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Welcome to the latest wikiHaus Lab update! Here’s what’s happening for Feb 10th:

:rocket: What’s happening?The first big experiment with the Relationships Project has started! We have 40 articles that have a new ‘skin’ on them. They’re still true wikiHow articles, but you maaaaay notice a couple of visual differences on the likes of How to Take Care of Yourself (with Pictures) - wikiHow . Although it took a minute for my eyes to adjust, I really like the different colors; they feel warm and inviting to me.
What do you think? Are there things you do or don’t like about the different skin?

:rocket: What’s happening?The team is working on a new page that will showcase some partnerships with websites that we believe do a good job of providing readers with trustworthy content in different categories. For example, we might showcase the “Best Relationship Expert for Married Couples” and the “Best Relationship Expert For LGBTQ+.” If you have any ideas for categories, and/or have any sites that you think might be good to highlight, feel free to let us know in a comment!

:rocket: Update:The first version of video transcripts are live on all wikiHow-made videos. Right now, you can click on the “read video transcript” button to read the transcript, but you can’t watch and read at the same time - that’s hopefully coming in version 2! You can see it in action here: How to Cut a Mango: 14 Steps (with Pictures) - wikiHow

:rocket: Update:The Category Project. You may have noticed some edits to the category tree (and unexpected additions on the WantedCategories page!) We’re working to delete empty categories, and move subcategories of categories that are marked for deletion to different parent categories. All this to say that there is work happening at the moment to reduce the number of categories we have!

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Thanks for the update! I’ve already noticed all of these. So the ‘Relationships’ wasn’t just one of my strange things:slightly_smiling_face:

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Lots of new updates today! Here’s what I feel: (Please remember that I’m completely saying this based on what I personally feel. I don’t mean to be rude, or anything. And because I don’t like something, it doesn’t necassarily mean that thing’s bad.)

New skin on relationship articles:I have to be honest – I don’t like these new visual differences. I have a question – what makes us try these new things?

  • The colours, particulary the pink and blue (I’m talking about the blue on the expert badges) are extremely bright – while the purple is a bit too dark and dull in my opinion. Purple links don’t stand out quite as much. Plus, it look extremely wierd when the tickmark on trustworthy sources is blue, and the link itself is purple. In addition, yellow “greenboxes” don’t look that great, because “greenboxes” are probably meant to be well, green. The shade of pink looks very unnatural, and maybe even not so gender-neutral. It goes pretty hard on my eyes, as well.

  • It’s a very wierd colour theme with too much pink and purple. I can’t lie about this, wikiHow’s typical green is my favourite colour. It’s so neutral, natural, and goes so easy on your eyes. I’m so used to and love the green so much, that no matter how long I look at the new pinks and purples, my eyes refuse to “adjust”.

  • Also, instead of the usual “Edit”, “Help Us”, “Explore”, “My Profile”, and “Messages”, there’s “Courses”, “Explore”, “My Profile”, and “Subscribe” on the top wikiHow header. Because there’s no “edit” tab on the header, logged-out users can’t edit articles with the new skin. This is super unfair! We’re just closing off anonymous editers from these whatever 40 articles! Also, not having the “Messages” option makes things difficult.image

  • But as a logged-in user, when I click “Edit” or “History”, the header becomes very strange – it becomes green, the “Courses” option does not have an icon, and the “Subscribe” option no longer looks like a button like it does on the article page.image

  • Also, on “How to Take Care of Yourself” says it’s in the “self” category, though it doesn’t link to anything, nor does such a catrgory exist. In fact, the article’s in the Health category.image

  • I also see the “Did this article help you?” section looks a bit different, but I think it looks okay-okay, though I definately prefer the typical style in which the “Yes” and “No”
    options are rectangles, inslead of circles.
    image

  • Um, I also had a question – is this new skin only there on relationship articles? I mean talking care of yourself doesn’t have anything to do with relationships, I guess. So it looks pretty strange when it says wikiHow Relationships on How to Take Care of Yourself.

Video transcripts:I love transcripts! But I did notice some videos have just muic in the background, and on those videos, the Video Transcript is exactly the same as the Article Summary. This looks a bit strange. I wonder what makes us have it this way?

The Category Project:I’m glad we’re getting to making these changes! We honestly do have a bit too many categories:wink:

I didn’t exactly get you. What’s it about?

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Thank you for the feedback Butterfly! I actually wanted to say most of these but forgot about it.:wink:

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Thanks for your feedback Butterfly, I’ll pass it on! Maybe taking care of yourself is about having a relationship with yourself:slight_smile:

As for the video transcripts, they are automated from the information we already have, so an article summary may be what was pulled to use as a transcript.

And the showcase page is going to be like an awards page (it won’t look like an article, it will be more like our informational pages) where we showcase and link to other sites that we think are the best at what they do. Then, hopefully they will also link to wikiHow on their site, to help more readers find us!

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Thanks a lot @JayneG for this! Everything is turning out to be amazing!!!

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Thanks for the update. I loved the Yes and No round buttons. They look cute like the heart next to wikiHow. I am glad wikiHow is going ahead with the budding market and demand in full gusto. I’ll sit back and watch the glory:slight_smile:

For the best relationship expert line of work, I believe a lot of work since the past two years are done at home, online. So, the best online shopping apps (country-specific) and payment apps that are trustworthy, and how to pay online etc can be a huge hit as many of us who had never made online payments, especially in rural areas are still looking for credible information on online payments and going about buying and shopping at home.

Other than this, I think many are now looking online for credible information on food and nutrition, exercises for specific fitness goals, holistic growth, credible online job portals and after-vaccine care.

I loved the transcripts. I’d have liked it more if I could drag and resize the transcripts window so it won’t come over the video. Go wikiHow with the category tree. May you have all the success.:heart_eyes:

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I like the new relationship articles, although I will say that I noticed that the category listings near the top left of the article don’t link to the categories like all of the other pages on wikiHow do, and the drop down menus are different in the tabs. While I don’t mind the change of the tabs, for being logged in, I would like to request that the “my profile” tab drop down work on these pages, and also that there is a way to see the message notifications somehow. But otherwise, I like the redesign for those articles.

I do like all of the other changes as well.

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Thanks for your feedback R2 - I’ll pass it on and see if we can get the profile dropdown and notifications back. I just can’t make any promises.

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Woah, right! That was something I never really thought of, but you’re right.

I get the things about the showcase page. I haven’t got any ideas for it as of now, but if something comes to my mind, I’ll definitely let you know:slight_smile:

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