January 15th, 2020 is wikiHow’s 15th birthday! It’s amazing how quickly 15 years can fly by, but when we take a moment to look at all we’ve achieved in that time, I think it’s something that we can all celebrate.
Together we’ve made nearly 35 million edits since wikiHow began. Starting with just a tiny handful of people making edits on the site in the beginning, we now average over 3,000 users making contributions to wikiHow every month, and wikiHow is read by over 150,000,000 readers each month, with people from nearly every country in the world coming to wikiHow to learn new skills. It’s amazing to think that from our small beginnings that we reached over a billion people in 2019, and hope to help many more people in 2020.
The community is the heart of wikiHow and has been instrumental in building and keeping wikiHow thriving 15 years on. We see the positive effects of our work everywhere we look: from success stories by readers who’ve told us how much wikihow has helped them prepare for exams
and learn to read music
, to Twitter posts that state wikiHow is their favorite resource
, and that it helped raise
them, to news articles like the one in The Atlantic in November. The Atlantic article
captured the essence of wikiHow and showcased it as a loving, supportive presence on the web, where anyone is welcome to learn or contribute.
wikiHow is now available in 18 different languages. We can be heard through the speakers of Alexa, read online, watched on YouTube
and Apple TV.
Each year we have continued to innovate, and in 2019 a number of projects were developed and launched. Community co-authorship is one of the most notable, showcasing editors from the community as co-authors on articles that they have expertise and experience on. This is proving to be a fantastic way to highlight our editors as well as increase the authority and trust for our readers on topics like British Sign Language
, watercolor painting
and even livestock
. We’re always looking for more community co-authors, so if you have expertise in a particular area, feel free to fill out the form here
.
The wikiHaus team has also been busy building partnerships with nonprofit organizations, such as Mental Health America, Small Giants, Crisis Text Line, and Direct Relief. We collaborated with experts in our partner organizations to create helpful content like How to Help Tornado Victims
and How to Help a Suicidal Family Member.
In an important initiative with suicide prevention non-profit, Crisis Text Line, wikiHow created a feature
that flags potential suicide queries on wikiHow, disables ads, and connects users with our partner Crisis Text Line for suicide support.
The homepage also got a makeover at the end of the year, creating a fresh, clean landing page for our readers. Again on the theme of authority, the new landing page shows off what we have to offer and just how far we’ve come in being a respected source for how to do anything!
Whether you’re new to wikiHow or a veteran editor, thank you for all that you contribute. I’m so proud of what we have been able to do together in wikiHow’s first 15 years, and I know that we will do many more great things in 2020 and beyond! So happy birthday wikiHow!
