WikiHow.com - How-To Manuals

Imagine if everyone had an expert coach who could teach them how to do anything. Despite that possibility doesn’t exist, wikiHow can help you a lot. wikiHow is a collaborative writing project aiming to build the world's largest how-to manual. The idea is to provide free and useful instructions to help people solve the problems of everyday life. Currently, wikiHow contains 22,821 articles, new articles are created every day and the existing articles are gradually improved by volunteer contributors. Looking for some advice? You can use the search box to find the topic you’re looking for or just browse by category – such as arts & entertainment, computers & electronics, family life, pets, health, relationships, travel, etc. You’ll find articles ranging from How to Eat with Chopsticks to Clean Dishes on a Camping Trip and Stop Being a People Pleaser. wikiHow is a wiki, which is a web site that anyone can write and anyone can edit. Any visitor to wikiHow can create a new page to write about how to do something. Once the page is submitted, any other visitor can edit, improve or change the page. Over time, the quality of the page rises as many people make improvements. You can browse articles in the early stages of development and see if you can add some information. If you are a good speller, these articles will benefit from your expertise. You can also share your knowledge by writing a new page. If you need ideas of topics to write you can look at a list of suggested articles made by other users. But be sure to search first, though, as many of the suggested articles have already been written.

“With the goal of creating a massive how-to manual with accurate, up to date instructions on every imaginable topic in multiple languages, wikiHow was founded by Jack Herrick on January 15, 2005. Josh Hannah assisted by paying for the servers and other expenses and Travis Derouin did all the engineering work on the site. Slowly but steadily, people around the world who were inspired by the goal of building a massive how-to manual started to join the community. Every person who edited made the site a little better for the next reader. And as the site got better, more people told their friends about it, bringing in still more readers and helpful editors. By April, over 100,000 readers were visiting wikiHow each month. By June, bloggers and the press were starting to write about the "how-to wiki" Eventually, wikiHow appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, ABC News, PBS Newshour, Singapore Straits Times, LeMonde, and other media.”

wikiHow is definitely an interesting concept. It is a big how to manual providing free, unbiased instructions on a wide range of topics. It will probably help lots of people solve everyday problems. What’s best, wikiHow is available to anyone in the world free of charge.

Will they make the site available in other languages? Right now wikiHow is predominantly for English speakers only. Are all contributors experts on the subject they’re covering?