Can anyone help with implementing the formatting concept being attempted here? Before: http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Decide-to-Use-Improper-Fractions-or-Mixed-Numbers&oldid=7844227
After: http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Decide-to-Use-Improper-Fractions-or-Mixed-Numbers&oldid=7843950
The editor (Ben Kovitz, name-dropped in this thread: http://forums.wikihow.com/discussion/comment/33578/#Comment_33578
) is attempting a fairly bold edit that appears at first glance to breach the writer’s guide but I’m sure we’ve done similar before. Any ideas?
I think Ben Kovitz’s changes improved the article and made it easier to read. It’s a technical violation of the style guide, which is evidence that the style guide is not inviolable scripture and should be violated from time to time. Whatever the merits of the edit, I don’t think it’s right to revert it twice without comment
.
The former looks like forced verb-starters that really sound like helpful tips. The latter (after version) looks more organized.
Certainly we shouldn’t fear to make the format of an article suit its content, even if that violates the [[wikiHow:Writer’s Guide]]. Then we should update the Writer’s Guide to reflect what we’ve learned. Oddly enough, though, the [ wikihow.com/index.php?title=Decide-to-Use-Improper-Fractions-or-Mixed-Numbers&oldid=7843950
tabular version] does meet the Writer’s Guide, and the [ wikihow.com/index.php?title=Decide-to-Use-Improper-Fractions-or-Mixed-Numbers&oldid=7844227
“standard” version] doesn’t. The “standard” version contains steps that aren’t actions (“Generally, post-college classes do not require…”, “Do not convert…”) and describes a chronological sequence of steps for a single-step decision. The Writer’s Guide suggests that when steps can be done in any sequence, give them bullets rather than numbering them. There is, however, another problem with the tabular version: it’s hard to edit. While I was editing the article on Monday, I wrote a Python script to convert from simple wikitable format into the right tags to make the table look nice. That made it easy for ‘‘me’’ to edit, but that’s asking way too much of most editors. What would it take to set up another standard format, for naturally non-chronological information like tables for making a decision? I’m thinking that while the numbered-steps format has served excellently to guide editors to produce quality how-tos for genuinely sequential procedures, such as making physical objects, cooking, and much more, there is a broad range of topics where the numbered-steps format has actually inhibited good writing. If we provided some software support and some simple guidelines, that might enable wikiHow’s quality and coverage to take a big step forward. (wikiHow has already achieved its goal of becoming the most comprehensive and highest-quality how-to guide in the world, but that’s no reason to stop improving, of course.)
Personally, I’m glad to see our format challenged in a good way (rather than by accident, by someone simply having no idea that it exists). There is information which is fundamentally how-to, but which simply is not best served by slavishly adhering to a style guide that demands a series of sequential, numbered steps beginning with verbs, and I think Ben has found an excellent example of such information, and an excellent alternative for how to format the particular information in the article. No, wikitables are not a lot of fun, and especially not in wikiHow. For http://www.wikihow.com/Choose-a-Pencil
(step 6), rather than let the guided editor keep trying to number or bullet the table (and whatever else was persisting in going wrong), I resorted to inserting a screenshot of the finished table. That’s fine, perhaps, if the information in it is correct and complete; not so helpful if it’s a table that might someday grow.
