This site is a mock-up
It shows some possible concepts for community-created repair manuals that can be extended to all makes and models. If you love it or hate it, drop a line to info@motorious.org.

About

From Motorious

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Motorious is based on the premise that the world's professional and amateur mechanics are collectively more knowledgeable and prolific than the companies who traditionally publish shop manuals and automotive repair guides.




What problems are we trying to solve?
  • Repair manuals are expensive. That information is common knowledge for enough people that it should be free.
  • Traditional manuals written by a few authors are static until the next revision is published. This information should be scrutinized and enhanced by hundreds of experts in the field who know it best.
  • Manuals often provide only a few photographs (usually black & white). Plenty of big, clear, color photos should be made available to enhance understanding.
  • Searching through forum archives usually requires lots of digging to get a complete answer. Comprehensive, clear information should be available via a single search engine query.
This site is...
  • free of charge and open source.
  • written collaboratively to provide a living repository of information about repairing cars.
  • a way to share the insights, lessons learned, and methods employed by the world's automotive experts.
  • an objective, consensus-based provider of information.
  • implemented as a wiki and intended to follow many of the paradigms and successes of Wikipedia.
This site is not...
  • a marketplace for buying, selling, or trading.
  • a place for stories.
  • tolerant of inflammatory comments.
  • a provider of copyrighted material.


Since there are already a bunch of good sites on car repair...why create a new one?
There are many great sources of automotive information on the internet. However, many suffer from one of the following three problems:
  1. Discussion forums, newsgroups, and email lists provide detailed answers to specific questions, but they are unstructured and non-comprehensive about providing step-by-step instructions. Detailed, thorough posts (such as this one) are rare and sometimes the photos disappear after a few weeks.
  2. Personal experience sites (e.g. "how I restored the top on my '79 Mustang") provide good narrative stories and tips, but often lack the structure and detail needed for a repair manual. Some of these sites are updated periodically by the author, but many are old and not actively maintained.
  3. Sites which consist primarily of links to other sites are difficult to maintain. As a result, they often have broken links which limits adoption of those sites as a trusted source of information.
This wiki-based site captures the best of what everyone has to offer in a way that the whole is indeed greater than the sum of the parts.


Is Motorious trying to replace other repair or club sites?
  • This site does not intend to replace forums or email lists (see "What problems are we trying to solve" above). Instead, it complements them by serving as a reference to check before asking questions. This allows threaded discussions to stay on-topic. Consider it a central place for multiple car forums to share a free FAQ.
  • This site does not intend to replace narrative websites. Stories are useful and complementary to the information provided on this site. Good narrative examples should be cited in Motorious articles!
  • Although this site can provide instructions and procedures, it is currently unable to compete directly with paid data sources which also provide licensed data and diagrams. Compared to older models, this is a larger problem for late model cars with lots of electronics and computerized diagnostics.


Why should I contribute to this site?
  • As an author, you are creating "the source" of automotive repair information.
  • Based on the quality of contributions, authors are publicly recognized. In their personal profiles, authors can share as much information as they wish about their personal interests, contact information, and business ventures (bias is acceptable).


Shortcomings
  • Wikis can contain problematic or incorrect information as described in this article on Wikipedia.
  • The target of this site to not produce copyrighted material places additional burden on authors to create documents such as wiring diagrams and illustrations.
  • This site can not currently afford to provide from-the-manufacturer information in the same way as paid data sources like ALLDATA.
  • This site does not provide local events or a sense of community in the same way as local car clubs or online forums. Again, we aren't trying to disrupt or replace those communities.

This site is built on top of MediaWiki software, which also powers Wikipedia.

For information about this site, please email info@motorious.org.

Retrieved from "http://www.motorious.org/wiki/About"
Personal tools

Editing Syntax:

''Italic''
'''Bold'''
[[ int_link | Link name ]]
[ http://link.com Name ]
* Bulleted list
** Indented item
# Numbered list
## Indented item

Common Templates:

{{raw:mot:Note|Your text}}
{{raw:mot:Tip|Your text}}
{{raw:mot:Injury|Your text}}
{{raw:mot:Damage|Your text}}

{{raw:mot:ProcedureSummary
 | ModelYears =
 | Model = more...
 | Difficulty =
 | Time =
 | Tools = help...
 | Parts =
}}

{{raw:mot:ProcedureStep
 | Text =
 | Image =
 | ImageCaption =
}}