Main Page

From Helpful

Point o' the wiki

To give information a way where pragmatic informing is more important than being entirely complete.

For all the collaborative knowledge on the web, things like wikipedia must serve a very general audience and usually stick to rough, technical overviews rather than those that are understandable (and critical of practical use). Wikipedia is usually quite good for an overview of the scope of a subject contains, but often is not so good at explaining gists and how ideas work out in practice.

Content to expect

This wiki is here to lie closer to the useful gems, which some people seem full of, rather than offering rehashed general information.

A page should probably only exist here if the answer to "will this be interesting to someone specifically looking for information on the subject" is yes. Which, yes, is a criterion that should be judged per page. For technical pages, say, SSH tunneling, you can probably assume that a person knows basic networking and is looking for skimmable notes including, say, some detailed explanation, notes on potential problems, common behaviour, a basic example, and such. They are probably not looking for the umpteenth vague introduction that takes a page of text to explain nothing very clearly.

An understandable introduction including a quick overview is also nice to have, for people interested in, but not yet aware of the scope of a concept.

Note that a lot of mid-research notes are often wrong in some details before they are done. Half-finished pages may contain many guesses to be verified later, which is only a practical way to work. It's probably smart to mark the things you haven't really checked.

What to add

Anything you know a bunch about is welcome, including things like:

• lists of common and useful (rather than all) commands/arguments/options/key shortcuts
• The meaning of cryptic computer errors, common solutions and workarounds for odd computer behaviour
• scripts or commands that may be useful later or to other people.
• links to succinct sites on a subject
• Personal mid-research notes, say, on color theory or batteries so that you'll only have to thoroughly research it once, or have something to come back to.
• 'anything else that has direct practical to someone

Many things have a place here. The current technical bias is just my own tendency.

You may want to look around via the categories. To quickly return to a page you know is on here, take a look at firefox keywords to search. 's handy:)

You could perhaps Request articles if you always wanted something clarified.

See also Helpful:About.