JayneG
1
Welcome to the latest wikiHaus Lab update! Here’s what’s happening for July 28th:
What’s happening?We’re experimenting with adding a new word game to the site. Check out a (blurred out) sneak peek here
. I’ll post a link if/when it goes live!
What’s happening?We now have a hub for the new quizzes that have been developed, so readers can access them all in one place: Quizzes - wikiHow
What’s happening?The engineering team is working on a backend change swapping section headings from H3 headers into H2 headers in the code. They will likely start on 1000 articles to test the change. Hopefully we won’t notice anything on the front-end, but if you do see anything unusual with section headings, please let me know.
Update:Adding subtitles under the title has been showing signs of success, so the team is working on some guidelines for further development. You may see them being added using the div class=‘subtitle’
tag at the beginning of articles. If this becomes something that we can also add as a community, I’ll be sure to let you know, but for now please do not edit existing or new subtitles because they are optimized for SEO.
Update:The horizontal table of contents seems to be doing well so you may see it being added to more articles with a new magic word. At this stage, it’s still an experiment, but I’ll let you know if we get the go ahead to implement it on other articles.
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I believe the Word Game site is live now, here’s the link: wikiHow to Train Your Brain
Ooh I see the word game now!
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JayneG
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Awesome, thanks for the link Ruppy!
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I am presuming the subtitles are just visible in search or what?
I am confused what you mean by “horizontal table of contents”. Weren’t the ToCs horizontal for several years until they were moved to vertical right-aligned?
On the topic of table of contents there is already a magic word __TOC__
in MediaWiki that can generate table of contents. I wonder if that magic word will just be repurposed or if there will be a separate magic word for this. Last time I checked this magic word does not work properly.
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I actually realize I am missing a lot of context to meaningfully comment on the TOC post. Can I see a few images so I can see what this looks like?
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JayneG
9
Hi Aasim, subtitles can be seen on articles. They show in italics under the title, like on How to Make a Hookah (with Pictures) - wikiHow
.
This was in the original post
about TOCs with a link to an article:
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WikiVY
10
I loved the word game idea. I might play it for positive distraction after work.
I think the quality of images on quizzes is quite high. Loved the beautiful photography.
I hope the subtitles and other experimental edits grow.
I think the answer to the word game in Jayne’s post is SILL.
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Looks cool! I wonder if it is going to look a bit like the “old styling” like this screenshot from Internet Archive
3 Ways to Lower Debt Payments - wikiHow (archive.org)
As for the subtitles, that sounds like a good thing to add to a template. Maybe I can be bold and create the template right now?
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JayneG
12
We don’t need any templates for subtitles yet - it’s still an experiment and staff-only at this stage, but I’ll keep you in mind
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This is a minor thing I saw on the wikiHow website, but when I hover over an article, the title gets highlighted green. Is this another new update?
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JayneG
15
It looks like it! I like how it highlights the outline as well
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I was about to report a potential problem with the new purple skin used on relationship-related articles.
In the skin, there is no button to view the current notifications, nor are there buttons to go to the wikiHow forums while logged in. I like the idea of skinning for different topics, I just wish there was a bit more consistency between pages in the same category and the option to turn the skin off when logged in. Wonder if the new skin is just a premise to expand the responsive design to all pages, including the edit and history pages, so that it is easier to edit on mobile again. I forget which thread the new relationships skin experiment was announced, or if it is still there, so I am leaving the comment here.
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