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Welcome to the wikiHaus Lab update! Here’s what’s happening for November 3rd:

:rocket: What’s happening?A range of small tests, including:

  • Seeing if readers are interested in a table of contents on small/mobile screens, so they can click to a specific part of the article. You can see an example of this in action on How to Soothe a Teething Baby or check out this screenshot here .
  • Testing two different banners on articles for logged out readers to see if people are more likely to click to the courses page or to make a monetary contribution to wikiHow.
  • Changing the “Related wikiHows” heading to see if we get different engagement from different wording, such as “You Might Also Like…” Let me know if you have any suggestions for wording we should try for that section!

:rocket: What’s happening?We’re going to test a new feature on the homepage with wikiHow Stories . These will display as circle icons on the homepage on all screen sizes, in a pretty recognizable form that’s similar to some social media sites. Check out a mock-up here .

We won’t build the feature out in its entirety until it’s been tested - so when it’s first implemented it might just collect data when someone clicks on the icon, or it might send readers to an article - but this is where you come in!

If this feature takes off and lots of people click on the stories icons, then we have the ability to decide what to show there and build it out. Would it be good to show a slideshow with images or gifs from the article like this ? Would it be fun to see social comments, like “I tried this and couldn’t believe it worked!”? Would you want to watch videos that readers upload showing their progress as they work through a wikiHow article?!

So, our two big questions to you are:

  1. What would you expect to see if you clicked on that icon?
  2. What would you like to see there?

:vertical_traffic_light: Update:Thanks for your feedback regarding the wikiHow.pet project. The current plan is to keep the cute cartoon on the home page, as well as add an animal print behind the header (check out a mock up here ), and use black and white icons for categories with none of the colored bars or real life images. Animal categories will also likely be added to the Explore menu tab. What a refresh!

:vertical_traffic_light: Update:The addition of expert interview transcripts in introductions (mentioned here ) has been well-received, so you may see more of these being added to articles in coming weeks.

:green_heart: Just for fun:Allyson and others have worked on three new articles on wikiHow-fun.com in conjunction with Ryan Reynolds’ latest movie Free Guy. I watched the movie and got a good giggle out of these articles, but they might seem a bit confusing if you haven’t seen the movie yet! I think it’s fun to see this lighter take on wikiHow:slight_smile:Check them out here: How to Tell if You’re a Real Person or a Character in a Video Game , How to Not Just Have a Good Day, But a Great Day , and How to
Deal with NPCs .

:star: Coming up:We have a potential new project that incorporates Minecraft articles and the wikiHow forums! Watch out for a separate post asking for feedback coming soon!

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I like the mobile table of contents. It looks like the old table of contents. I’m glad to see it again.

Also, what do the banners say? And I noticed that the “Join us in our mission” box, which you see when you are logged out, still pops up every time you go to a different page even if you close it. And what is the “My Points” box in the top right that you see when you are logged out?

I don’t have any ideas about changing the title of the Related wikiHows section, but I am wondering how it would affect the header while you are editing?

For the wikiHow Stories section, I personally would expect it to take me to another page, but I don’t know about other readers. I do think that the one slideshow is neat though. And for the social comments, how would they work?

I think that the wikiHow.pet page looks nice, but I don’t see it yet, so I assume that it’s going to be implemented latter.

I don’t really have a comment on the last 3 points.

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Well done! I love the option to go directly to a part of the article. And You might like actually sounds way convincing. I liked the addition of the circled articles. If the name or the category of the article is mentioned underneath it, that would help decide which ones one wants to read. Why is it called stories? It sounded like those were stories from readers with their kudos. I still love the books graphic the most on the homepage.:heart_eyes:If there’s feedback from readers, perhaps mildly filtered with a bit of borderline negative ones too. Once a colleague said if the website itself hosts negative comments, it shows they are being honest. This shows fearlessness. I think. May be there could be some insider info snippet from the makers about how the information got put together like the expert brought this piece of information from that book or experince, a particular Q/A that might be really interesting or related to the article or a social media comment about it.
All the best with the pet project. wikiHow does better with serious and light hearted projects like giving birth and romance. Ok, that didn’t sound like how I am thinking of it. Pet project by wikiHow will rock.
Good luck with the fun project. I think it could help people dealing in fiction, screenplay, art, drama, and such fields where you need inspiration away from the mundane. Spunk it up as you like. It has scope to expand. Some of my friends do often talk about minecraft and roblox. May be a non gaming person like me will know more about what it is after it starts.:grin:

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@R2_d2000 It seems the “My Points” box for logged out is also a test happening to see whether people may be interested in some gamification on the site - currently seeing if people might be interested by collecting email addresses. It’s not on all sessions - I haven’t seen it in the wild yet!

