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Starting today, you may see folks in the wikiHaus re-writing a lot of introductions to remove the “Here’s how” out of them. For example, you can see how “Here’s how” was removed here: http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Fishtail-Braid&diff=12058839&oldid=12053166 and rewritten here: http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Ask-a-Girl-to-Prom-or-Homecoming-in-a-Cute-Way&diff=12058867&oldid=12028518 Unfortunately, we need to rewrite the introductions of our pages but not for our usual reasons! Google thinks that when we write an introduction that ends in something like “Here’s how…” and then have an advertisement near the intro (as happens to users coming directly from Google on their first page view), the wording is essentially tricking people into thinking that if they click the ad, it will tell them how to do it. Here is an example of a page they are complaining about: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s254/sh/88798387-845e-4023-a519-5893819da460/06b328c6a7af77f7edc2217ad489d33d Of course we aren’t trying to trick people with these introductions at all! We are just trying to find a concise way to finish the introduction. Heck, when we are logged in, we don’t even see that some anonymous users might see an ad there! But since Google ultimately decides the policies on the pages we place these ads, we have no option other than to change the way the introductions are written. Since this is a wikiHow business problem and not really a community problem, I’ve asked editing fellows, interns, bots, staff, etc to start making these changes. You may see tons of article intros getting changed. Please accept these changes on RC patrol and elsewhere. And of course, if you want to join in and help make these changes, that would be immensely appreciated! Finally, it would be great if we could make these sort of changes permanent. If you see folks in the future ending intros with “Here’s how”, let’s remove that language and send them a link to this post. I wish Google would see this our way, but unfortunately they are adamant. And since we need them to keep the lights on here, we really don’t have a choice right now. I’m sorry about this.:frowning:

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I have seen this happening in Rc patrol for the past few days. Thanks for the clarification, Jack. I’ll try to do my bit removing the here’s how later. I have always tried to avoid here’s how, and use this article instead. Ill change any here’s how’s I come across. Maybe an addition to the writer’s guide is in order? To save on manpower and resources, I think a bot that removes here’s how is a great idea. My thoughts are a little jumbled up above, so kindly excuse any confusion this may cause.:slight_smile:Regards, Abhishek

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Thanks for the heads up

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Snapppp… I’ll remember this while boosting!

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Since this is a managed editing process, is there any reason not to make these, or the majority of them anyway, autopatrolled?> I have seen one patroler roll back a batch of these, even though the edit summary explained the reason for it.

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One other thought that I have mentioned before. Very few people actually know all of the editing fellows and staff, and none of the newest patrollers know them. Is there a simply way to add something to their username that would make them easier to identify? I know they are introduced in the forums from time to time, but those posts sink pretty quickly, and the staff page only lists ‘‘official’’ staff, not interns, and as far as I know, not editing fellow…

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Yes, we should be able to autopatrol these! I’ll ask everyone here to turn on that setting. If you still seeing any new unpatrolled edits on this after a few hours can you post the username here so I can ask them again.

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Thanks for the heads up, Jack, I’ll try to remember to remove it.

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I am not reverting these, but they are confusing, what does ‘‘After the Jump’’ mean, anyway? http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Recover-Lost-Partitions-with-Eassos&diff=12075020&oldid=12075008 http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Find-an-Experienced-Criminal-Defense-Lawyer&diff=prev&oldid=12075143

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“After the jump” means means after the buffer for the next section. It’s Google approved language.:wink:

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But do their ‘customers’ know? I like to think we are reasonable smart and it isn’t something that just jumps out at you.

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Thanks for the heads up, Jack:slight_smile:

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I don’t even know what an “editing fellow” is… LOL

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Thanks for the update Jack. I removed the “here is how” from some articles, according to my contributions list .

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Should edits like this be quick edited to remove the last sentence, or rolled back, too?

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Thanks for the heads up. I don’t know who these editors are, never seen them before. I’m with Jaob, what’s an editing fellow? It’s hard not to assume they are editors who are not on much just tossing in editorial changes on a pet peeve. I don’t see the ad like in the example Jack used because all ads are hidden in my browser. It’s hard to shift to IE at work because the ads are so pervasive.

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Yeah, someone please tell TJean that if they’re going to put that whole “Please do not revert” thing in their edit summary, it should be because they are ONLY making this rather uncontroversial edit, and not making their own “improvements” while they’re there .

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Thanks @Lewis-Collard - we chatted about this anyway, but yep, it was a result of back-to-back edits where the edit summary wasn’t changed. Feedback passed on and should all be good going forward. Thanks for the heads-up!

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By the way- I’m still reverting edits if they aren’t at least grammatically correct or don’t make sense…

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@Jaob - thanks for the heads-up! Your best bet is to quick edit any mistakes in that case, since we want to make sure that the “Here’s how” type wording doesn’t get back into the intros. Does that make sense? Like with any edit you see patrolling, it’s always great to improve it, though! The team working on this project is working through a long list, so if an edit isn’t totally the best it can be and you want to make it better, definitely go for it!