I created three drafts at https://www.wikihow.com/User:Awesome-Aasim/c
, https://www.wikihow.com/User:Awesome-Aasim/t
, and https://www.wikihow.com/User:Awesome-Aasim/u
. The purpose of proposing these templates is to make it quicker and easier to link to a specific forum thread or forum user page or forum category without having to memorize or save long URLs.
The Templates
{{c}}
This is supposed to provide a great way to link to a category on the forums. Currently, wikiHow only has a few categories, but if more categories were added and restructured on the forums (for example, if Forum Games and General Chat were made a subcategory of a separate category Off-Topic), then this could provide a method to linking to the discussion categories. So {{c|village-pump|Village Pump}} would produce:
Village Pump
{{t}}
This is supposed to provide a way to link to threads more efficiently. For example, to link to the Discourse Welcome thread, one can just use {{t|welcome-to-discourse|Discourse Welcome}} to produce:
Discourse Welcome
{{u}}
This is supposed to provide a way to link to forum user pages. I picture this would be useful on the administrator noticeboard when linking to forum user pages so that administrators can quickly view and ban spammers from wikiHow. Although this may kind of not be used on ANB except for serial spam because of the new reporting feature. So {{u|Awesome_Aasim}} would produce:
Awesome_Aasim
Final question
Should we have templates for linking to the forums? If so, then which ones?
It’s far faster to just copy and paste the link to a thread than to use a template. I don’t see a need for any of the proposed templates at this point in time.
2 Likes
I think everything but {{c}} is useful. I support the other two though.
1 Like
Another thought I had after initially posting here that’s kind of unrelated, but that I wanted to toss into the mix… I’m not sure that the whole “like this post to support and this post to oppose” is a great way of doing things. Aside from how incredibly Wikipedia-esque it is (we don’t even do firm “support” or “oppose” votes rather than just stating our thoughts on it, barring maybe policy changes), I could see it causing issues with people who are more on-the-fence just flat-out not voting at all because they don’t feel that a like on a certain post adequately expresses their thoughts on the matter. Depending on how the votes and thread as a whole are interpreted, that leaves it open to possible misinterpretation if the consensus is based on the number of likes on the vote posts rather than what’s stated in the thread (or even the likes on other posts in the thread), and could potentially drive down engagement if we’re encouraged to just vote on one of two options rather than share our thoughts on it. There’s middle-ground to be found on many things wiki. Restricting the votes to a yes/no system doesn’t allow for that.
2 Likes
Good point. I have had thoughts about this as well because, well, it may inflate the number of “likes” that a user has, which is not the goal of wikiHow. And in terms of “how incredibly Wikipedia-esque it is”, it is kind of true, but then Wikipedia proposals are not a vote either. I do recognize that we do things differently.
And I think I may have made the thread a little deceiving by putting two posts for “like to vote support”, “like to vote oppose”, the “likes” feature is kind of new and we are still working out as a community how we should kind of approach this. I guess it kind of is “make it up as we go along” and partly “same norms as old forums”, like many new features.
Thirdly, I recognize plain “support” and “oppose” votes are meaningless on their own as well. If the user disagrees with a proposal, they should have several characters to explain why they disagree. So what I will do is this: I will delete my previous comments with the “like to support/oppose”, but I will list the votes here for reference. I think the polling feature should be enabled on wikiHow forums for small proposals (like agreeing on a title for an article), but for larger ones, a vote may not be enough to explain why you agree/disagree with an idea.
Existing votes for this proposal (you may want to give an explanation as to why you agree/disagree)
Support
Oppose
I’m kinda neutral about this, but I put agree because I suppose I can see how it can be beneficial in some aspects. It’s pretty simple to just post the link to a thread, and I don’t really see much of a need to link to a category (unless a user wants to chat; I guess you can link them to the general chat section), but I believe it could sometimes
come in handy.
1 Like
Eric
9
There’s some great dialogue here, @anon74718567
and @Awesome_Aasim
! Thanks for pushing for further discussion on these topics.
The main reason I don’t support these initiatives is that I don’t see any purpose for any of them. Someone would spend far more time to find the forum link, then just copy the portion of the link needed to complete the template, rather than just linking using the full URL.
I tend to agree with @anon74718567
that we shouldn’t gather general community consensus by the use of the “like/heart” function in the forums. I think it’s fine to use the function to get a general idea of whether people like an idea, but I tend to agree that consensus should be given by people actually typing out a response so that we can get that input from individuals who are on the fence. Additionally, either side could very likely raise valid concerns that could impact other people’s support (or lack thereof) through sharing their input rather than just liking a post.
1 Like
JayneG
10
Popping my 2 cents in here - although it’s great that you’re thinking of ways to help improve the forum/wH experience @Awesome_Aasim
, I’m not sure that this is something that’s needed. You can copy the URL of a post/topic by clicking one button, or copy a url in general very easily (no memory required!), so it feels a little like making a template for the sake of it
I think the second point here has been agreed on, but just confirming that the “like” button is not meant to be a tool for voting, I think we want to leave that to the simple task of “liking” a post!
1 Like
I understand kinda. This is just an idea…I think it would be good to enable the polling feature as it can be used for small proposals (like what the title should be for an article).
JayneG
12
I think historically we’ve preferred conversation and discussion over polling - and I feel that it may open a can of worms… but it is something that we can consider. Let’s take some time to get used to everything we have here in the forums at the moment, and come back to this after some time if it feels like it is necessary.
2 Likes
Sure. I recognize as well because wikiHow tends to fork a lot of open-source projects, like MediaWiki, it can be difficult to implement everything. But hopefully everything works out and after all this testing we think “oh this may be a good idea…”
I even picture this being used in general chat.
[On a tangent… I learned Discourse allows subforums of forums. So if you wanted to, you could have “General Chat” and “Forum Games” subforums of “Off-topic”. Or you could triage bug reports in “Low”, “Medium”, and “High” priority. (These are hypothetical examples, I am not asking for any changes.) I think it is good I am learning about all this in case I ever decide why not start an Internet forum (very unlikely, but whatever).]
