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Shall we have how-tos or procedural knowledge in Wikipedia?

Original text moved from Wikipedia:Votes for deletion

Discussion began with a vote for the deletion of: How to demonstrate osmosis with eggs and How to demonstrate osmosis with potato slices

For obvious reasons, I hope. (sign your name please!)

I've written an IP Masquerading howto, http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Masquerading-Simple-HOWTO/index.html which has been around a few years know and is pretty bug free. Would this be suitable to put up here? Anyway - I put it under the GFDL so I shouldn't have to prove that I'm not the copyright holder to you right? -- 11:32 Jan 23, 2003 (GMT)

Hi, this may be more suitable for the OpenFacts wiki, a new open source centric wikipedia-based wiki, one of the purposes of which is the collaborative editing and writing of HOWTOs, FAQs etc. We're still working on the finishing touches before launching it officially (the English version is still less complete than the German one in terms of documentation etc.). We will also import existing HOWTOs where the license allows it (I've written a very hackish SGML/Docbook-wikitext converter for that purpose).
This is not to say that is necessarily unacceptable around here. You might want to rewrite some of the more jovial explanations and change section titles like "Frequently Asked Compla^H^H^H^H^H^H Questions" for Wikipedia. If you, however, would like to help with OpenFacts, drop me a mail. --Eloquence 23:47 Jan 23, 2003 (UTC)
Thanks. I remember seeing emails about the OpenFacts thing on discuss@en.tldp.org . Anyway I'm bored of that ^H^H joke thing - it has been 2 years, and I never liked it much in the first place... oh well.

-- JohnFlux(as anon) 06:35 Jan 24, 2003 (GMT)

You could create an unified page : How to demonstrate osmosis. I love divulgation articles. Alternatively, one can use Easy Experiments with...(i.e. osmosis) User:Mac.

Could do with a rename & rewrite, but I don't see a problem -- Tarquin 19:01 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

As the initial author of how to demonstrate osmosis with eggs [but not potato slices]] I can't see what your obvious reasons are. If you'd be kind enough to spell them out explicitly I could defend the page better but: here goes anyhow. Osmosis is an important topic and IMO experiments that demonstrate the principle liven up the topic. This is a particularly simple experiment, which any potential reader who has an interest in osmosis can perform. In writing the article I was guided by the Wikipedia:How-topage which states that instructions for doing things are suitable for wikipedia even if they do not ordinarily occur in a paper encyclopaedia. Theresa knott 20:12 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

I'm not really in favour of these kinds of articles. The next thing you know we'll be getting how to boil an egg and how to light your farts. Mintguy 23:34 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

I have no problem with howtos, they can be both informative and fun. Although how to light your farts would probably need a safety disclaimer and/or a link to how to find your local burns unit in a hurry. Seriously, if the osmosis things are real articles, why would we delete them? Puzzled, Nevilley 23:45 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

I am against howtos on Wikipedia, because it is very hard to write them in an NPOV-compliant way. The existing ħow-tos demonstrate this very well. The original author usually has a particular idea how to do a certain thing and does not care to supply or research alternatives. Moreso, an NPOV HOWTO would probably read terrible ("Do this .. but you could also do this. Some people suggest doing that first. But if you do that first, the order of the following steps has to be reversed, at least according to some people .." etc.) --Eloquence 04:22 Feb 27, 2003 (UTC)

  • I don't think NPOV how to's have to be written like that. I have a recipe book at home that lists a number of different methods for making merangue.It lists method one "quick and easy" then a full method than goes on to method 2 "professional" and so on. NPOV how to's could adopt a similar style. Also the debate about whether how to pages should exist has surely already been settled in favour of yes. Otherwise why would a page like Wikipedia:How-to exist unchallanged for months. If we get rid of this page becuase 'it's a how to' then we would have to get rid of all the other how to pages. There goes the whole cookery section. Theresa knott 08:36 Feb 27, 2003 (UTC)
  • For an example, please see pet skunk sections on Diet and Roundworms. Numerous people gave their own ideas about these areas, and in response I did what I could to make it NPOV. Nathanlarson32767 03:08, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Good idea about quick and easy and professional User:Mac
    • Most people are probably not aware of our howto section. I have observed this for a while and so far not said anything in the hope that the articles there would eventually improve, as Nevilley suggests below. They did not. Given the huge range of topics that can be covered in how-tos, I'm afraid this is a Pandora's Box we are opening here. Of recipes alone there are thousands and thousands -- we could have as many of these as we have regular articles, and every second time you'd hit "Random page" you would view one of them. Similar to the articles on subpages, howtos tend to be neglected -- perhaps it's the writing style that creates a sense of ownership.
    • I'm afraid there's a trend to fill the Wikipedia database with everything that people come along. As we import more and more data en masse (and surely there are open content cookbooks which we could import), it will get harder and harder to maintain the existing data. Eventually, Wikipedia content might deteriorate into a mess of mostly low quality pages similar to Everything2. As long as these pages are human written, this problem is not as big. But if we more officially allow how-tos, people will soon want to import the Linux Documentation Project HOWTOs, the MealMaster recipes of Usenet times, their self-made translations of badly written Chinese manuals ..... etc. Stuff for a new project, maybe, but IMHO not for Wikipedia. --Eloquence 10:37 Feb 27, 2003 (UTC)
For this, the Sourceberg project has been risen.


