1

Hi, everyone in Village Pump right now! I have recently started to help out with the wikiHow Herald, and one thing that was a priority was to get some topic suggestions for the community. These could be topics you want to learn more about, topics you want to draw community attention to, or topics that just generally interest you. We will pick some of the most popular topics to address. 

Let me know!:stuck_out_tongue:

2

Well, maybe something COVID-19 related? ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

3

Like, how to stay safe during the outbreak?( ˘ ³˘):heart:

4

Definitely!

5

This is probably already on the list, but I thought that I would say it anyway. Maybe the next edition should have a story that talks about the redesign, and what areas of the site will see it next?

6

Great idea, @R2_d2000 !

7

While we’re waiting, it might not be best to help envision what could go up at the Herald. As @Eric has posted on the Herald page in transit on 4/30/2020 (EDT), it’s on hiatus but an edition is coming up shortly. Contribute towards our mission, but do no more than watch these spaces when its been published. 

8

Thanks for catching that update, @Byankno1 ! 

@PianoLover1016 offered to help out by engaging the community to identify some additional topics for upcoming editions of the Herald, and they’re doing so in coordination with me. :) 

9

Didn’t know you were discussing anything with them- something I might have missed in translation.

10

I think coronavirus should be at the top of our list.  We can talk about what wikiHow contributors have been doing for the past few months because of the lockdown.

Next on our list should be the progress on the redesign.  It has been a couple of months since the redesign was rolled out, and there are still kinks being worked on.  That is why this should be second.

Third on our list should be the “meet a contributor” that happens almost every edition.

Finally on our list should be an essay in response to a general question related to wikiHow’s mission.  I emailed @Eric once about the RfA process, so maybe he can edit and broaden it so it is more useful before it gets published.  He can publish a different a different contributor essay if he wants to, but I would like to see another’s opinion on a subject area.

11

I think it would be cool to show positive things people are saying about wikiHow on other places on the internet. Something similar to this .

12

Like, how to stay safe during the outbreak? mee too

13

I don’t want to be that person , but I don’t think there should be a focus on coronavirus in the Herald. It’s a source of stress for many, many people, and I actually had to avoid the wiki to a degree in the initial weeks of the pandemic because I couldn’t deal with seeing it so often in RCP and Talk page notes; I can’t be the only one who was in that position, and I really don’t think it should be forced into people’s faces again, especially because the Herald has a pretty diverse readership. And coronavirus itself isn’t really wiki-related on its own - talking about what wikiHow has been doing as a website to help is completely different from talking about what contributors are doing about it or general tips on staying safe (which, frankly, every website has been shoving in people’s faces to the point where I think everyone is sick of hearing about it and doesn’t even bother clicking on the popups anymore).

14

^I think you have a point. Maybe the wikiHow Herald could stray away from direct mentions of the coronavirus. Recently I read a magazine which didn’t mention the word “coronavirus” or “COVID-19” at any point, but at the same time had indirect mentions such as “stay safe” and “seeing as we are staying at home”. Something like that might be more appropriate.

15

Honestly I’d love to know more about the history of wikiHow. Like how things used to be done, what changed when certain tools were introduced, how did policies like the nfd policy become the way it is nowadays, stuff like that. It’s not exactly “recent changes and developments” but maybe other people would be interested as well.

16

^Cool idea, @Zodi

17

I would like to have a staff corner like we have a contributor section, like meet a community member sort. Just from an introduction to anything that they would want to share.:slight_smile:

18

This is literally just a copy paste from what I put on Jaeden’s talk page, but here are some ideas I had.

What if there were wikiHow Herald “reporters”? There could be, like, 4 different reporters.

One could be a new article reporter, who interviews a user who started a really awesome new article, and the reporter could ask a few questions about the article, why they wrote it, etc.

And then you could have another reporter who interviews a new user, asks them how they’re liking wikiHow, stuff like that.

You could have yet another reporter who does a report on some of the forum highlights of the week, like new ideas, other things from the village pump, or really important bug reports and stuff.

And then for a fourth reporter, you could have someone who reports on the community dashboard, about stormy weather, users who really pitched in on a certain thing (answering questions, etc.), things like that.

You could have a games section from the games forum, like the wikiHow version of the weekly sports section. Like a scoreboard or something. I don’t know how that would work out exactly, but hey, it’s an idea!

There could be a funnies section, somebody could make memes just for wikiHow (not those awful wikiHow-images-out-of-context memes from Reddit- yuck). That could be interesting.

19

I’d be interested in knowing what if anything has been different about wikiHow during these unusual times. What have users been searching for? I’d expect a surge in, “how can I make my own toilet paper…”, well, maybe not that but, pehaps how to bake without flour has been more popular or pehaps the boredom buster pages have had a spike in popularity? Has there been more people editing? Has there been more sunny weather on the community dashboard?

20

There has been a lot more sunny weather on the dashboard, I would say.  Or maybe just less stormy weather : )

I’ve certainly been on quite a bit more, and I’ve seen a bit of a surge in new users.