Wikipedia talk:How-to

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I see absolutely nothing wrong with having practical advice and even, in some contexts and presented the right way, moral exhortation on Wikipedia. Knowledge, which encyclopedias catalog, includes not just declarative knowledge (knowledge "that") but also procedural knowledge (knowledge "how"). Sometimes it can be of great interest to try to codify procedural knowledge in declarative (or imperative) sentences.

The big question is how to formulate such how-tos. (We need a how-to for how-tos.) In keeping with Wikipedia's general interest in being unbiased, we want advice of a sort that is often given by experts, or in guide books. Where different experts would give different advice, the differences should be noted.

This is great! :-) My only nitpick is that personal opinion is actually to be avoided in Wikipedia how-tos; i.e., we would like even how-tos to be written from the neutral point of view.

The point is that it is sometimes not practical or even possible for some how-tos to be neutral, and even when it is, sometimes the personal opinion is just as valuable information as the neutral information. For example, Poker/Equipment expresses the opinion that high-quality cards and chips are worth the price but that "poker tables" generally aren't. That's useful information to someone learning to play poker, so I wouldn't want it excluded. It should be mentioned in the text above, though, that such opinion should be attributed if it is potentially controversial (if even with a wimpy attribution such as "many believe..." or "this author believes..."). --LDC

I agree entirely that what you call "personal opinion"--if it is expert or (where experts per se don't exist) well-justified opinion--is sometimes just as valuable as neutral information. Please note that extremely opinionated stuff can be presented from the neutral point of view.

I would be curious to learn why how-tos sometimes cannot be neutral. There is more than one way to skin a cat, eh? Wouldn't the neutral point of view have us report on all of them? (First, get a cat; firmly grab it by its neck...) --LMS

Question: what about if somebody starts posting howto guides for really nasty illegal stuff? "tax evasion for beginners"? "Ecstasy production in your own backyard"? "photographic techniques for kiddie porn?" I think it's appropriate to have traditional encyclopedia articles on tax evasion, ecstasy, and kiddie porn, but (hypothetically) having howto guides for such topics poses additional moral questions and ones that might better be dealt with by other projects IMHO.

Yeh, I posted a similar question at talk:Wikipedia Cookbook. The answer was honest, if not especially reassuring. :-) --KQ

About How-tos, which ones to include/move to Wikibooks for classrooms, how-to update Wikipedia:How-to, see Wikipedia:Village_pump#How-to --Docu 12:06, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] From Village Pump: How-to

(Which How-to articles to include? Where do How-to articles belong?) Moved to Wikipedia talk:How-to

"Procedural knowledge or know-how is the knowledge of how to perform some task. Know-how is different from other kinds of knowledge such as propositional knowledge in that it can be directly applied to a task.".

According to Wikipedia:How-to:

"A HowTo is a simple set of instructions needed to complete a task or build something. Ideally, Wikipedia articles should not be mere sets of instructions, but additionally provide historical context and further information."

Both were written before Wikibooks: was created for "developing and disseminating free, open content textbooks and other classroom texts". Not a few of the how-to previously included in Wikipedia have been moved there.

The current situation is less than satisfactory, teachers look at our main page and Wikipedia:How-to and suggest to their students to write how-tos for a task, deletionists use a "how-to" argument for anything that has "How-to" in the title.

Should we continue to have how-tos in Wikipedia or not? Should any type of procedural description be excluded? Is it just classroom-projects and IKEA-how-tos that shouldn't be included? -- User:Docu

I was a strong supporter of having How to knowledge in wikipedia before wikibooks was started. Now I feel that wikibooks is the best place for this stuff. I propose we move all the how to pages over, we put a notice on VfD saying how to's are not to be listed there, we keep the page how to but tell people not to start new how to pages on wikipedia. The how to page should be used to list existing procedural knowledge that needs to be transwikied. theresa knott 00:42, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)
  • Theresa, I agree with your proposal. Kingturtle 00:44, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)
  • Yes - Wikibooks is the best place for How-tos. That type of content is very welcome there. --mav 04:43, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)
  • Appropriate how-to's should have a place in Wikipedia. I am beginning to feel this more and more. I agree that "Wikipedia articles should not be mere sets of instructions, but additionally provide historical context and further information." However, I am somewhat bemused by the apparent consensus that instructional articles are not encyclopedic. Given
a) the derivation of the word (-paideia, teaching or instruction),
b) the historical origins of the Britannica, where "utility" was a chief feature of the mission,
c) The lack of any deprecation on the What Wikipedia is Not page,
d) The apparent endorsement on the Wikipedia:How-to page,
I don't think articles should not be excluded merely on the basis of being how-tos.
An ideal encyclopedia should contain the elements of a full course of general education. Just because something could go in a textbook doesn't mean it should be excluded from an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia is a textbook--a comprehensive textbook, and "instruction" belongs in it as well as "information."
Soapbox off. Dpbsmith 16:15, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I don't think there's any such consensus. I do think that most people don't care which project information ends up in, as long as it is preserved and propagated. Among the people who care strongly about those divisions, I think the only consensus is that original-research style how-tos do not fit in with the rest of Wikipedia. However, many of them would accept a suitably "NPOV" how-to; that is, one which addresses all of the different ways to do something, and puts it in context and into perspective. -+sj+ 09:43, 2004 Mar 2 (UTC)
Dpbsmith, I agree with you up to a point. However, distinguishing the two types of knowledge does seem useful. Perhaps wikipedia and wikibooks should be renamed, both being wikipedia, but each part being "wikipedia information" and "wikipedia instruction" (or whatever). Or perhaps the names should be accepted as idiom as they are de facto now.
Mr. Jones 14:20, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