  • When Eloquence says I am against howtos on Wikipedia, because it is very hard to write them in an NPOV-compliant way, my first thought is yes, but then it's hard to write anything on Wikipedia in an NPOV-compliant way. In fact Erik's whole (rather good) paragraph, with some minor rewording, could serve as a description of what is going on all over Wikipedia all the time ... hang on, just let me tick these boxes ... yep, inadequate research, yep, author's particular idea, yep, reads terrible ... that's right, he's describing all my work on Wikipedia!!! But then, what happens is, nice (and occasionally nasty) people come along, think the article could or should be better, and change it so they think it is, then other people change that, and so on. And this fascinating, maddening and life-enhancing process is what makes the whole thing tick ... so why should howtos be any different? They're just more articles, they try to be factual, if we think they aren't, we try to fix 'em! Scrambled eggs anyone? :) Nevilley 09:28 Feb 27, 2003 (UTC)

This whole discussion has changed from should we have the osmosis pages to should we have "how to pages", so really it should be moved somewhere else. (but I can't think where, so I'll put my opinions here for now) The situation regarding "how to's" is at the moment silly. To tolerate them because they are not widely known about, with some people thinking it's ok to post a how to page and others thinking they are not encyclopaedia material an so putting them forward for deletion. We should either embrace how to pages, perhaps colour the link differently, put a link to them on the main page, change the software so that for example "random page" excludes them. Or we should ban them. Theresa knott 09:28 Feb 28, 2003 (UTC)

Damn! I probably just moved this discussion to the wrong place. (Bloody search engines. I looked for two or three possible "how-to" topics to see if there was an existing page before I made this one. I'll leave it here for now and if anyone wants to move the text over to Wikipedia talk:How-to, I promise not to throw my toys out of the pram. Tannin 09:53 Feb 28, 2003 (UTC)

Toys safely placed out of reach, I join the discussion. :(

In Wikipedia talk:How-to, the point is well made (to misquote slightly) that: Knowledge (which encyclopedias catalog) includes not just declarative knowledge (knowledge "that") but also procedural knowledge (knowledge "how").

Back on this page, Eloquence suggests that it is very difficult to write "how-tos" in a NPOV way, but doesn't manage to offer any cogent evidence to support his view. On the contrary:

  • The determination that procedural knowledge is inferior to, or somehow more POV than, declarative knowledge can only be made by taking a point of view as to the relative merits of one form of knowledge over another. It is in itself clearly POV.
  • I accept his point that there is an infinite number of different ways to boil an egg. However, this has no bearing at all on the issue, as there is an infinite number of different ways to do or describe absolutely everything. For examples of this, consider the "othodox", "approved of" Wikipedia entries on .... well .... I was going to start with my own field, "history", but I might as well try to be NPOV about it and say anthropology, biology, Canada, D-Day, erotica, fishing, gypsies, horticulture, industrial relations, kangaroo, labor unions, meteorology, nickel, opium, police, quantitative research methods, race, science, taxation, uranium, virginity, worship, xenophobia, yellow fever, and zoology. The assertion that "how to" is inherantly more POV than "is" is not just unprovable, it's almost laughable.

However (having just crossed myself off Eloquence's Xmas card list!) his subsequent point that "if we officially allow how-tos, people will soon want to import the Linux Documentation Project HOWTOs, the MealMaster recipes of Usenet times, their self-made translations of badly written Chinese manuals ....." carries a good deal of weight. I cringe at the thought of it. How do we prevent a thousand useless "How to clip your toenails" entries cropping up? Sure, it's a wiki, whatever is entered can be deleted if it's bad enough, but that's a serious concern which deserves further thought.