The banners are either “Join us in our mission” or “What will you start learning?”

The related wikiHows test is only on a small number of articles at the moment, but if it expands, then I’m sure the header will be updated or there will be some magical way of making sure it’s ok:slight_smile:

There’s no plan on how the wikiHow Stories will work when it’s completely built out - it’s all just brainstorming ideas at the moment!

Yes, the refresh to wikiHow.pet is still being built out, but will hopefully be live soon.

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Incoming Wall of Thoughts on all these new developments!

  • Mobile TOC:I like the idea, but the TOC on that article specifically leaves a lot of whitespace, which looks a bit unbalanced, and I’m not really sure how we would fix that. (Space relationships are not my strong point.)
  • Related wikiHows heading:To be clear, is the actual in-text heading being altered, or is it just on the reader-facing end of things? Either way, some suggestions if we’re looking for anything with a more casual tone:
    • “Looking for more?”
    • “How about these?”
    • “These might be interesting…/These might interest you…”
    • “Liked this article? Check out:/Check these out next:”
    • “What to [read/try] next:”
  • wikiHow Stories:Multiple points of feedback:
    • Is it possible to include title snippets or something similar under the story icons? The preview doesn’t have anything like that, so I’d have no idea what I’m clicking on, and I can’t easily tell by the icon previews (and it leaves it totally inaccessible to someone with visual disabilities).
    • Photos, gifs, or short videos would be preferable for a Stories feature; people who would use that are likely used to stories or content on Snapchat, Instagram, or TikTok, and might not like our stories if they’re dramatically different. (I’d expect a “swipe up/click here to go to X” feature, but I’m really used to our Instagram stories.)
      • Personally, I’d opt for photos or gifs over videos of someone showing their progress. What videos people find appealing would be based on personal taste (like sense of humor), video submission quality could be hit-or-miss, and there’s some topics you can’t really show progress for (like relationship articles).
      • In general, I would steer away from social comments; depending on where we’re pulling them from, it could feel clickbaity or generic. (“I tried this and couldn’t believe it worked” could apply to just about anything anywhere, and risks feeling like it was pulled from an infomercial or something.) We likely can’t pull them from the Helpfulness because that nets a lot of trolling and spam – I don’t even remember how many reader testimonials I’ve had to ask someone to remove on that basis, lol.
    • This is more of a general comment, but can we also be careful to keep accessibility in mind with these? I’d be worried about clicking on these and suddenly getting bombarded with loud sounds or flashing lights, which would be painful and could be dangerous to someone with conditions like PSE.
  • Free Guy articles:I don’t want to be a downer, but I’m genuinely wondering… how does this impact wikiHow’s reputation? Something mentioned in this year’s State of the Wiki was that a lot of “younger audience” or less serious articles, like Take Your Rubber Ducky on Vacation, were possibly harming our standing on search engines because they’re silly and not authoritative. It feels like “articles” like these could contribute to that “not authoritative” view, especially with the “co-author” stamp and how jokey the articles are. (And being honest, it feels slightly like the NFD policy was trounced in favor of a pop culture topic that will inevitably need to be deindexed when the popularity dies down… it’s not like unicorn frappes, Fortnite dances, or TikTok trends that someone else might just be “late to the party” to.)
  • Minecraft and the forums:This sounds like we’re merging Minecraft into the forums somehow, so I’m really confused. Is there a tiny bit more information we could have before the project is announced?
  • Expert interview transcripts:Is there any chance of something like that being extended to community co-authors? I know it’s not likely for the disability topics, but I remember Halle pulling me away during the 2019 meetup to interview me for the LGBT+/transgender topics. That specific interview kind of sucked, heh, but there are definitely some topics where a community co-author interview would work better than a “formal” expert (see: the transgender topics!).
  • wikiHow.pet:Thank you guys for being so receptive to our feedback. And I really like the animal print. It’s super cute:slight_smile:
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Thanks for the feedback so far! I am collating it all to pass on to the respective team members.

@anon74718567 : I hear where you’re coming from with regard to the Free Guy articles. We haven’t done anything like this before, including having them on a sub-domain. There was a lot of effort and care put in going back and forth to work on having them fit into the wikiHow format, and I am confident the team wouldn’t have chosen to publish them if they thought it would impact wikiHow’s reputation negatively.

