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How-to

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Wikibooks
Wikibooks

Wikibooks has a How-tos bookshelf and also books on these subjects:

Individual general-knowledge how-tos are being moved from Wikipedia to Wikibooks, on the How-tos bookshelf. For solution-centered practical how-tos, there is the Wikihowto project (formerly Wikisolutions). For a list of how-tos related to Wikipedia itself, see Wikipedia:Help. There is also a category of Wikipedia articles containing how-to sections that need to be edited.

A how-to or a howto is an informal, often short, description of how to accomplish some specific task. A how-to is generally meant to help non-experts, may leave out details that are only important to experts, and may also be greatly simplified from an overall discussion of the topic. See procedural knowledge for a discussion of what sort of knowledge is imparted, and how far it can be imparted, in how-tos.

Spelling

The correct way to write it in English is "how-to", but it is common practice to write it as "howto" in the Linux community. A possible reason is that this makes it easier to find a how-to in search engines like Google as searching with the words "to" and "how" does not necessarily deliver in relevant search results.

How-tos on the internet

How-tos have a long history as a way of sharing knowledge on the internet, but are less successful as FAQs, manuals, recipes and guides. How-tos are very successful within Linux communities.

In the beginning, most how-to's on the internet were the result of a linear process in which an author wrote a how-to that readers would read. An example is eHow. This company raised $30 million from venture capitalists including Hummer Winblad, Media Technology Ventures, General Electric and Fingerhut which it used for hiring 200 professional writers [1].

After 2001, user added content played a more and more important role on the internet in a trend that is widely referred to as Web 2.0. This had a profound impact on the way in which how-tos are spread on the internet. A number of websites choose the wiki model as a way of sharing knowledge on how-tos. WikiHow was founded by the founders of eHow [2] and is currently the largest wiki on howto's. Howtopedia.org is a wiki with how-tos on appropriate technology [3]. Wikibooks contains a number of wikis on specific subjects. Howtodude.NET is a website where users can archive and share their own how-tos. It claims that wikis are no proper way for how-tos stating "howto's are fundamentally different from the information that is shared in wiki's" as "Wiki's require that contributors share a certain amount of norms and values" while "a howto is never neutral by definition" [4]. A blog style website that allows user to add how-tos on Linux is HowtoForge [5].

References

  1. ^ eHow, Wikipedia. Accessed on June 27, 2007
  2. ^ History of eHow and wikiHow, wikiHow. Accessed on June 27, 2007.
  3. ^ Howtopedia.org
  4. ^ Why not a wiki? Howtodude.NET. Accessed on June 27, 2007.
  5. ^ How To Forge

See also

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