On the whole though, I guess it's not the problem that it might at first seem to be. First, the "random page" function has been useless ever since the Rambot filled the 'pedia up with all those stupid one-horse town entries. Hell - at least I'd rather learn about clipping my toenails than be faced with yet another Pointless, Arizona (population 9). Second, it seems pretty silly to be complaining about a potential flood of practical how-tos when we already tolerate those countless hundreds of vapid fan-boy popular music entries on anyone who ever knew enough not to try restringing their trumpet while standing next to a microphone. Or whatever it was they did.

Now. Is there anyone I haven't offended yet? No? Then on with the rant. This is probably not a good time to say that I think Nevilley and Theresa make good points. Nevilley says "They're just more articles, they try to be factual, if we think they aren't, we try to fix 'em!" Exactly.


Having said all that, I have to admit that I've never read a Wikipedia "how-to", bar the first one I saw Theresa do (because the MIT Vandal was about, she was new, and I was checking her bona-fides), and the eggs one just now (because it was listed for deletion), nor do I have any particular interest in them, and I very much doubt that I'd ever contribute to one myself. But that's the whole point of the Wikipedia: everyone has different interests. If Theresa (and others like her) are interested enough in salty water and eggs to bother writing an entry on how best to combine them, then it's reasonable to assume that others will be interested enough to want to read them. Hell - I just spent ~8 hours researching for an entry on an obscure 60-year-old aeroplane that only Maurie M will ever read, and that just to make sure that I didn't get my facts wrong. So where is the beef?

But I do wonder how we are going to cope with the inevitable How to light your farts craze. There needs to be a guideline to deal with that stuff.

Tannin 11:14 Feb 28, 2003 (UTC)


Tannin, you have failed dismally. I'm not offended in the least, and in fact I agree with what you've written above! :-) -- Tarquin 18:13 Feb 28, 2003 (UTC)


I notice How to light your farts is up for deletion already. I think this will probably happen with most really silly how tos. Wer could have some rules. I suggest
  • A How to page must be written by an expert. By 'expert' I mean someone who has actually done the thing thay are describing how to do.This means :
  1. No BOTS
  2. No importing stuff from other web sites, even if it is open source.
  • The page must have the words "how to" in the title of the page.That way people can easily see it's a how to page and choose not to read it if they want to.
  • The page must not be trivial. (Of course the definition of trivial is up for debate)

What do people think? Theresa knott 09:23 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)

(This entry is not meant to overwrite Theresa's. Her questions are good ones, IMHO.)

Some talk moved to Talk:HowTo

Reconciling SchoolBiology and LifeSciencesBiology

Given the overlap of Science and Teaching:SchoolBiology and LifeSciences:Biology, I'd recommend those interested in the subject either cross-reference them or reconcile them in some way so that people looking at one don't miss relevant items at the other place. Conceivably almost anything in a "how-to" could be a Teaching/School item (though there is reason perhaps for ranking these roughly by difficulty). - Brettz9 20:19 16 May 2003 (UTC)

  • I agree so I went ahead and did it. What do people think about ranking in order of difficulty? My view is that most of the how to's are pretty easy and ranking can wait until more technical how to's join the list. Theresa knott 09:44 19 May 2003 (UTC)
    • I would say that How to tell bees from wasps is an example of one that definitely doesn't belong in the "Science and Teaching" section, for what it's worth. While I'm at it, is there a good reason for using HTML list & bold, etc., instead of wikicode "**", "==", "'''", etc.? -- John Owens 09:49 19 May 2003 (UTC)
      • What about a ""Nature"" heading, we could put How to tell bees from wasps there? As for HTML I just followed what was there already. I can't see any advantage of it.Theresa knott 13:48 19 May 2003 (UTC)
        • Thankfully, Eloquence has already cleaned that eyesore up, and that HTML is gone now. I'd been thinking maybe there was a special reason for it, with the "type=" properties in the tags, but I don't think they'll be missed. Anyway, about How to tell bees from wasps, I was thinking it was just fine in the "Life Sciences" section where it was before. It says "including Food Production", but that doesn't mean it shouldn't include other life sciences How-Tos. The bees/wasps page just doesn't strike me as primarily school-oriented material; as we've been discussing on its talk page, it's mainly intended for people who call them all bees, whether it's a yellowjacket buzzing their soda or a paper nest full of hornets (bees don't do paper). So I feel that squeezing it into the "Science and Teaching" section is somewhat excessive use of the shoehorn, if that section is to be for pages mainly explaining demonstrations appropriate for primary/secondary school, as seems to be the case for most of those. -- John Owens 13:58 19 May 2003 (UTC)~
          • On reflection _ think you're right so I've moved it back. I have however left off the biology subheading under life sciences because I think there is a potential for confusion as to where to put things. Theresa knott 14:39 19 May 2003 (UTC)

