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Google provides several sources of useful information for wikiHow editors and patrollers. Google search can be used to quickly and easily test suspect articles for copyright violations, and can also be used to determine whether the subject of a "Be Like" article is sufficiently notable to be a useful wikiHow article. In addition, Google Suggest also provides a way to determine what the best title for an article should be. This article will provide a reference for using these Google tools on wikiHow.
Steps
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Look for new articles or unformatted articles that appear to be copy and pasted from another source. New "copy and paste jobs" generally tend to stick out like a sore thumb on wikiHow as they will not closely fit our how-to format.
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Do a "Google Test" by taking a selection of 5-20 words of the suspected copyrighted submission, and enter it into a Google search box with quotes around it. By entering the selection of words in quotes , Google will locate any other document on the Internet with those exact same words.
- If no matches come up, then the document is probably not a copy and paste from a copyrighted source on the web.
- If Google shows one or more matches for the search, then look at the document to see if it is the source of the submission on wikiHow. The image below shows an exact match of two full sentences between a wikiHow article and another article. This almost certainly indicates that one was copied from the other.
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Another way to do a Google test:
- Select some text by highlighting it.
- Right click on the text and choose "Search the web" from the drop down menu.
- Review results for exact matches.
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If the page appears to be non-unique, mark it as a suspected copyright violation by writing {{ copyvio |URL of source}} and blanking out all the text.
- For more information on dealing with potential copyright violations, read How to Remove Copyright Violations from wikiHow.
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Copy the name of the person whose notability is questionable. If you encounter a "Be Like" article where you do not instantly recognize the name, you should apply this test.
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Search for that person's name and look to see where it comes up.
- Search results that may
support notability:
- If the person has an entry about them on Wikipedia.
- If the person has an entry about them on IMDb.
- If the person is prominently featured in a major newspaper or magazine (e.g., The New York Times, Time, Newsweek ).
- Search results that do not support notability:
- If the person has a Myspace page.
- If the person has YouTube videos.
- If the person is on Buzznet or any other social network.
- Search results that may
support notability:
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Use your best judgment in scrutinizing these articles; if the target of the article does not appear to be someone widely known with achievements other than merely creating internet buzz, he or she does not probably pass the notability requirement.
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Nominate articles that are not about sufficiently notable figures for deletion as vanity pages. This process may encourage a helpful discussion as to whether the article's subject is sufficiently notable as to warrant inclusion in wikiHow.
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