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Welcome to the wikiHaus Lab update! Here’s what’s new for December 17:

:rocket: What’s happening?
The team is experimenting with swapping the position of Tips and Warnings on articles, so Warnings show first. This will first be implemented in 1000 articles.
:mag: Who’s working on it?
Jordan in engineering is working on implementing this change.
:dart: What’s the goal of this?
There is some evidence to show that readers like to check warnings before going ahead with a task. Putting the warnings above the tips may be beneficial and appreciated by readers.

:rocket: What’s happening?
We are moving article samples into lightboxes, rather than having them directly on the page.
:mag: Who’s working on it?
Trevor in engineering is working on this.
:dart: What’s the goal of this?
This move will likely help with SEO. Because sample pages are seen as ‘thin content’ by Google, the whole wikiHow site could be downgraded in the Google algorithm. Moving samples to lightboxes means that we won’t have ‘thin content’ sample pages.

:rocket: You may have noticed:The first beta membership trial is now live. Readers will find out more when they click on the “Download PDF” link above the Table of Contents in an article like you can see here . If you’re an active wikiHowian and would like free access to this feature, just shoot me an email on jayne@wikihow.com and we’ll make it happen!

:rocket: You may have noticed:Some work has started on restructuring categories. The WikiHow Projects account has been going through some articles to replace categories on articles that are to be deleted from the category tree. These edits are good to approve:slight_smile:

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About the category restructuring: I’ve seen the wikiHow Projects replacing the category to be deleted with a very vague other category, even though there are more precise ones to replace it. Is it OK if I change the articles to a more precise category then or am I only disturbing the wikiHow Projects in their work?

(Specific example would be Open a Letter Secretively . It was moved by wikiHow Projects from Category:Secrets (to be deleted) to Category:Education and Communications — even although there is the much more fitting Category:Secrecy right above in the category tree.)

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@Murmansk_Hills moving to another category is ok if you think there is a better - but still fairly broad - category for it. We generally wouldn’t want to move it to a category with a small number of articles in it, because that may potentially be rolled into another at some point!

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But why is downloading a PDF in an article not free? I wish it was free…

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I’m not sure if this is the primary goal ( @JayneG please correct me if I’m wrong here), but I think the goal was to earn money for wikiHow and the wikiHaus. I believe registered members can earn free access though, as mentioned in the post.

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I actually downloaded a few articles the same way @R2_D2000 downloaded it.

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I noticed the second two changes. Not the first one yet. I hope Jordan, Trevor and wikiHow Projects have a smooth sailing and see the light shining bright at the end of the tunnel. I like all of these changes, especially the category one. The category tree was humongous.:slight_smile:

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I wonder how downloaded articles look…:smiley:.

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@FlowerPower555 I have an example of a downloaded PDF that you can check out on Google drive here :slight_smile:

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Wow, that looks great! I think this feature will definitely be useful:slight_smile:.

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