While writing an article last night having to deal with taking screenshots, I noticed several articles talking about taking screenshots on a Microsoft Windows computer. The two articles, if you take it by title only, are two distinct titles. However, you open them both up, they contain the SAME information. Furthermore, you open up both article’s discussion pages, they both were featured on two different days. Need a consensus for which one to have deleted. I was able to place a split tag, on yet a third article dealing with a subject that had yet the same info posted yet again to another article. Oh yeah, on the one article mentioned, you’ll notice the author weaving the other article into his article. a) http://www.wikihow.com/Take-a-Screenshot-with-the-Snipping-Tool-on-Microsoft-Windows
b) http://www.wikihow.com/Take-a-Screenshot-in-Microsoft-Windows
c)one I was able to place nfd|dup on: http://www.wikihow.com/Take-a-Screenshot-of-the-Entire-Screen
I would suggust merging Take a Screenshot with the Snipping Tool on Microsoft Windows with Take a Screenshot in Microsoft Windows, possibly transfering over all of the information from the Snipping Tool article that is not in the Take a Screenshot in Microsoft Windows already. Then, Take a Screenshot with the Snipping Tool on Microsoft Windows can be deleted.
Ok. I’ll take care of that in the upcoming days. Thank you.
Ok. I went about that slightly differently. I was able to merge the tips and warnings, along with the removal of the one dup section of information in the “b” article(leaving the better information in. It splits it so the 2 articles don’t contain the dup information but still keeps it on topic.
See what you think, then you may close this discussion, if found permissible.
I’d like to mention this while I have the brains to explain my edit: To keep the articles as distinct as possible, I was able to merge the information and remove the dup information. I then edited it to weave the article I merged it to, into the tips section. However, I keep getting rolled back. And now that I’ve done so much reverting of reverts(that shouldn’t have gotten done to start with), the reverts I’m making just aren’t sticking. It might be protected now, but with dup information now existing(in article B), these things need to be removed, and the rest kept(as the other information isn’t available elsewhere on wH.
In my opinion, it is not needed to take off the method in Take a Screenshot on Microsoft Windows, because the steps in it just tell you how to do it in a basic way. In Take a Screenshot on Microsoft Windows, it has a note that says, “For a more detailed tutorial, see How to Take a Screenshot with the Snipping Tool in Vista”. Also, wikiHow’s Merge Policy states: “The main reason we base merging on the title and not the content is because when people search the Internet for a specific topic, they’re more likely to find us if we have a specific title that matches their query.” and “Do not merge a more specific title to a more general title, thinking that the information should be combined on a single page. Specific information should have its own page with a specific title.” I think this means that the steps on Take a Screenshot on Microsoft Windows can be left there, because they don’t go into detail like Take a Screenshot with the Snipping Tool in Vista.
Chris_H
8
I don’t think any of these articles should be deleted or merged. There’s nothing wrong with having the same information in different articles, so long as the the titles are distinct. This is kind of a tricky and subtle point regarding one of our trickier policiesWhen looking at whether articles are duplicates of each other, the only thing that we focus on is whether the titles mean exactly
the same thing. This is because of the way that people usually find our articles (searching for “How to xxxx”), and because they often don’t click more deeply into the site. For each distinct title, we want to do the very best job we can to answer that question as thoroughly as possible, and there is nothing wrong if the same information is repeated in multiple articles as long as their titles are distinct, and that information is sensible to include in both articles. In the case of these articles, all of the titles mean different things, and none are duplicates: a) http://www.wikihow.com/Take-a-Screenshot-with-the-Snipping-Tool-on-Microsoft-Windows
– refers to taking a screenshot using that particular tool only. b) http://www.wikihow.com/Take-a-Screenshot-in-Microsoft-Windows
– This is a general how to on taking screenshots in Windows. Should cover many methods and versions of Windows, including the snipping tool available on recent versions. In general, we want to interpret our policies in a way that answers readers’ questions in the fewest clicks; even though the snipping tool method is in another article, it’s helpful to have it here. c) http://www.wikihow.com/Take-a-Screenshot-of-the-Entire-Screen
- not a dup of either, as it refers to how to take a specific type of screenshot. Should also ultimately include e.g., Linux distros and mobile platforms, too. This is not a duplicate and I removed the NFDs. Hope this is helpful, and I’m happy to discuss title guidelines in more detail if needed. I’ve coached our interns a bunch on this, so I’m well versed
Teresa and I thought up another solution. If we moved the dup information below the other subsections, it would make the others more prominent and thereby cause few people to think these are duplicates.
Chris_H
11
I think very few people are likely to notice this content is duplicated anywhere, since people are unlikely to view more than one of these pages. My research has shown that articles perform best when the most common or current method of doing something is the first thing in an article. In this case, it’s probably best to keep the Snipping tool method at the top of “Take a Screenshot in Windows” because that’s probably the best practice with current versions of Windows.
