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This topic is for anyone who needs help with tips, related to wikiHow. If you have any tips, (and people don’t have to ask for them) just post them here! Here are the rules:

  1. Do not post unhelpful tips.
  2. Do not post anything unrelated to wikiHow.
  3. Please post tips that don’t have anything disrespectful.
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When coaching someone, don’t use all caps or bold text. When you use these, your message can come off as really rude and condescending, which achieves the exact opposite goal of coaching. If you need to use all caps or bold text to emphasize one of your points, then your coaching message is either too long, or too convoluted, and you need to rewrite it.

I’ve seen many users, including admins, make this mistake on wikiHow, and I find it very counterproductive.

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  • If you’re not sure what to do about a coaching situation, ask an admin for help. They can usually handle any immediate needs and give guidance on what to do for next time. (I still turn to other admins when I need help with some stuff.)
  • Some of the things you learn on wikiHow have pretty concrete rules, like how to format a page or apply a template. Others are far more flexible and case-dependent, like coaching or handling edit wars. It’s normal to have difficulty with one or the other, especially if you’re younger and/or disabled. Nobody expects perfection - it’s a learning process, and you can always ask for help.
  • The community has a very diverse userbase. Some people you’ll get along with great; others, not so much. There’s a lot of reasons for this, ranging from differences in communication styles to differences in deep-seated personal beliefs. You don’t need to like (or even regularly work with) everyone, but learning how to behave civilly towards others is vital even if you disagree with them on fundamentals.
  • If something’s bugging you, address it through the appropriate avenue. None of us are mind-readers (well, last I checked, anyway). It’s hard to fix a problem that we don’t know exists.
  • Feedback or coaching isn’t a reflection on you and doesn’t mean anything about how that person feels about you. Everyone makes mistakes and has strengths and weaknesses, and feedback can be separate from personal feelings. I’ve gotten feedback and scoldings from people who I consider friends, and I’ve given some pretty blunt feedback to friends or people I don’t dislike nor like. It’s not about you, it’s about the Mission and the community, and coaching and/or feedback is so that you can participate in those most effectively and learn where to improve.
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One thing I have noticed on wikiHow is people tend to use rollback to revert changes when they should consider the undo button. Because “rollback” uses a default edit summary that can’t be changed, reverting an edit that isn’t a clear instance of vandalism can be misinterpreted as harashly “rejecting” an edit altogether and risks violating AGF (assume good faith). In contrast, using “undo” allows you to make additional changes to the page as well as override the existing edit summary to explain why you decided to undo that person’s changes. Rollback should ideally be used for obvious vandalism or bad-faith edits (blanking, exlinks, etc). Any edits that don’t seem to conform to wikiHow norms and standards (inaccurate categorizations, incorrectly formatted but well-intentioned additions) should be either edited to improve them further, or simply undone with a concise edit summary to explain the removal and continue upholding AGF.

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I started doing what you said last year. I thought using rollback without giving a reason for the revert would hurt someone’s feelings, especially if the editor is not experienced.

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