I just started a QAM article on getting a foldable phone: 5 Ways to Choose a Foldable Phone - wikiHow
I want to know if there are any ways this could be improved (even if boosted) or if there are formatting changes that I need or if the article should be switched to a different format?
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Very well written article. I didn’t know you could have a tick mark/ check mark symbol before each question.
I don’t know why this is the case, but usually QAM articles are supposed to be structured like a question and answer. I think maybe replacing the check ticks with a question mark instead may make this a lot clearer that it is a Q&A.
I’m really late to this (crappy health took me out for a bit), but I’ll offer some feedback based on my limited experience with QAM format:
- QAM format works best with one step (answer) per heading (question). It’s okay to have one or two headings with two (or rarely, three) steps, but it should be done sparingly when there isn’t really a better way to format it, because multiple steps mangles the format.
- Target the questions that people are asking. You can usually get a good idea of what’s being asked from the “people also asked” or Related Searches sections in Google or other search engines. Otherwise it can seem a bit ramble-y or like an infodump on unrelated things.
- Make your question headings as clear as possible. The content sometimes get picked up by the Google auto-answers or “people also asked” sections, so you want the questions to make sense without context from elsewhere in the article (e.g., instead of “What is a foldable?”, write “What is a foldable phone?”).
- Building off this: avoid incredibly vague headers that require
context from the title or other parts of the article. “What options are there?” is unclear; someone looking up info on foldable phone varieties isn’t going to find our content that way.
- In the same vein, your “answers” should also make sense without the question being visible; i.e., no sentence fragments. “Improved typing and gaming” doesn’t make sense without the context of the header, for instance, and needs to be changed.
- Put your ref tags in the article text, not the headers. Otherwise it messes with the format, as seen in the TOC:
Some more targeted feedback for your article specifically, Aasim:
- This is kind of short for a QAM article. Five “Q&As” is really the absolute bare
minimum you can use. Even with five, the content risks looking stubby, which search engines can and will penalize us for. Try to aim for more than five unless there’s really nothing you can write.
- A1.1 is confusing to the layman. I’m fairly tech-savvy but have no idea what a “folding form factor” means (it might just be that it’s 3 AM, but it makes me think of a phone where the entire thing warps in your hand like slime or something, which I’m guessing is not correct). It’s also technically inaccurate to say this is a new trend; ask anyone who had a flip phone before smartphones were widespread.
- A1.2 should either be merged into A1.1, split off into its own Q&A, or deleted. It’s not answering what a foldable phone is
, but rather how it works.
- The entirety of Q&A 2 might be better off scrapped. I get why you added it, but it’s going to be a pain to keep up-to-date, especially if foldable phones become incredibly popular. It also risks coming off as promotional, especially if the article isn’t updated in a timely manner, and A2.4 doesn’t really give the reader any useful information: if they want to get a foldable phone, they want to know what’s available now
, not what Apple or Google might
do in the future.
- Q&As 3 and 4 should either have their answers merged into one continuous answer per question, or split into individual Q&As.
- Cut the sentence about the Nintendo DS from A3.2. It’s not relevant, and there was quite a bit more that went into the DS’s success than the dual screens (e.g., WiFi features and the touchscreen).
- A3.3 is wrong from a neurological standpoint; generally speaking, multitasking actually harms your concentration and leads to worse performance across all tasks ( childmind.org
; relevant studies linked within article). Context also matters here; taking notes while on a Zoom class is likely less problematic, but having Instagram and TikTok open at the same time would be the physical manifestation of stereotypical ADHD.
- A4.2: If the hardware and software problems are unlikely to be fixed, why would someone want a foldable phone? At that point, why not set up a dual-screen computer or tablet system, which is bound to work better?
- Q&A 5 needs to be broken into separate Q&As. If this was picked up in a Google card, the reader would likely only get one answer, which may not be the one most relevant to them.
- The answers on 5 are sentence fragments and would be better served by more context (e.g. “Skip the foldable phone if you won’t benefit from the extra screen space”).
There might be other things to look at, but I’m already really late with this feedback, and I have an 11 AM class and really need to get to sleep…!
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This isn’t all that related, but I don’t quite understand why the reference number is showing up next to “What are the advantages of a foldable?” under the table of contents …
I’m not sure if it’s being caused by the verified source or having two side-by-side references, but it’s very likely to be a low priority bug since we’re not meant to put references in the headers anyway.
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Thanks for the feedback. Since QAM is still a relatively new thing I want to make sure I make the most informative article possible. It was already put live but if you feel it needs more work you can add the {{Stub}} or {{format}} tag. If needbe I can convert back to regular parts format as well.
