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Hey everybody - an announcement for you!

The Greenhouses were originally developed as tools to help people specialize with their editing skills, but the greenhouses for topic enthusiasts have had their problems: The Stub Greenhouse doesn’t let you delve into subcategories (so you might get a whole load of articles you don’t know much about),  and the Topic Greenhouse often brings up articles that are in pretty good shape already, rather than the ones that really need your editing help. With these concerns in mind, Alissa and Scott have been working on some changes to try to hit two birds with one stone, and have just rolled out a new and improved Topic Greenhouse:slight_smile:

There are two main changes to check out:

  1. The tool has been revamped to focus on category choices. The selection for topics is smoother than it used to be, and most importantly, it’s hopefully more inviting for new editors: we have a prompt that lets you list what you’re passionate/knowledgeable about when you first sign up on wikiHow, and this now connects with the Topic Greenhouse.

When folks first sign up for a new account, they’ll see this. Then, when they head to the Topic Greenhouse later on, their choices from the Interests prompt will be pre-populated in the tool. 

Anyone can also change, add, or remove topics from the Topic Greenhouse by clicking this link:

You’ll get a view like this that lets you pick all your topics of choice, and then the Greenhouse will serve up topics in that category or subcategory:

  1. The second change is that the tool will now prioritize articles that really need help. Within the category you pick, it should first show you stubs, then articles with other templates, and then eventually ones that are probably already in good shape. Our hope is this will really help knowledgeable folks find the topics that need their help, rather than finding ones that are already pretty good. 

Because the new Topic Greenhouse is essentially also a “smarter” Stub Greenhouse, the plan if this tool launch goes well is to phase out Stub Greenhouse. You can still see all the same stub articles in a tool, just through this new Topic Greenhouse, instead:slight_smile:

This is a brand new set of changes, so let us know if you see any bugs with the tool! We can always send Scott to do some bug squashing. And let us know what you think of it – hopefully it provides a better way to find articles on topics you care about that need your help!

Check it out here: https://www.wikihow.com/Special:EditFinder/Topic

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Nice.:smiley:

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Awesome!

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Great!

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Wo-hoo! This is awesome, will l totally try out when I get a chance =D

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Just tried it out - AMAZING! It starts off with the stubby articles and you can add all your knowledge to it. =D

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Excellent:slight_smile:

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This looks like a great addition, Anna. Thanks for the update!

Does the new tool put any specific emphasize on articles that have been demoted? I feel like this could be a good way to edit some articles that may be a bit harder to find otherwise.

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At the moment, its focus is on templated articles. That could change in the future  - but, for a starting point, we reasoned that a lot of the articles that are demoted but need some expansion/cleanup/formatting/etc to get ready to go live have got templates on them as well, so they’ll probably get into the queue that way. 

But I do see the plus side to your general idea, Andrew - if this new tool works well, I could see using it for demoted articles too. We’d just have to be open to some experimentation and watch whether it brings in the kind of article folks are inspired to work on. I could see emphasizing demoted articles being a good thing (getting topics improved!), or I could see it actually making it harder to find promising articles to work on (because a fair number of the ones demoted without templates would need a complete overhaul to be helpful). So I think it would be an experiment! But step one for now is seeing how it goes with these stubs and other templates (some of which are also demoted), then going from there. I’m hopeful this will be a tool that gets improved even more over time, so let us know any impressions or thoughts about the kinds of topics you come across as you use it!:slight_smile:

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Great!

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I agree with @Anna - It seems that dredging up the demoted articles for inclusion in the topic greenhouse would undermine the efficacy of the demotion process.

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Wow. Some really amazing edits coming through the greenhouse now:

As Anna mentioned, since topic greenhouse was revamped to prioritize stubs, and stub greenhouse doesn’t get much use anymore, we’re going to begin the process of retiring it. We’ll need to mark this as historical: http://www.wikihow.com/Use-the-wikiHow-Stub-Greenhouse

Can anyone think of other links or places where we’d want to make updates?

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Marked as historical: http://www.wikihow.com/Use-the-wikiHow-Stub-Greenhouse

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I made a thread for what appears to be a bug:  http://forums.wikihow.com/discussion/18197/topic-greenhouse-not-refreshing-when-new-category-ies-is-are-selected

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Great update:slight_smile:Why does the stub article need to be historcial though?

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Just to let our readers know that they won’t be able to use the stub greenhouse anymore after it’s retired:slight_smile:

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Oh, wow! I’ve never used the topic greenhouse much before, but I might have to give it a try now!

If I specify a general category as an interest, will it automatically include all subcategories? (For example, would specifying “Disability Issues” automatically include “Autism Spectrum,” or would I need to list both?)

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@MissLunaRose I think the subcategories are included - I just tried Disability Issues and was served up Make Friends While Having Autism. Yay:slight_smile: