Instructables.com: Collaborative How-To Website
I really enjoy sites that are collaborative, but in a way that isn’t just centered around ego. Instructables.com is a perfect example: Users sign up and can post how-to articles about projects. It’s a brilliant idea — another one I wish I’d thought of myself. I like this much better than sites like MySpace where it’s all about creating a weird value system of uploaded photos and linked-in friends.
Sites like Instructables (or GameFAQs, Good-Tutorials.com, etc.) encourage people to make useful things. The social rewards are still there, but the valuation is based on the quality of material submitted to the site: A really good tutorial writer is valued on a site like Good-Tutorials, or even on old sites like FlashKit. These software-based sites were some of the first to provide this kind of directed how-to information, but sites like Make: Blog and Threadless and Etsy have pushed things much further. It’s the collaborative CMS qualities of SlashDot and SlashDot-descendents like Digg mixed with the how-to software culture and the DIY ethos of the Web.
Here’s a sample from a project on Instructables that I thought was exceptionally clever: How to turn a $3 ball point pen into a $200 ball point pen.
Save $200 in 2 minutes and have the worlds best writing pen
Transform a $3 pen into a $200 pen in just seconds. Mont Blanc pens are the worlds finest writing pens but they make specialized refills so you must buy their $200 pens to use their amazing ink…until now. This is the easiest hack/adaptation to give anyone the king’s writing ink.