I also tweaked the original message about Minecraft so it shows there may be a connection between Minecraft articles and the forums…so much less cryptic now, right?:slight_smile:

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Okay – I assumed there was a lot of work behind it, and I trust that you guys are monitoring everything and would act accordingly if it looked like this was causing problems, but with how I am, I had to ask!

That is far less cryptic – I no longer feel like I have to find the End Portal to gain an understanding of that part, lol. Thank you:slight_smile:

also, minor thing, but… you misspelled my username, and I’m pretty sure you said a few weeks ago that you were already at your Mistake Limit for the year

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Ah yes! The mobile table of contents looks great – and very nostalgic.:slight_smile:

I’m just slightly confused about the stories on the home page. The first thing that, to me, at least, is that I simply cannot tell what each story is about. The icons look great, but I honestly get no information whatsoever on what I’m going to learn. I’m assuming stories are meant to be quick and easy ways to skim through an article, but is there a feature for you to, perhaps, swipe up and explore the entire article or that step? Since in the screenshot, it was just one quick sentence, and it would make more sense if you could swipe up and read the entire step.

Overall, it looks great! I can’t wait for all this to be implemented.

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Hi everyone! I’m very, very sorry for being so late here, but maybe it’s just better for me to give my input late, than never. I’m still very sorry, though.

Table of contents on small/mobile screens:Wow! I love this!:+1:I always like a table of contents, because I get to know a bit about what the article covers, before I actually start reading it. But because they, on most pages, aren’t available on mobile screens, I must switch to desktop mode, just to access the table of contents! I love the idea of table of contents on mobiles, but yeah, I agree with what Alex said about it.
By the way, there’s some sort of a different table of contents on articles like How to Make Up an Excuse to Get Off the Phone , and some like How to Troubleshoot Muffins don’t have one. What’s this?

Banners on articles for logged out readers:Well, I thought we had it earlier, too. Is this new?:slight_smile:

Changing the “Related wikiHows” heading:Hey, I’ve got the same question as Alex: “Is the actual in-text heading being altered, or is it just on the reader-facing end of things?” The “You Might Also Like” looks great to me! I also liked Alex’s ideas as always, and a few random things popped up in my brain, too (again, these are just random ideas, I said!):

  • “We also have:”
  • “Want to learn more? Check out:”
  • “Didn’t find what you were looking for? Try these:”
  • “Interested in learning about (category of the article)? Try:”

wikiHow Stories:Let me be clear, I’ve never tried using, or really done anything on any social media platforms other than YouTube – so I don’t really know how “stories” look like on these social media platforms.
But the mock-up looks nice to me! Yeah, but I do agree with what Alex said: “The preview doesn’t have anything like that, so I’d have no idea what I’m clicking on, and I can’t easily tell by the icon previews (and it leaves it totally inaccessible to someone with visual disabilities).” – I think that’s right.:slight_smile:
I’m more than happy to answer the two questions: Well, if I’d click on that icon, I’d probably expect a sort of square speech bubble popping up with the title of the article. I know, this is a bit weird, but I’ve been asked what I’d expect, so I’m being super honest! Well, that’s what I’d like:wink:– but I saw the preview of how we’re planning to show it, and I did like it, too!
I’ll confess, I don’t want any GIFs or videos or something similar moving on the main page, especially videos! Photos, are perfectly fine with me, but please no videos! I’ve stuck around with wikiHow because of how “quiet” it is, there are pretty much no noises it can make, which I love! I know many articles have videos, but me clicking on them by “accident” is really very low. And I also know we have some videos on the main page towards the bottom, but again, me clicking on them by accident would be really low – but if we have some videos right on the top of the main page, I would definitely accidentally click on them once in a while and would have to face sounds, oh no! “This is more of a general comment, but can we also be careful to keep accessibility in mind with these? I’d be worried about clicking on these and suddenly getting bombarded with loud sounds or flashing lights, which would be painful and could be dangerous to someone with conditions like PSE.” – that’s right, I agree. That’s what I mean to say.:slight_smile:

wikiHow.pet:Wow! wikihow.pet looks amazing! The icons are really cute, I love them!:hugs:

Addition of expert interview transcripts in introductions:Looks good!

Free Guy articles:Well, I haven’t seen the movie and I didn’t know about it until I read this post, but I haven’t got plans to watch it, either, since I prefer peaceful and calm movies! But I think these articles might interest those who’ve watched the movie!

Minecraft forums:Honestly speaking, I don’t play the game (or any video game, for that matter) so I basically have no idea what this is about! I think I should at least go through the “Minecraft Community Forums:video_game:Feedback Welcomed!” thread, maybe I’ll understand a bit!

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