
So if Wikipedia is the web's encyclopedia, where is the web's user's manual?  - davewiner
http://scripting.com/stories/2010/12/11/theWorldwideWebUsersManual.html
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zdw
"Hi, where can I buy just enough rope to hang myself"?

For some things, simple instructions are fine - the coffee example being one
of them. Once you get into complex or dangerous things (home improvement,
etc.) you need to impart some safety and theory before just giving
instructions.

There's a reason that they make undergrads go through the "Lab Safety" course
before doing work in a science lab...

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zachrose
Before reading the article, I thought it was going to be about a universal
manual for web browsers.

Such a thing would be immensely helpful.

Say, for instance, that your site asks the user to disable their popup
blocker, or install a bookmarklet, or upgrade to a newer version of IE. It
would be great if everyone could just use a "how do I do this?" link that goes
to a neutral site with instructions. Sort of like whatbrowser.org, but with
info on how to actually do stuff.

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mishmash
One scoop per cup is the golden rule. ;)

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gojomo
<http://www.wikihow.com>

~~~
TobinCurry
Yes, wikiHow is it. From wikiHow's about us page,
<http://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:About-wikiHow>:

"wikiHow is a collaborative effort to build and share the world's largest,
highest quality how-to manual. Like Wikipedia, wikiHow is a wiki, in that
anyone can write or edit a page on the site. Thousands of people from all over
the world have collaboratively written 93,410 how-to articles. Over 25 million
people a month read wikiHow, which makes it the 150th most popular website
according to Quantcast."

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dheerosaur
The web itself is a user manual. And the index/catalog is called a search
engine.

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rds2
It's not open, but eHow.com is pretty much a general FAQ for the web.

~~~
ComputerGuru
PLEASE NO.

eHow is Demand Media. It's a spam/scam - they generate millions of pages with
almost zero content. Contributors are paid pennies to write the bare minimum
to get a "PASS." Demand Media is a disease of the web.

[http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/digital-strategies/e-media-
ti...](http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/digital-strategies/e-media-
tidbits/100146/demand-media-may-be-bad-for-social-media-but-not-for-
journalism/)

[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/demand_media_is_a_page_...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/demand_media_is_a_page_view_generating_machine.php)

[http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/ehowcom-demand-
med...](http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/ehowcom-demand-
media-c295301.html)

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mooism2
Who would read it?

Does anyone read user manuals any more?

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ajaimk
"Kick to restart"

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kissickas
It's down- mirror?

~~~
Groxx
Looks like it's back up. Worked for me * shrug *

If not:

>I was just making a small pot of coffee, just two cups. So I measured out two
full cups of water, and guessed how much coffee to put in the basket. The
coffee came out great, but could just have easily come out awful.

>So if Wikipedia is the web's encyclopedia, where is the web's user's manual?
It would be infinitely expandable, aspire to cover everything, and take a
practical 1-2-3 approach to doing things we humans do on this planet in the
times we live in.

and try googling for "cache:url" in the future :)

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kissickas
Awesome, thanks for the tip! I searched for the url but the results didn't
have "Cached" links below them, this is so much faster (and clearly more
effective).

~~~
Groxx
The cached-links seem intermittent at best, cache: finds a _lot_ that aren't
linked. Searching also takes you straight to it, which is nice.

I only found out about that trick ~ a month ago, from here. It has quickly
become my favorite / most-useful Google trick _ever_.

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yycom
wikihow

