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Welcome to the wikiHaus Lab update! Here’s what new for October 6th:

:rocket: What’s happening?The team is working on a new course on misinformation in conjunction with the UN Verified Initiative that will be out this month. We’re excited for another great collaboration to provide important information that is free for everyone to access. I’ll be sure to share the course with you when it goes live so you can check it out!

:rocket: What’s happening?We’ve learned that when we try small experiments, it’s actually best to do them within one main category rather than across multiple categories in order to get reliable feedback and understanding of how they are doing. So, you may notice this happening more moving forward. As always, if you have any ideas or thoughts for tweaks that might make wikiHow better for our readers, feel free to post them on wikiLab updates or send me a talk page or email!

:rocket: You may have noticed:Design tweaks to the category pages! Thanks to your input and feedback, the team made some updates to category pages this week to make them more visually balanced and easier for readers to navigate. My eyes are feeling happier already:eyes:

:thought_balloon: Something to ponder on:User Intent.
Everyone at wikiHow has a united goal of helping anyone learn how to do anything. Recently, the team has been looking into how we can help as many people as possible by learning about user intent. This basically means understanding why someone is on a wikiHow article, and how we can help them feel like they’re in the right place.

Generally, someone gets to a wikiHow article by typing a search query into a search engine and clicking on a wikiHow article from the results. When they click onto the article, we want them to know that this is the page that’s going to give them the help they need. We think there could be lots of factors that can help us ensure that, like the title of the article, the wording or size of the introduction, and what the reader sees when they skim the page, just to name a few.

As we edit or create new articles, something to ponder is who the reader of the article will be, and “ Is this helping the reader know they’re in the right place? ”

What do you think helps our readers know that a wikiHow article is going to help them before they even read the whole article?

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Is user intent the reason there’s been changes to article intros lately, or is that something else?:slight_smile:

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Yes! And that just helped me realize that I talked a little about this in the last wikiLab update too! Hopefully this detail helps give more context and understanding of it:slight_smile:

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Wow! Seems great!:hugs:

Personally, I feel like articles with clear, short titles have more chances of me sitting down to read them.
I personally tend to have a special liking for articles with a not too long but not too short introduction. A few short and sweet sentences in the intro look best to me. Intros with a quick question also get my attention. Too short intros sometimes give me an impression of the article, too being short, and long ones give a feeling of lengthiness.
High-quality, relevant, and eye-capturing images are very good at making me feel like is article will help me. (Images with clean outlines look best to my eyes, and I’ve got a special liking for images of this , this , this , this , this , this and some other styles, for some reason.)
Steps that are not too long, nor too short and with sub-points also help grab my attention. I also love it when steps state why something should be done or is helpful.
Article summaries also look great, because you can read through it in brief before to take time to read the whole thing. That helps me know if (roughly) the article’s instructions apply to me.:slight_smile:

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This is great insight and really helpful, thanks Butterfly!:slight_smile:

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Thanks for the update Jayne. I think even asking what makes a reader feel like this is where they should be is a great start. It will guide you to finally getting to it.

I as a reader, when I search for a topic say best muscle building foods, would like a page with whatever word limit, to mention super foods that are packed with protein regardless of them being vegetarian or non vegetarian, then in the next para, I’d like vegetarian options, nonveg, juices, a list of all sorts of food. What will make the page best loved by me would be if it says what one needs to digest the protein as well. In number, I’d like to know the quantity like a handful of dry fruits a day would help me in real time. I’ve written about it a lot as a ghost writer in the recent past, so I think, if we cover how to get what the title suggest, with related data like where to get it from, if its easy on the pockets, the references from research can make it one comprehensive article. Even remotely related data under the context helps.

So yeah, I feel, its more covering the main topic and related areas that a reader needs. I also think wikiHow already does quite well to do it. I especially love the images. It immediately makes me relate to the content.

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Is there a particular reason why I’m seeing a blank slot here at the end of pages that aren’t the final page of the category?

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Thanks Helpie, nice catch! It seems it was to do with how many articles showed on a page - we have a fix that will be implemented on Monday:slight_smile:

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Jayne, I would love to take this course. I think when earlier I tried to open a course page, it asked me to put my bank account number. Is there something I’m doing wrong??:slight_smile:

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The UN one isn’t out quite yet, but sending you a note on your talk page:slight_smile:

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