A solution for recipes appears to be that they are to be included (see also Talk:List_of_recipes/Delete, not necessarily with all steps, quantities and variations though). If we leave out the procedural part, they might as well end up in Wiktionary.

In another field, Algorithms on Wikipedia are described in pseudocode to allow to understand how they work. The Meta:reading level of most of us seems to need that "instructional part". -- User:Docu

Following the various comments also made on the mailing list wikipedia.english, I suggest we add the following to "What_Wikipedia_is_not": "Wikipedia is not excluding content that may also be suitable for textbooks (Wikibooks)". -- User:Docu


[edit] Wikipedia is not a guide?

As far as I remember "wikipedia is not a guide", so am I right to guess that how-to and everything in it is content "to be cleaned up sometime and expected not to be expanded further"? I specifically ask because I told a guy that he should not create howtos in article space and he pointed me to this specific article and its contents. I believe this is wikibooks content, and not wikipedia's.--grin ✎ 19:33, 2004 Aug 7 (UTC)

This seems to support transwiki'ing how-to's Talk:How to breed Siamese Fighting Fish (despite the fact the article still exists)--besides the nominator, six votes to transwiki/delete, with one neutral vote. Why on earth is How to breed Siamese Fighting Fish still here?
Probably someone forgot. It is on its way now. -- Egil 17:35, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I think it would be MUCH better if articles transwikied from Wikipedia were NOT deleted, but replaced with interwiki redirs (or possibly interwiki links). It's better for Wikipedia, because there's less chance of the article getting recreated. It's better for Wikibooks (or Wiktionary, or whichever) because it raises the visibility of the sister projects. It's better for the user, because they find the info they're looking for. Niteowlneils 20:02, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Some people dislike how to articles. Some people like them. Opinions differ. As this policy page says, such an article should contain more than simply the instructions. If you dislike a particular topic, ignoring it is easy enough. Jamesday 03:57, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Be cautious and tentative when you tell people such things. You're not exactly wrong but it's not that simple, either. I believe that this is controversial, that there has never been consensus on this point, and that there is no official policy. I asked this question on the mailing list a while ago and several Wikipedians confirmed my impression.
In practice, though, articles that consist solely of a cooking recipe tend to get listed on VfD, and what then generally happens is that the recipe ends up being transwikied to Wikibooks. The same thing happens to articles that are very explicitly pure step-by-step directions. (I personally oppose this and regard it as tyranny of the majority, or tyranny of the more persistent, rather than true consensus policy, but there you have it.) If you want to test the waters, it might be interesting to list how-to for deletion and see what happens. Conversely, if someone wants to contribute an article that includes a recipe or a set of directions for something, it is a good idea to present them in a cultural context, proceding from general to specific, with the recipe or directions being presented at the end as a very specific example of whatever is being discussed.
Warning, warning, POV alert. Historically, encyclopedias contained a great deal of how-to-like material. Diderot's work was entitled "Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of Science, Arts, and the Trades." The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edition contained all sorts of detailed mechanical and circuit diagrams. It did not quite tell you how to build a working transatlantic telegraph, but nearly. Chambers' 1728 work was entitled "Cyclopaedia; or an Universal Dictionary of Art and Sciences, containing an Explication of the Terms and an Account of the Things Signified thereby in the several Arts, Liberal and Mechanical, and the several Sciences, Human and Divine." The very word "encyclopaedia" means "universal course of study," or "textbook of everything." If it's suitable for a textbook, it should be suitable for Wikipedia. That's just my $0.02 and others do disagree. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 20:30, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for the history, Dpbsmith. I am part of the minority faction that believes guides aren't always out of place in an encyclopedia. I've heard the contrary asserted several times, but never convincingly justified. What determines the nature of what is "encyclopedic", apart from majority opinion? --Fritzlein 00:43, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I understand the general issue is under some debate. However, at the moment I am more concerned about the apparent violation of VfD policy/process in this one specific instance. Unanimous vote to transwiki, and yet a generally respected Wikipedian removes the VfD tag and leaves the article on Wikipedia? Why have VfD if the results areoutcome is based on the whim of individuals. Niteowlneils 19:56, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Also, I am interested in responses to the broader issue, if articles are transwikied for whatever reason, is it not better to leave a redirect to whatever 'sister project' it went to. Niteowlneils 20:26, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