About 400 HOWTOs about the Linux computer operating system are published by the Linux Documentation Project. Many of them are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and parts of them can be included in the Wikipedia as long as attributed properly. However, please do not copy them into Wikipedia wholesale; Wikipedia is not a repository for primary source documents. See http://www.tldp.org/docs.html#howto

Dude, guys, this is SO like the The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy! And Project_Galactic_Guide! Except with a bit less humor... --Nelson 21:20 30 Jun 2003 (UTC)

"How-to" articles have no place in the Wikipedia. They are contrary to the NPOV principle in two ways that I can think of. Firstly, the fact that we are telling people how to carry out an activity suggests that we condone the activity in question. (Imagine how to grow cannabis plants, for example.) Secondly, there may be an infinite number of different ways of doing something, and any single procedure is just one point of view on how it should be done. A summary of the different ways in which people do things could be NPOV, but that wouldn't be a procedure. It would be an encyclopaedia article! So instead of having how to grow cannabis plants, we'd have something like growing cannabis plants, which would be a perfectly valid topic for writing about. For any widely practised activity X, "how to do X" should be rewritten in NPOV form as "doing X", which just summarises the procedures that people use, without recommending any one procedure over the others. -- Oliver P. 00:12 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I roughly agree, but with the proviso that people shouldn't be going around trying to delete how-to articles, but rather going around fixing them in the manner you just described. "how-to" articles have the same place in Wikipedia as a lot of other content - a temporary place, until replaced or rewritten as something better. Martin 00:21 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Okay, I agree with that, as long as "fixing" includes removing the words "How to" from the title. -- Oliver P. 01:16 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

See, eg, Osmosis demonstration (but would Osmosis experiment be better?) Martin 13:31 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hmm. It's still a "how-to" article, despite its name. Osmosis demonstration should be an article which says what an osmosis demonstration is, describes the history of osmosis demonstrations, and summarises what happens in them. That sort of thing. (If it's renamed to osmosis experiment, the same applies; I don't see much difference.) It shouldn't consist of full details of someone's favourite implementations, any more than book should consist of the full text of someone's favourite books. And I think that a golden rule of encyclopaedia articles (especially ones with a NPOV policy!) should be not to tell people what to do. -- Oliver P. 04:42 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Certain experiments are definately encyclopedic - for example, the experiment of dropping two objects and seeing which hits the ground first - as initially done by Newton(?) off the Leaning Tower of Pisa - so gravity experiment would be poorer without the full details of Newton's implementation. That's probably not the case here, but I'd rather let a biologist make that judgement :) Martin 09:52 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Oh, I entirely agree! There are several ways in which experiments can be of general 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. But in the "how-to" articles I've looked at, there is no indication of what the interest of the procedures outlined is. As far as I can make out, they're just procedures that Wikipedians have made up, or found in a random book, or whatever, so these should perhaps be removed. In any case, any procedures described should be introduced with some explanation as to why this particular procedure is of general interest, and they should be described in a neutral way, not saying, "You should do this," and so on. By the way, the Pisa thing was Galileo, and I gather it's thought to be only a legend anyway. Quite bizarrely , the Galileo article doesn't even mention the story, although it's easily one of the most famous stories about the man. I suppose I should add it... I don't know that Newton ever went to Pisa. I expect if he needed a tower to drop things from, he would have made use of the famous Leaning Tower of Woolsthorpe. ;) -- Oliver P. 08:08 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

SO what your saying is -only important stuff in your opinion should stay? Stuff found in a random book should go ? Doesn't that negate the whole idea of an encyclopedia of all knowlege? Who get's to decide what is important and what isn't? The osmosis experiments are important IMO because they are bog standard experiments done in schools. Students and teachers are likely to be future users of wikipedia and so we should cater for them. Theresa knott 20:15 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Oliver said (and I quote) "There are several ways in which experiments can be of general 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". My emphasis.
If an experiment is a standard experiment done in schools, then that's great, but the article should say that it's a standard experiment done in schools. Is that so onerous? Martin
No it's not, you right. I shall try to include that statement in the other experiments. Theresa knott 07:54 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)
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