strange objects. Natural language has more than 10000 years of history or more, there is a word created for every important thing, if there is no word than the "object" is only a sub-category of a larger objects so we can use chapters (or if there are realy many links in sub-chpaters we can use diferent pages, but they will be related to the main object).

About the portals, i was thinking to integrate old how-tos from wikisolutions with objects first, but if you want to create a few portals, maybe we should start to find out what will be the portals name and subject. If we choose that well, the rest is less critical. moa3333 13:49, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Where belongs it
I