Learn “How to Make a Book Float” on wikiHow.com!
We are lucky to live in an age where the Internet is so readily accessible. Anything you want to learn can be found online, but how do you know for sure if the article that you have located is written by a qualified professional? If you are looking for one of the best how to guides online, try wikiHow, the site that is “owned by everyone”.
Screenshot of wikiHow’s Home Page
This site is great for its wide variety of information, advice, reviews and tips. It is a wiki-based online collaborative community. Users can log on and create one of the best how to guides on any topic imaginable, in a fashion similar to Wikipedia. Readers can then choose to utilize this information or to offer edits and additions based on their own level of expertise in that perspective field.
Ask Follow-up Questions on wikiHow.com
The topics range from the silly, like How to Make a Book Float, to the more technical variety, such as How to Overlay Sectional Aeronautical Charts in Google Earth. You can search by categories or by simply typing in a few words in the search window. It’s incredibly easy to use, and with a few clicks of the mouse, you too can begin to educate the world on how to “let the cat out of the bag” by joining one of the best how to guides online!
WikiHow is growing in leaps and bounds as people from all over the Internet want to have more confidence in the information that they are finding online. Because this instructive website allows for anyone in the Wikihow community to edit or add information to any of its postings, an added sense of trust is automatically built-in to the content found on Wikihow. Readers of the how to guides can ask follow-up questions directly to the writer for more in-depth knowledge.
Nominate Poor Content for Deletion on wikiHow.com
The site also monitors all postings, edits, and additions through a staff of volunteers. You can opt to follow your own article submissions by watching, reviewing and re-editing the edits that others provide to your posting. Another reason that Wikihow is one of the best how to guides on the Internet today is due to is “Nominations for Deletion” category. This works as a sort of “community action” self monitoring method to alert the administration of questionable content. Perhaps the article is mean spirited, sexually charged, inaccurate, or just plain wrong! This helps keep the “junk” off of this best how to guides.
Wikihow makes the whole process of editing extremely easy. After logging in, you are brought to a simple screen that allows you to start actively contributing as an editor. In this way, Wikihow funnels viewers into a pool of potential editors.
Screenshot of Welcome Screen After Signing Up
A Brief Review of the History of wikiHow.com
WikiHow is free to use, but the administrators make it very clear that Wikihow is a hybrid organization. It is a cross between a “non-profit” and a “business”. The non-profit characteristics are that its ultimate goal is simply to provide the world with useful and valuable information to enhance the public good and to benefit the life of the individual. But like a business, it has to make money in order to stay alive. Therefore, they allow for advertising, but also allow the readers to “hide ads” with the push of a button. If only more websites would follow this trend.
This best how to guides website likes to say that it is “owed by everyone “, but wikiHow actually began as eHow.com back in 1990. EHow eventually declared bankruptcy and was later bought by Jack Herrick and Josh Hannah. By late 2009, the site was boasting 20 million monthly visitors and now has a global Alexa traffic ranking in the top 500 and is a Top 300 of the US Ranks consistently. With articles that are fast approaching 150 million by number of posts, wikiHow has become one of the best how to guides online today. They have been reviewed by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and everywhere in between. It looks like wikiHow is here to stay!
Some of the Best How to Guides on wikiHow.com
Check out these fun…and funny postings:
Hahahahha.. Tech Deck Tricks, if only I saw this years ago
Are you sure about eHow declaring bankruptcy? The link leads to a 404 and I can’t find any other sources. It also seems like ehow.com is still up and running (and doesn’t look anything like wikiHow.com)
Hmmm….odd. It was working when I wrote it. Here are a couple more….
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1017-252798.html
http://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:History-of-wikiHow