How to Guides generally belong on Wikibooks, because they are not strictly encyclopedic, wikibooks is a collection of books, documentation, and textbooks written by the equivalent of wikipedians. So that is where how to guides belong. —siroχo 09:30, Aug 8, 2004 (UTC)

The fact that Wikibooks uses information originally placed on Wikipedia isn't a justification for deleting that information from Wikipedia. There's no reason to cannibalize when copying will do. - Nunh-huh 23:10, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The only reason I can think of for keeping how-tos (for now) would be to wait until the software can support moving page history across wikis. (Unless this is now possible and I've missed it. I don't work on the other Wikimedia projects so I don't know.) Isomorphic 06:12, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Another reason for keeping them is that they are part of encyclopedias and belong here. As Dpbsmith noted, there's a long tradition of practical instruction in encyclopedias, even though some contributors dislike such things. Jamesday 03:36, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Concur with siroxo. They belong on Wikibooks, not here. Why do you want them in both places? --Improv 03:43, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I'm happy for things to be in as many places as are useful. This particular place is an encyclopedia and encyclopedias traditionally contain such things. That you dislike them doesn't make them unencyclopedic. If you want to create a text book covering a topic which is also covered in a how to article here, please feel free. Jamesday 03:57, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Hey Jamesday -- I wasn't meaning to be a loose canon, making policy and rewriting it in one go. I thought I had read somewhere that it had been explicitly decided that howtos are not for wikipedia but are for wikibooks, so my rewriting of this page was based on the idea that this page simply had never been updated to agree with that consensus. I'm going to double check on it -- it's late where I am, and I'm about to head to bed, but sometime tomorrow I'll see if I can find the policy I thought I read. If it's there, we should probably reapply my changes, if not, we should definitely keep yours unless said conclusion is strongly implied, and then we'll have a discussion, and I will apologise for my error in thinking it decided. --Improv 07:42, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Vfd debate

For the vfd debate related to this page see Wikipedia talk:How-to/delete -- Graham ☺ | Talk 15:29, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Most of this is now obsolete in light of WP:NOT

Let me make it clear that I personally believe an Encyclopedia should contain how-tos. For about two years I've been trying to resolve the apparent discrepancy between this page and the frequent assertions that how-tos belong in Wikibooks. However, currently WP:NOT is perfectly explicit on this point, point 8:

Wikipedia articles should not include instruction - advice (legal, medical, or otherwise), suggestions, or contain "how-to"s. This includes tutorials, walk-throughs, instruction manuals, and recipes. Wikibooks is a Wikipedia sister-project which is better suited for such things.

And that page is "official policy." So Wikipedia articles should not even _contain_ instructions, even in a wider context, according to current policy. Therefore, I gutted the article and stripped out most of the prior contents. (See history if you're interested in, well, the history). Dpbsmith (talk) 14:13, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Per the VfD discussion linked above, this previously had support, so I've added the {{historical}} tag instead. --Interiot 15:56, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Fine with me. But I'm wondering whether the {{historical}} tag shouldn't go below the note referring to the current policy. Dpbsmith (talk) 16:59, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
Try to preview it, the two large boxes look a little weird when they're right next to each other, top-to-bottom. Though the current arrangement isn't necessarily pretty either. Or you could just be more bold and remove the {{Style-guideline}}. --Interiot 17:14, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
The unified box looks great. --Interiot 19:29, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] How-tos in Science

Often it is appropriate for Wikipedia to include details of a particular scientific experiment that are of interest. For example, if they are the first of their kind, or if they are commonly performed, or if they are just generally well known. It is important that scientific how-tos explain why they are of interest.

Some questions that you should consider in articles on scientific experiments:

  • Who first performed this experiment? When? Where? With whom?
  • What technical inventions allowed this experiment to be performed?
  • Where and when were the results published? Under what title?
  • What was the scientific reaction to this experiment?
  • What was the public reaction?
  • What theories did this experiment confirm or disprove?
  • How has this experiment been simplified or made redundant by later innovations?
  • What scientific principles were used in the design of this experiment?
  • Is this experiment commonly performed in schools or universities? At what age range is it typically performed?
  • What conclusions can be drawn from the experiment?
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