Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of awesomely titled articles, with content that’s a bit less awesome (example that’ll likely be deleted in its present state- http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Flower-Soap
). Articles like these are often answers to some of our more intriguing and potentially interesting requested articles. The sad part about this is that, in the current system, these titles aren’t typically placed back in the requests queue. We end up missing out on a lot of good articles that could have been written if the right author had picked them up. Therefore, I’d like to launch an effort to add titles like these back into the request list. If you’ve seen a potentially useful title deleted (the deletion log is here: http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=&page=
) then add it to the “Suggested Re-Requests” page that I created just now ( http://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:Suggested-ReRequests
). I envision admins reviewing the titles requested to bring back, determining which could lead to serious and successful wikiHow articles, and restoring those to the request queue. So, yeah. Thoughts?
I don’t think, considering we have essentially unlimited space in the request queue, that we should trash a bunch of really good titles. “Too many requests” isn’t a bad thing.
This is actually much more divisive than I could have ever fathomed. You’d think saving potentially awesome titles wouldn’t be this controversial.
I don’t think the existence of poor titles in the request queue is a good reason to be against adding good titles into the system.
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Mets and I discussed about this in IRC, so I assume you peeps know where I stand… *whistles innocently on the side*
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So… okay… You’re asking that when we delete a good title with pitiful content, that we go to your page and re-insert that title? As in… take another extra couple mins for each title we delete? later: never mind. Just spoke with you on the forums. Ping me when you’re ready for help.
I can picture a featured article called Make Flower Soap, and the one Mike posted above is notit. I think it’s an idea that has potential.
Hey, I expanded it a little. I believe that NFD tag could be removed now. What do you guys think?
Wait, I thought on the discussion page it says it was deleted.
I requested the flower soap article, as me and my mother run a soap buisness, but when we try out flower soap it goes mouldy to quickly. We made our own soap mixes and such, so it was disapointing. I feel some people look at a title and think “Oh, you can just -------- instead of doing it the proper way: that’s much easier.” Good idea!
@Loiswade42
What did you find out, Lois?
Yeah, well, at least it’s readable now!
@Lillyshak
were you actually looking for how to make soap with realflowers in them, or just flower shaped soap? Also, what type of flower petals did you use!
As good requests are added back in, the challenge is going to be how to keep the request lists trimmed down to the point where people will be able to find them. Right now we have 451,683 requests.
I don’t think adding any more requests would do us any good until we sort out the ones we have.
Yet the more we have, the harder it is to sort through. Besides, I can’t figure out how to work the Suggestion Deletion Nomination thingy. Do I edit the page, and if so, how exactly should I do it?
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KIS has a good point. We have more requests than writers at this point in time… I’m not adverse to adding good titles back into the queue? But please do so responsibly. Check the existing request list first to see if there’s anything close to it in there already. No need to put duplicate or very near duplicate titles back on the list!
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There’s an article for that… http://www.wikihow.com/Nominate-an-Article-for-Deletion-in-wikiHow
Basically you edit the article and put in the “tag”… { { nfd|mea } } for example. The tag consists of two groupings of three letters each. The first three are the letters NFD… for nomination for deletion. The second three stand for the reason you are nominating. For example: mea = meanspirited activity acc = accuracy issues van = vanity article adv = advertising dup = duplicate The vertical line between the two three-letter clusters is found on your keyboard above the enter key that you use your right hand pinkie finger for… press your “shift key” then “backslash” to get it. Ping my talk page if you still don’t “get it” after reading the article above, okay? I’ll be happy to help you figure it out.
Yes, just edit the page over at wikiHow:Administrator Notice Board - wikiHow
Or actually it may be easier just to edit the section in which you think the suggestion belongs. For example, if someone requested something silly, and you think that “Eat Peanut Butter On Mars on a Tuesday” is likely to result in a joke article, no matter how sincerely someone answers it, just paste that exact title into the Joke topics area.