I know we don’t really add new templates all that often, and usually I’m all for sending personal messages instead of using templates, but this is a situation I’ve seen pop up repeatedly over many months. I know that sometimes having a friendly coaching template helps patrollers efficiently get the word out to new users about how to use a tool, so I’m hoping we can find a solution that benefits the newer members, patrollers, and article/video quality.
If you’re not sure what I’m referring to by Video Adders: I’ve noticed that we get a lot of users who start out using the Video Picker tool, but don’t necessarily read the Video Curation guidelines before doing so, and then we end up with videos that don’t match the article. Sometimes it’s minor and we only get one or two video additions that need to be rolled back, but it’s fairly common that we end up having to roll back several additions that don’t match the article - and if we get a particularly eager video-adder, sometimes that results in quite a lot of rollbacks in a row. It can also be fairly hard to explain to a contributor why the videos are being removed in a friendly way that still provides the reasoning and gives them best practices for future.
Because of this, I thought it would be best to get everyone’s input here: Should we create a template for video adding? Presumably, if we created one, it’d be something like {{tipspatrol}}, detailing what the guidelines are and maybe giving a few good and bad examples (like the ones on the guideline page). Does anyone else feel that creating this template would be beneficial?
This would actually be very useful to the video adders. A lot of people are having trouble with the videos because they’re not specific or something like that. I agree.
I agree with @Galactic-Radiance
, I’m sure this will help many users who are new here.
Anna
7
Sounds good to me - I think it could be really useful to have an easy way for patrollers to reach out and guide Video Adders in the right direction with some friendly advice.
So would it be something like {{videopatrol}}?
^ Yep, something like that.
I fully support this idea. We have frequent newcomers hop in with Video Adding, and while that’s great, it’s important to coach them about the guidelines about video adding. A template sounds like a great idea.
I’m glad this has gotten support so far! I’ve noticed this situation a lot, but I was a bit worried that I was stressing over nothing, hah.
I don’t mean to get overeager here, but: does anyone want to offer some ideas as to how we would word this? Like I said, I imagine it would be something like how {{tipspatrol}} is set up, but I want to know if anyone has any ideas that they’d like to pitch forward for how the template could look or any phrasing that should be written in it.
^ Hmmm… We could do something like : · {{videoguide}} · {{videopatrol}} · {{videohelp}} · {{videoadder}} There might be some other better ones but maybe we should name it like the {{tipspatrol}} template but replacing the “tips” with “video”.
^ No, that’s not what I mean - I mean, what would the actual template
say when posted to a Talk page? Not what the template code would be. Template code isn’t the most important thing in this case.
^ Oh! Lol sorry. Well I’ll think about it. I’m going to try to think of the mistakes I made when I tried the video adder…XD
This is basically what’s used for Tips Patrol. I just changed up the words and some other stuff. Here it is: Thank you for using the Video Patrol to help us out. Your efforts to improve articles are greatly appreciated! I just want to offer some advice that might help you become a better video patroller. Since wikihow attracts millions of readers per day we want to make sure each video is high quality and helpful. Therefore, it’s important to make sure the videos are accurate, complete, on topic, not joke related, and follows against the wikihow guidelines. If you come across a helpful video that could use some improvement or you aren’t sure how you could follow it you can always click the button that is labeled “Skip”. For more information you may read "How to Use the Video Adder Tool on wikihow. " Thanks again for helping out on Video Adder. I do hope you keep at it! Please let me know if you have any questions. I’m always happy to help. Ta da! Is it acceptable or too much like the Tips Patrol template?
I don’t think you need to say ‘not joke related’. It’s not exactly nesscary.
^ I doubt that, sometimes people add in joke videos. I’ve seen it happen.
@Gymnast-7
, I think the start is great, but it’s too similar to the Tips Patrol template. It could stand to have some rewording. I’ll post if I think of anything. Hopefully I will, hah.
^ Thanks! Yours is probably better. Maybe it should actually seem more of a personal message just in case the person also got a {{tipspatrol}} and they’ll be like “my that’s awfully familiar” or something. : D
Anna
18
@Galactic-Radiance
- When you gather your ideas, I think you should feel free to just start the template page and we can all give input and tweak from there. Sometimes editing the wording to get it just right is easier in the wiki format than here on the forums!
… @Anna
, I don’t know how to create templates, especially coaching templates. .-. Create a wikiHow Template is a complete mess and I’m still just as lost as I was before I read the article.
Anna
20
Well I did a quickie quickie accuracy edit on https://www.wikihow.com/Create-a-wikiHow-Template
- the older method of starting a template page using the “Write an Article” approach won’t work if you have the Article Creator turned on, so it’s generally easier just to copy/paste/modify the URL to dump yourself right into edit mode and start it from there. This update was just a quickie so if it doesn’t make sense, I can work on it more later, or anyone else is welcome to, too
