Wiki143 talk:No Instruction

I would disagree with this. Wikipedia is not a traditional paper encyclopedia and need not act like one in every respect. Where matters of public health and safety are concerned (as in the recent response to the london bombings), instruction can be reallly, really useful. (I daresay wikipedia's fluidity is one of its best assets.) Tlogmer 06:13, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Utility is certainly a valid arguement; however, the encylopedia should not preach at its reader. For example, take the article on Evangelical Christianity. Suppose it included the following section:

How to get to heaven

The following procedure demonstrates the most effective method of getting into heaven and avoiding hell. Pray the following words: "Jesus, I want to thank you for dying on the cross to save me. I am sorry for my sins, and I want you to come into my heart. Amen.".

Or perhaps in the article Investing:

How to get rich quick

• Go buy that weird book by Matthew Lesko.
• Take all of your money and go to Vegas.
• Don't pay your taxes. The government has too much money.
• Invest all your stock in SCOX.

Well? What would you think about that? I contend that Wikipedia is not a qualified source for advice of a spiritual, medical or financial nature. On the other hand, I think it is particularly appropriate to document, with sufficient attribution, noteworthy advice given by competent authorites. For example, an article on terrorism might contain the following:

Mitigating the threat of terrorism

Various nations, subnational states and municipalities have established agencies which are intended to assist persons in the mitigation of the threat of terrorism. One example of general guidelines for such mitigation follows:

• Be aware of your surroundings.
• Move or leave if you feel uncomfortable or if something does not seem right.
• Take precautions when traveling. Be aware of conspicuous or unusual behavior. Do not accept packages from strangers. Do not leave luggage unattended. You should promptly report unusual behavior, suspicious or unattended packages, and strange devices to the police or security personnel.
• Learn where emergency exits are located in buildings you frequent. Plan how to get out in the event of an emergency.
• Be prepared to do without services you normally depend on—electricity, telephone, natural gas, gasoline pumps, cash registers, ATMs, and Internet transactions.
• Work with building owners to ensure the following items are located on each floor of the building:

• Portable, battery-operated radio and extra batteries.
• Several flashlights and extra batteries.
• First aid kit and manual.
• Hard hats and dust masks.
• Fluorescent tape to rope off dangerous areas.

Source: Are You Ready? An In-depth Guide to Citizen Preparedness US Department of Homeland Security (2005).

Now here is why this is OK - these guidelines are sourced from a competent authority. The author has not attempted to place Wikipedia in the role of a canonical advisor. In fact, one could argue that placing instructions in the imperative without citing a source could constitute original research and thus it is already disallowed; however, if that is the case, it would seem necessary to clarify that policy. --Mm35173 about 04:00, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

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I agree with most of what you wrote, but I don't think a new rule is warrented -- citation is already encouraged in general, for example. Yes, instruction taken to the extreme, as in your example, could cause problems, but I don't think "how to get into heaven" would last very long under npov anyway. Putting down an absolute guideline ossifies things. Tlogmer 09:07, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

WP:NOT

See WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information a FAQ. -Splash 20:39, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

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I disagree with this for two reasons. First, it is unneeded policy creep. Popular Wikipedian sentiment is fairly strongly against pure "how-to" articles and they usually get voted for transwikification when they come up for VfD. Second, before encyclopedias were marketed to parents of high-school families and dumbed down, they traditionally contained a fair amount of how-to material. You couldn't quite build your own telegraph system from the circuit diagrams in the Britannica, but almost. I don't want to tighten up our de facto policy by trying to draw a bright line at the margin. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:31, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Disagree -- I endorse Dpbsmith's comments to the letter. — Xiong熊talk* 07:20, 2005 August 27 (UTC)

