Wiki How, founded in 2005, is the world’s most popular site for wiki-style how-to guides. It provides step-by-step instructions for a huge range of practical tasks, from learning how to French-kiss to regaining control of a spooked camel.
As a wiki, the website’s content changes constantly. It must be updated quickly and without incurring a performance lag to meet the needs of its 150 million monthly visitors.
How it works
Wiki How is a website that offers free step-by-step guides on how to do just about anything. It’s a hybrid model that employs a team of experts, artists, and volunteers to ensure articles are continually improving in helpfulness, reliability, and accessibility. It also relies on Muck Rack, a media research platform that helps it save countless hours of research time.
The wiki How model was created by Jack Herrick, who had previously founded and sold eHow, which publishes a similar type of how-to content. In 2004, he learned about the open-source software that powers Wikipedia and decided to repurpose it for a simpler, less workmanlike encyclopedia of common sense and DIY tips.
Herrick’s goal was to create an online encyclopedia that served every single person on the planet, so his site would have to be flexible and adaptable to new trends. He also wanted to create a community that would feel like a home.
A large part of that community was its editors, and Herrick devoted a lot of his time to getting to know each and every one of them. That involved spending time on phone calls, Skype conversations, and emails.
Many of these calls were short and to the point, whereas others were long, drawn out. But they all helped to build a close community of editors, and made it easier for Herrick to find the right people to hire as full-time staff members.
In addition, Herrick’s staff spent a great deal of time discussing their individual skill sets with contributors, which was useful for getting them to feel confident in submitting their work. That, in turn, allowed Herrick to build a team of highly-experienced editors that could handle the site’s increasing load and speed up new articles.
But while Herrick was building his community, he faced some challenges from some of the site’s more wild vandals. Thankfully, Wade says a few of these individuals have since converted and become respected community members.
Those problems haven’t affected the site’s growth, however, as the site continues to be one of the most popular how-to websites on the web. It’s also a pioneer in the way it uses community standards to make sure articles remain trustworthy and accurate. For example, if a user finds that an article isn’t age-appropriate for kids or contains inappropriate language, they can ask for it to be removed. Likewise, articles on legal or medical topics are frequently reviewed by experts, and can be tweaked before they’re published.
Articles are created by volunteers
Founded in 2005 by Internet entrepreneur Jack Herrick, WikiHow is a website that consists of an extensive database of how-to guides. The site is a wiki-style community, allowing people to edit content in an open and collaborative way. It is a hybrid organization, run for a social mission, and uses the open-source MediaWiki software to make its articles available for free.
The website’s main goal is to provide the world’s most helpful how-to instructions, with step-by-step guides based on any topic. To reach this goal, it uses a system called kaizen: each article is constantly updated to reflect the most up-to-date information about a topic.
While most of wikiHow’s how-to articles are written by volunteers, a small team of experts review certain topics. For example, if an article is related to medical or legal matters, wikiHow employs in-house experts to ensure it is accurate and reputable.
These reviews help to keep wikiHow’s how-to guides up-to-date, as well as improve them. For example, if a guide doesn’t include all the steps needed to do something, or it’s unclear if it’s correct, a user can flag the issue and a staff member will look into it.
Another important part of the process is ensuring quality control, so that users can be sure they’re getting the best possible answers for their questions. This is done by reviewing each new edit and using a diff feature to see how it compares with previous edits of the same article.
The company also invests in careful translation into 12 languages, with a focus on medical and legal guides. Examples of this include 'how to recognize spinal meningitis' and 'how to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre', which have helped save lives.
As a freelance writer, you can work with a variety of companies that use Wiki How to promote their products or services. These companies will often request that you write an article for them, and this can be a good opportunity to build your portfolio. There are many different freelance job boards that you can search to find opportunities for writing on a variety of topics.
Experts review articles
Unlike Wikipedia, which is a non-profit organization and not commercial, Wiki How is a for-profit company. Rather than pay writers to write step-by-step guides, the company relies on the knowledge of its users to produce articles.
Articles are edited by the site’s community of volunteers, who are passionate about their interests and professions. This helps to keep the site’s quality up and ensures that readers receive high-quality, useful content.
Some articles on wikiHow are written by subject matter experts who have a background in the topic. These articles are marked with a green checkmark to indicate that they have been reviewed by an expert in the field. Those with a green mark also include a brief author bio at the end of the article.
These articles are usually well-sourced and based on well-established research. In addition, some of them contain videos or other elements that help readers learn more quickly and easily.
The kaizen philosophy behind wikiHow is to constantly change and improve the site’s content in order to offer readers a more up-to-date, relevant experience. For example, the 'how to tie a tie' article on the site has changed hundreds of times, and it now incorporates video tutorials to explain the steps.
Its medical and legal guides, for example, are checked over by doctors to ensure accuracy. And the site has worked with 30 nonprofit organizations to review articles for sensitivity and credibility.
As a result, wikiHow has a large archive of how-to articles on all kinds of topics, from home renovation to the best way to get dimples naturally. It’s one of the world’s largest sources of how-to content.
Some of the site’s biggest articles, like 'how to recognise spinal meningitis symptoms' and 'how to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre', have been carefully scrutinised by doctors. This is in addition to a team of volunteer editors who check over the articles before they go live on the website.
Articles on wikiHow are not published until they pass a quality review process called “New Article Boost.” These reviews look for problems such as stubs and formatting issues. Most articles that don’t make it through this review are tagged and de-indexed, but some may get nominated for deletion.
It’s free
wikiHow is a website that contains a large database of step-by-step instructions to help people learn how to do almost anything. It’s free and has been used by millions of people worldwide, including some famous names.
It’s a wiki, which means that it’s an open source project where anyone can add content. This means that the quality of articles can improve as more and more people use it.
The site has been around since 2005 and was created by Jack Herrick, who wanted to create a database of how-to instructions that could be edited by the community. Herrick used the wiki method of continuous improvement to achieve this goal.
He says that the website’s quality is better as more people contribute their knowledge to it, which has resulted in a site that’s become one of the largest and most popular how-to sites on the web.
According to traffic monitoring site Alexa, wikiHow pulls in 150 million unique visitors a month. This figure is impressive, considering the small full-time staff and the fact that wikiHow only makes money by serving ads to its readers.
What sets wikiHow apart from other companies is its hybrid business model. It acts like a charity, but doesn’t take donations; it turns a profit, but growth is not a primary goal; and it refuses external investment that would accelerate the growth of the company.
This has helped wikiHow to remain independent from the commercial internet and to maintain a focus on helping people. It’s been successful in this mission because it has a strong community of contributors who aren’t trolls, and because its small team keeps the company lean enough to stay profitable without taking any outside money.
wikiHow is also one of the only websites that doesn’t require any registration to access its content. If you want to see what a wikiHow article is all about, just type in a topic into the search box and it’ll give you several pages of instructions on how to do it. It’s a great resource for learning how to do things, but you should still do your research before doing anything.