I’ve decided to make a coaching template for those using the Tips Patrol. It’s aimed at people who approve tips that have spelling/grammar errors, redundant information, or are too obvious. Here it is: “Hi, Thanks for using the [[Special:TipsPatrol|Tips Patrol]] to help us out. Your efforts to improve articles are greatly appreciated! However, I’ve noticed that some of the tips you’ve patrolled seem to be below our quality standards. Since wikiHow attracts millions of readers per day, we need to make sure our articles have the highest-quality material. Therefore, it’s important to make sure the tips are accurate, free of spelling and grammar errors, not too obvious, and don’t repeat itself. If you come across a tip that sounds really good but could use some improvement, you can simply click the text box and make the necessary changes. For more information, you may read [[Use the Tips Patrol Tool on wikiHow|How to Use the Tips Patrol Tool on wikiHow]]. Thanks!” Feel free to suggest any changes. Will be at http://wikihow.com/Template:Tipspatrol
system
2
@Illneedasaviour
You can always copy and paste the text here, so that people can know what they are approving/disapproving
I thought of doing that at first, but I don’t know why I didn’t, heh. I added into my original post.
I’m beginning to have a problem. On the Community Dashboard, it says the app has 11 tips in the application. However, when I go in, I get the same tip over and over and over again. I keep skipping them, but I still get it when I refresh. After I skip, I"m told there’s no more in the app. It’s not giving me all of the tips to add/revise/delete/etc! #bug
Writelf
5
In the sentence “Therefore, it’s important to make sure the tips are accurate, free of spelling and grammar errors, not too obvious, and don’t repeat itself”, decide whether the tips you are referring to are singular or plural, because you are currently switching between them. Otherwise, it looks good to me!
Exactly right. Otherwise it’s an excellent template, approved by me
Great! I created it now at http://wikihow.com/Template:Tipspatrol
I’ve also fixed the error that WriteIf pointed out. Go ahead and use {{tipspatrol}}
Good work! My only concern with TipsPatrol in general is that we don’t seem to be clear about quality standards. We say they don’t meet our quality standards but what are those standards exactly? Is the explanation good enough for a 14 year old adding tips to relationship articles?
system
10
The only thing I wouldn’t “badger” towards younger editors that are new and using the tool as soon as they create their account is the redundant information part, especially on long and popular articles. This is a totally different scenario if it was an editor familiar with the articles already and would know if it’s already there or not.
We don’t yet have an “official guidelines page” on how to use the tool, but we do have http://www.wikihow.com/Use-the-Tips-Patrol-Tool-on-wikiHow
which is our best explanation of what we want so far. I agree with @Maluniu
that we should avoid hounding new users of this tool. While we ask for people to remove wikiBloat (aka redundant tips), we shouldn’t expect that people on tips patrol read every single tip already on the article to know whether the tip is redundant or not. I personally don’t do that when I do tips patrol, and I don’t expect others to do it either. Having an intuitive sense of what is repetitive and therefore knowing that we don’t need “just be yourself” as a tip, is something that comes with lots of wikiHow experience. We don’t need to demand it on day 1 here.
Melwade
12
Agreed. Most users are not trying to be redundant and don’t mean to add useless tips. This brings the point I raised on the other thread regarding this tool and the image app - there’s no real good education tool available to help them improve their skills. This creates a much larger burden on RC Patrol than would otherwise be there. While we don’t want to badger, we definitely want all wikiHow users to improve their skills - and the vast majority want the same thing.
Elocina
13
Maybe there should be a coach for this, like the “patrol coach”, and if a certain percentage of tip patrols get rolled back you get a talkpage message?
Now that sounds like the best idea for this problem, I’ve heard yet.
system
15
I like this idea. Is it workable from an engineering POV?
Elocina
16
Jack said it would be a long time before something like this could be implemented and I totally understand that. So, I think we need to just develop some best practices in the meantime for how to communicate about tips patrol.