• I agree with the proposal, and I also agree with the merge into WP:NOT, on the grounds that how-to material should appropriately be incorporated into Wikibooks. WikidSmaht (talk) 04:57, September 10, 2005 (UTC)
  • That's never been policy. Dpbsmith (talk) 10:55, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
    • I didn't say it was. But the whole point of this "No instruction" proposal is that it should be. Plus, Wikibooks is a project where how-tos are welcome, and if this proposal is agreed upon, they won't be welcome on Wikipedia.
      See for instance Egg (food), an informational article which links to Eggs in the Wikibooks cookbook. Or The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, which links to a strategy guide at Wikibooks. This is an effective use of two complementary projects which keeps the informational resource, Wikipedia, from being cluttered with information which is not really encyclopedic. -- WikidSmaht (talk) 17:51, September 10, 2005 (UTC)
• I agree with "no instruction". How-tos are bookish, not encyclopedic, and I definitely agree that POV problems are a common side effect. I say merge away. -- Beland 08:04, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
• I agree. Wikipedia isn't a general repository of useful stuff. It's an encyclopedia. Step-by-step instructions are just like recipes: one way - among many - of accomplishing an end result. The key phrase being "among many". Picking any one particular set as "the right way to do it" is very, very, POV-ish. An article which tells you so much about telegraph systems that you could go out and build one is probably a great article; an article which sets out to tell you how to build your own telegraph system is non-encyclopedic. Bunchofgrapes 02:02, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
• Go ahead and merge it. Many of the information not only has POV problems but accuracy ones. Anyway, I'll go ahead and draft a section for the main article. This is a very rough draft. If anyone wants to improve it, copy and paste it to your comment; change the version number so we can tell them apart, and edit away. My draft follows:

Wikipedia is not an Instruction Manual (version 1.0)

Wikipedia does not address how to perform various actions. This causes NPOV disputes and the information is very often incorrect. Not only is false information a bad thing, but also the nature that it is presented in encourages its use and often harm to anyone who takes the advice. However, this isn’t to say the information is useless. It may have a use on Wikipedia’s sister projects, however, it is not relevant to Wikipedia.

Obviously it's not ready to be put in an article. Go ahead and critique but please do not criticize. HereToHelp 12:48, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

I'd say add links to the appropriate projects, particularly Wikibooks. -- WikidSmaht (talk) 05:24, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

No Instruction Without Content

Here's my take on the issue: Articles that are 100% instruction should be transwikied, and usually are. For example, an article entitled "How To Varnish Your Outdoor Deck" would be purely instructional, and not appropriate for wikipedia. But a section with instructions that's part of an overall encyclopedic article, like the condom article, is okay because the instructions aren't the main point of the article. --Icarus 22:22, 16 September 2005 (UTC) Added note: I don't mean that an article that's largely instructional, just not 100%, is okay. If an article can reasonable include some degree of instruction, it should still only be a small percentage of the over-all amount of content in the article as a whole. --Icarus 00:00, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

But how are we to determine that instructions given in an article are the absolute right way? That doesn't seem to quite be the job of the encyclopedia. -- WikidSmaht (talk) 18:58, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Do you mean how do we decide on a standard format, or how do we know they're accurate? If it's the second, then, well, the same way we make sure any information in an article is accurate. Sources, discussion when there's a dispute, etc. --Icarus 00:00, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

There is almost always more than one way to do something. Specifying a specific set of how-to instructions in a specific order is therefore almost always an arbtitrary choice - unless if you think you can determine a "best" choice, which is likely to be the "best" only in one particular Point of View. Short series of instructions, explicitly quoted from specific sources, are the only real exception I can think of where the "How To" style may be appropriate. Bunchofgrapes 02:46, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Good point. I support limiting any instruction to cases where it's quite clear that there's a right way and a wrong way. For example, the condom article. The wart article, on the other hand, has already been changed so that it covers folk remedies in an informative rather than instructional way. In most cases, I think the wart article's way is better. But I oppose an over-all "no instruction" policy because of the few cases where it's appropriate. --Icarus 04:14, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Icarus. Usually articles can be re-written in an informative way, but not always, and this shouldn't be a reason to delete the article. ··gracefool |☺ 23:05, 25 September 2005 (UTC)