It is my contention that a central resource collection needs to be brought together and put in a form that is easy to use, understand, and access. Access to this collection could be via a hot key which would be on every screen on the wikiHow site and in the same screen location for all pages. Clicking this hotkey/button/hotlink would take you to a well-organized comprehensive resource collection for editors. It might be that some resources need to be locked to all except boosters and admins, but, “in my humble opinion”, those resources should still be on the landing page. I am in favor of putting everything on one well-organized page that is intuitive to navigate. Key elements might be: 1) logically organized table of contents (TOC) 2) use of TOC links which go to internally anchored sections 3) a return-to-TOC from each section 4) (sub)sections be expand & collapse 5) information be included multiple times on the page (as needed) for ease of assimilaton (i.e. Information need not be constrained to only one position of the page.} 6) _user-friendly, especially for newcomers_7) sections be broken into subsections based on usage In the past, I have found it useful to organize tools into groups: 1st group: contains three to five of the most accessed tools 2nd group contains most of the tools [including those in the first group] except those tools that are seldom used 3rd group contains all tools I will flesh out my thoughts and begin discussion on this in a future forum post “Organize shared wikiHow resources efficiently”.
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Isnt the community dashboard what you are looking for? its available from every page and is a well organised table of resources and tools to edit articles efficiently. But yes, there should be a hotkey but that kind of this is tough to integrate into an online site, since key shortcuts work better offline. The design of the community dashboard will have some improvement in the upcoming redesign
There is a sidebar to the right of every wikiHow page that has links to some editors’ resources, but it can
be modified to include more.
Yes, @Adelaide1230
, a portion of the sidebar is imminently usable for what I have in mind. However, the sidebar scrolls with the page, so as you move down a long page, you end up with blank space on the page. Essentially, the side bar has been blanked. This is not good, especially on a high-traffic page like this (where space represents a high agglomerate.community.time premium). __________________________________________ *!* I have often found myself scrolling back up a user/user_talk page to get to the usable portion of the side bar. Much agglomerate.community.time might be saved if the side bar scrolled independently of the page. Alternatively, the sidebar could be divided and a portion of it be pinned, leaving the rest to scroll with the page or independently (best). *!* Extending this to other pages, I have often found myself scrolling to the top of a page or to the bottom of a page for one reason or another. I am wondering if there are keyboard shortcuts for this action (maybe cntrl.up.arrow/cntrl.down.arrow). If these (or similar) were implemented, I would vote that cntrl.tab.fwd/cntrl.tab.back move through sections on a page. (Implicit in this implementation are anchors: top, bottom, section.) Again, a tweak has been identified and highlighted which represents savings in agglomerate.community.time expenditure. This section has been broken out to a separate forum discussion: “Navigate a wikiHow page efficiently”. _________________________________________ Your idea of adding more links to the sidebar is tres excellente, @Adelaide1230
. The upper "x"cm of the side bar could contain the “y:” most used links by active editors. Almost all of those editors know how to replace those links with the most helpful links to him.her if he.she is permitted to change that html code. ___________________________________________________________________________ No @Mrappbrain
the Community Dashboard is not a resource center. The Community Dashboard is a graphic representation of a house of workrooms showing who has done the most work within each room and how much work remains to be done within each workroom. It provides access to each of the public workrooms within the house via hotlinks. Note that the Community Dashboard does not graphically represent the foundation work going on in the basement or many of the private workrooms within the house, so it does not “paint the whole picture”. Being new, this is what I have observed/surmise: When a new editor opens the door to one of these workrooms and walks in, he is clueless as to what to do. He is in a new environment, so, he.she looks around, pokes around and does the best he.she can to figure out what to do. Then he.she does one of three things: 1) says “To heck with it” and leaves the workroom never to return (or a least not to return for a while). 2) comes out of the workroom and fires a volley of questions at a high.value.wikiHowian. This results in a multitude of question/answer exchanges with the high.value.wikiHowian, during which the newcomer is pointed to a resource, a HowTo, which outlines and provides pictures for what he has already figured out for himself, the easy stuff. Note that he.she is not provided with the nuts and bolts or the whys and wherefors that pertain to that workroom and the process carried out within that room. Nor is he.she given guidance on the contingencies likely to arise, nor clear documentation and tools to handle each contingency quickly efficiently. 3) scrapes, scrounges and muddles through link after link until he.she finally feels like he.she has found the answers. (These are the diligent, resourceful editors like @Danielbauwens
) Ultimately, smart and resourceful as they are, these alpha individuals emerge from their “trial by fire” with a few misconceptions and still, in the process of coming up to speed quickly, end up using up a number of question.answer exchanges with high.value.wikiHowians. (And there are only so many of these sessions that can be given out each day.) ____________________________________ My proposed process, a starting point for developing the resource center, follows. First an editor new to a process within the wikiHow system needs to be told what to expect, what the overall function of the workroom is; what is hoped to be gained by completing the activity that goes on within that room. Then the new editor needs to be provisioned with the tools to apply to the most common contingencies that arise within that room. Finally the new editor needs to have access to the tools and resources for his.her room from within the room
. That is access to the resource center should be readily available from within the workroom
. Then the editor who is seeing the process for the first time has comprehensive guidance and is not just stuck in a room to figure it out by tinkering. So what I am talking about in the way of a central resource collection is a comprehensive set of tools and documentation that is so arranged that it reflects the structure and workflow on the site by judicious organization/arrangement of sections. Sections and subsections can be expanded, providing drill down functionality. Links to the resource center from the workrooms would be directed to the appropriate (sub)section on the resource center page.
On the subject of the lost new member, I would suggest a kind of guide to pop up giving you the general rules/tools and idea of what happens (only when one registers, so this is a problem for anonymous users). This would be a possible solution, although I can imagine a lot of impatient people would not want to take the time of reading a page filled with boring text.
I revised the initial post in this thread and revised the thread name. I hope that this does not inhibit the discussion. Does anyone see problems or have suggestions?
