Hello, all, if any of you still remember me! Ok, so, the story to my disappearance: when I was on wikiHow before, I was on behind my parents’ backs. They found out something like a year or two ago, maybe more, and made me stop using wH. Shortly before this, I had changed my name to KetsuiS, but I’ve requested that it be changed back to Nate848… ANYWAY. So yeah, I’ve had permission a couple of months, but been waaay too busy (I’m graduating HS/finals are very soon) to come back. I thought of wH today and decided to see if I could even still log in. I’m impressed that I can. I figured I would have forgotten the password or the account no longer be active. ^^’ But yeah. So, what has changed? What should I know about? Any major news? I saw something about some expert thing? What exactly is that? It looks like a lot has changed… Nate848
WHAT??? I just saw that Krystle left???
Who else is here/gone that I should remember? Is Maluniu around? I used to bother her a lot.
Hey again, Nate! Well - I don’t remember you in the first place, since I wasn’t around when you were, but welcome back
You have been gone for awhile! Yeah, Krystle left staff last summer - it was pretty sad to see her go, but she still pops in from time to time as a volunteer. Anna has taken over community management since then. To answer your other editor-related question, Maluniu drifts in and out from time to time, like a lot of our other volunteers. A fair amount of people that I see on old revisions of your Talk page have drifted from the wiki, but on the bright side, we’ve got a lot of new wikiHowians who also offer their own knowledge to the project, and some of the older ones have stuck around through the years. Others drop in every now and again to say hello, and sometimes stick around for a bit before returning to their lives
I’m sorry that I can’t offer a ton of help in terms of what’s changed since you left - but I’m happy to do my best to help with any new confusions you might have, if you’d like? You can always write here or shoot me a message on my Talk page and I’m happy to try and help out! Again, welcome back!
Yup. I’ve been gone way longer than I realized. Hm. Who is in charge of what now? Are the new welcomes manual? I thought we had done away with manual welcomes a long time ago because people kept getting missed? I don’t quite know what all to ask, but thank you anyway for the nice welcome back message!
@KetsuiS
- I might be able to help you with your welcome message.
All new users are sent an automatic welcome message by WelcomeBot on behalf of rather a New Article Booster or Administrator, however, we now have a tool called the Welcome Wagon which Welcomers, like myself, can use to personally welcome new users. We have streamlined access to their edits, contributions, current talk page and user page. If you’re interested in that, you can apply for it here: https://www.wikihow.com/Become-a-Welcome-Wagon-User-on-wikiHow
Anna’s in charge of community management these days (but I already mentioned that, hah). For the most part, the site is still pretty volunteer-driven. We’ve got Seymour Edits and WRM - basically, I believe they’re freelancers, although I have to admit I’m not positive about that - creating content for us, and they’re paid to do so, and we get experts to review our medical topics (such as mental health or physical health) so that we get the “Expert Reviewed by:” stamp on some articles, but for the most part, a lot of stuff around here is still widely volunteer-operated. Although you’d be surprised how many arguments that SE’s work has managed to kick up…
Tim (ItsPugle) nailed the welcoming bit, but I can elaborate further - basically, WelcomeBot pulls at random Boosters and admins who have been online recently. But WelcomeBot isn’t mandatory - a lot of us remove our accounts from the WelcomeBot rotation. I turned mine off, in all honesty. It’s a bit overwhelming!
If you’ve got more questions, just fire away - we’re happy to help
Well… what is this SE/expert thing?
SE is Seymour Edits. They’re a group of editors who work on wikiHaus projects. https://www.wikihow.com/User:Seymour-Edits
I don’t know too much about the expert review other then it basically is that wikiHow hires people to double check articles.
I can’t answer that question with certainty - a staff member would know better than I would- but basically, from what I know, there’s a group of paid editors who work with wikiHow’s content managers (such as Carrie, Or, and Tucker) to create content that readers are looking for and might need.
Seymour Edits (and WRM, and plenty of other staff-monitored accounts) have multiple people using the account, although it’s tracked behind-the-scenes and the editors are followed up with by whoever is managing their work. A quick sum-up of the accounts:
- New content pages comes from the WRM account, where it’s auto-published (sort of like how article creation used to work, before the promote/demote system introduced with NAB 2.0 came into play).
- Seymour Edits - also called SE - are the editors incorporating new edits, taking out inaccurate edits, and tweaking based on the feedback they get from staff. They also do bold rewrites of existing content to bring it up to our quality standards - often, they revise stubs.
- WikiHow Expert Review is an account used to incorporate expert feedback. On pages like mental health or physical health topics, after Seymour Edits has finished most of their revisions, they’ll get an expert to review the article and make recommended changes, based on the expert’s knowledge and advice.
Does that make sense? I know it’s a lot to take in, so please don’t be afraid to say so if it doesn’t
It kinda does. It’s honestly quite fascinating and intimidating–how different this is.
Oh yikes - I’m sorry, none of us meant to make you feel intimidated here! Stuff does change over the years, but rest assured that it’s a normal, everyday part of wikiLife when you get back into the swing of things. And if you see the paid editors screw up, you don’t have to just quietly patrol it in hopes it’ll get noticed by staff - you can go and address it on the Talk page, since that does get checked. Who knows how many times poor Anna has seen me yell at the Seymour account for an unsatisfactory edit
Hey, if you want to get back into the wiki stuff, how about you go ahead and dip your toes in with your old activities and then send me a note on my Talk if you need any help? I’d be happy to give you guidance if you’re confused about any of the tools or anything! I’m happy to check this thread, too, but I’m attempting to multi-task at the moment and it’s a bit of a juggling act
I’ve been doing a bit of tip/recent changes patrolling again, but I think I understand now. Thank you! ^^
No problem - feel free to send me a note any time you wish, or spam this thread with questionsWe’re always happy to help out!
