1

Hey, I was wondering who was able to use {{nointoimg}} - I saw a user using them and didn’t know if there was any criteria for it, or if only the wH interns and workers, so, I was just wanting to open up a discussion for it. Thanks! June Days

2

I’m pretty sure any user can, and any user can remove the tag as well…I may be wrong though.

3

I believe the idea is that it should only be used by wikiHow staff and interns. I don’t see why that should be the case, because if something can be used to improve an article it should be used where appropriate by all editors, and if they are wrong they should be ignored as necessary. That is a discussion worth having.

4

Anybody can:

5

Oh, OK - Thanks. June Days

6

Oh yes, anyone can use this!

7

Can we only use it in cases where it’s impossible to find an image? When the tag debuted, I thought I read that part of the reason for using it was that articles on certain topics fared better without intro images. Am I correct? If so, is there a way for non-staff members to figure out what those topics are?

8

^ I think so too… Some articles with the {{nointroimg}} template are usually the ones that are almost impossible to find pictures for… Like one of my articles:slight_smile:

9

Yes! That’s right. The research showed that on articles with standard Wikiphoto images (large images below each step, and almost every step has an image), people stuck around and read the article for longer when there wasn’t any intro image. For other articles with different image layouts, this may or may not be the case. There are so many variables at play (image placement, image size, how consistent the images are with each other) that it’s hard to pin down. The reason the {{nointroimage}} template gets added systematically is because we know it helps Wikiphoto articles, and those are easy to identify and add the template to with a script or a bot.

10

Thanks for the explanation. I didn’t know there were so many variables, so now it makes more sense.

11

Is this true for all articles like that or just a general trend? I can believe it for most articles, but I really struggle to believe that it is the case for craft articles and recipes because I know that I NEVER stick around to read any article on those anywhere on the internet that doesn’t show me what I’m going to be making first…

12

Same. It’s a trust factor for me concerning what it’s supposed to look like at the end first without having to scroll down or fish for the end result image (if there is one).

13

I have to say when this finding came out, I initially refused to believe it. It just didn’t seem logical. (It also ticked me off a bit that I had spent so much time adding intro images…I didn’t want to think that I had wasted my time!) I asked Elizabeth Douglas to keep testing and re-testing this. But every large test we did basically confirmed the same thing: If we have large step by step photos, the intro image hurts rather than helps reader retention. That said, if we don’t have step by step photos, intro images are (usually) helpful to readers. Hard to believe. @Caidoz @Maluniu we have done small tests on recipe pages and have found this works there too. That said, we haven’t run a test on a large batch of recipes and crafts only. My hunch is that we would find the same affect even in those categories though. This effect is so strong that my guess is that it would work here too. The difference between wikiHow and most other how-to or recipe sites is that we often have large step-by-step images. This difference seems to prevent people from immediately clicking back on their browser even though we don’t have an intro image. BTW, this counter-intuitive finding is just one of many findings the wikiHaus labs has been discovering. There is some really amazing stuff that is going to help us better serve our readers. @Loni_lings has some plans afoot to share these learnings with the community. It will initially be a small group of 10 people, but we may widen it over time. Stay tuned for @Loni_lings ’ forthcoming announcement!

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^ Yay, can’t wait.:wink:June Days

15

If you get counter-intuitive results, we need to be considering why that is, rather than just assuming straight out that it’s because people prefer no images. If people go to an article with an image and immediately click back on their browser, there is going to be some reason for that. In the case of “normal” articles, chances are that’s because the pictures are awful and irrelevant and taking up space for no reason and removing them is the right way to go. But in the case of “making things” articles, people aren’t going to search for something, find a picture showing exactly the thing they want, with instructions, and then click back in their browser to look elsewhere. If people are clicking straight back on that type of article, it’s because the picture doesn’t show the thing that they were looking for. Of course, forcing them to scroll through the entire article to find a picture of the end product increases the amount of time they spend on there, but who does that help? Forcing them to spend longer figuring out that the article isn’t what they wanted for the sake of making people spend longer looking at articles is just rude…

16

I think Caidoz’s point is spot on, if I want to make something, and have a good idea what I think it should look like, seeing an image that doesn’t look right would instantly make me believe I have come to the wrong place. In that respect, and introduction image would shorten a person’s visit time, but in practicle terms, it would often be saving them time, which might not be the desired effect, but would, in my mind, make a person’s time at wikiHow a better experience. There are many, many ways of doing different things and accomplishing what seems to be exactly the same goal (on the surface) with different results. An example would be frying chicken (or any other common dish), where many people want to duplicate an exact end product (just like grandmas?) and find the image just isn’t what they are looking for.

17

That’s a valid concern, and part of the reason this is being done only with Wikiphoto articles. We used to put an image of the finished product in the introduction of all Wikiphoto articles, and we can reasonably assume that the image was accurate in that it showed the reader what they were going to get. Still, people preferred the experimental Wikiphoto articles with no intro image. We can’t really extend this observation to non-Wikiphoto articles because there isn’t any consistency among the finished product images, like there is among Wikiphoto articles. I agree that it would be silly to force people to stick around for the few extra seconds it takes to scroll down, and it does *not* help us to gain a few scrolling seconds and a frustrated visitor–it’s a more significant difference than a few seconds. It’s still really interesting to think about though. With more experiments we might be able to get a better idea of why people prefer articles with no intro image.