Anna
1
Happy Tuesday, wikiHowians! A bit more news for you all: Since the introduction of Parts and Methods to more articles, readers and community members have - rightfully so! - pointed out that that some of our multi-part articles read “# Way to Do Something,” which doesn’t quite make sense. Now, thanks to @Agent86
and the other engineers, we have a fix! Parts and Methods are going to be handled a little differently around the site to get this done: instead of using “Part One:” or “Method One:”, there will now be a “magic word” to designate, article by article, whether the focus is parts or methods. If you put “__PARTS__” or “__METHODS__” within the article text (ideally at the bottom, out of the way), this will tell the system how to display those section headers, and it will fix the “# Ways to” issue as well, so the header titles will be accurate.
MiscBot will also be doing a one-time run-through to remove the current extra title words, leaving behind just the actual descriptive portion in the wikitext, along with the correct Magic Word for that article. The bot may well make a few mistakes in cases where the initial subtitle setup was unusual, so while it goes, you may see some editing fellows and other Staff members following behind to clean up a few unavoidable “misfires” - and you are, of course, welcome to help fix up any bot edits or other section headers that you see needing it, too! We’re hoping this solves a couple of problems at once: making titling a little bit more straight-forward and improving the header wording’s accuracy. Do feel free to make necessary adjustments to titles or sections as you find them, of course - and let us know if you see any bigger issues as it goes live! Phew, busy feature week! If you guys have feedback or see anything that needs adjusting with the new developments, please let us know
Coolio! Awesome work, engineers! Just one question that I came up with while seeing all this, will you be able to have “Parts” within a Method? For example, Say you have a couple of Methods, but Method One is divided in to different parts (if you get what I mean). Would this still work? ==Steps== ===Method One=== ====Part One==== Text ====Part Two==== Text ===Method Two=== Something like that ^
Marina
3
Nice! I was actually right about to ask if we’d ever see a fix to the ‘# of methods’ issue!Thank you, engineerrsss!
Take for example the one that got mentioned a few months ago in the forums (if I’m not mistaken, I believe this one was one of them: http://www.wikihow.com/Use-Your-wikiHow-Watchlist-Page
Anna
5
@Danielbauwens
The ==== level section headers shouldn’t be affected at all (we just did a test to confirm, but it looked good!). So that kind of formatting should still work fine! Miscbot will make the changes to the === level parts and add the magic word, but the ==== level will remain as is
Wow. That was bugging me and *poof* it is gone. Well done @Agent86
and thank you @Anna
for letting everyone know.
I love this new feature! The titles will be simpler now - thanks @Anna
for the update. Happy Tuesday
Hailey
8
I agree. Much easier than putting the “Method 1, Part 1, etc” to every subsection.
@Anna
- I tested some alternatives for the magic words. “__Parts__” and “__parts__” both work to get the job done. When I previewed my edits, methods were shown, but, upon publication, parts were in place.
Anna
10
Ok, cool @Alabaster
- thanks for teasing that out! Good to know! I passed on the info about the Preview earlier, and that’ll get fixed up ASAP - hopefully tomorrow. Big thanks for pointing it out!
This looks like it’ll be easier than the previous method, and I like it. Thanks for the update!
system
12
It is a great idea, but in RC, it is confusing since the preview still shows ‘‘Methods’’ rather than ‘‘parts’’, kind of like the wikivid edits don’t always load in RC, so sometimes you only see the text command for the video, and it looks broken…
When I see headings in RC Patrol, I intuitively look for the designation of the headings (methods or parts) right by the first ===Heading===. When checking articles in edit mode, too, I find that I want to see which choice for the heading labels was specified and verify that it was chosen correctly. While I understand the choice to put the magic words out of the way, it is a bit like keeping your keys in the glove box rather than beside the seat. You have to go out of your way to get them when you need them. It makes so much more sense to put: ==Steps== __Parts__ ===Heading===
Anna
14
@BR
They’re working on getting the Previews to display right today, so that should be dealt with (along with all the other Previews around the site). Thanks! @Alabaster
The idea in placement with magic words in the past has been to keep them out of the way, particularly to help newer contributors avoid deleting them by mistake in editing. That being said, they’ll work in other spots too, so if people develop a preference for moving them, I don’t think that’s the end of the world. If so, maybe we’d just keep an eye, in those cases, on whether folks are ending up accidentally deleting them, and kind of develop an MO from there, depending on how it goes? There’s no set in stone rule about placement though - they will work wherever.
Anna
15
@BR
@Agent86
fixed up the Previews, so those should display correctly now! Thanks for your patience - let me know if you see any areas where it’s still not right, but I did check in RCP, diffs, Tips Patrol, etc, so hopefully it’s all good
@Anna
, forgot to say this, but when applying methods, you don’t have to place the _METHODS_ at the bottom because it’s already set from default to methods when using === Title ===. Also if you ‘‘do’’ use _METHODS_ it (in my case at least) shows up in the article.
Anna
17
Yeah, __METHODS__ is currently the default - there’s always a chance that we might switch the default in future, if we get to a stage where Parts articles are more common than Methods ones, so it doesn’t hurt to have the __METHODS__ word there in case of future adjustments, but if you forget or choose not to put it, not the end of the world
