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One thing folks outside the wikiHaus may not realize about wikiHow is that we actually have dozens of engineering tests running every single day, mostly affecting logged-out readers. The goal of these tests is to figure out how we can improve reader experience, feature by feature. The majority of the tests are small and almost unnoticeable, like “which shade of green should we make the submit button” type tests. Most tests don’t go beyond the experimentation phase (the ones that do sometimes become permanent features we tell you guys about here!).  Every now and then, though, the tests are so bizarre that discovering one might make you think the site was broken.  So in that spirit, I want to give you an early heads-up on a unusual test that will start running soon, so if you see it, you won’t have to file a bug :) 

On a collection of tech and fitness articles, we will be testing a different user experience. For logged out readers, some tech and fitness articles will be temporarily redirected away from wikiHow.com to new, specific domains, so the test won’t impact the reputation of the larger wikiHow domain. These pages may look a little different logged out, but the main goal is to see if readers prefer learning in specialized areas.  For example, if you are trying to get more fit, do you want to be on a site that will ONLY present you with more information about fitness, rather than possibly distracting you with non-related topics? The best way to figure out if this will be more useful to readers is to actually test it.  Since this is just a test, the new domains won’t have all the same features and tools as our standard site, but they’ll be developed enough for us to see whether readers prefer to learn this way, or not. 

The experience logged-in won’t be any different from usual, so hopefully it won’t even affect anyone who’s reading this! But if you happen to be logged out on a tech or fitness articles in the coming weeks, you may see the test in progress. To get adequate data, we will likely have to leave the test running for 6 months or so.  And once we have enough data we can come back and report what we learned, if we learned anything interesting at all. Hope knowing this saves you the hassle of filing a bug:slight_smile:

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Is this test running for both desktop, or mobile browser versions, and is there any testing on IOS / Android or any other APP’s. 

I’m just curious since there are different, I assume, demographic reader prefference interests and search pattern behaviour and features (visual, accessible, input methods). 

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Thanks for the heads up Jack.

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This specific test will be for all platforms.  Quite frequently we only test things on one platform though.  In most cases for example we are just testing phones…or just testing desktop. 

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Got any specific links - I wanna see what’s the hype about.

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Nothing to see just yet, @ItsPugle - Aaron is still working out on a few wrinkles before the code and pages are ready for readers, but Jack wanted to give a heads-up early on. Hopefully it won’t be too long before the test gets rolling:slight_smile:

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Awesome! I can’t wait till it’s up