wikiHow is a web-based and wiki-based community, consisting of an extensive database of how-to guides. wikiHow's mission is to build the world's largest and highest-quality how-to manual.[2] The site started as an extension of the already existing eHowwebsite, and has evolved to host over 175,000 how-to articles as of May 29, 2014.[3] In January 2012, "wikiHow had 35.5 million unique readers from over 200 countries or territories. These 35.5 million different people visited it a total of over 44 million times in the month."[4]
All of the site's content is licensed under the [Creative Commons] (by-nc-sa);[5] and the site uses a modified version of MediaWiki1.23,[6] which is open source.[7]
Contents
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1 History
2 Content and article format
2.1 Deletion policy
3 Business model
3.1 Licensing
3.2 Opt-out ads
4 Criticisms
5 Footnotes
6 References
7 External links
History[edit]
On January 15, 2005, the two owners of eHow, Jack Herrick and Josh Hannah, started wikiHow––a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest how-to manual. While eHow already contained instructions on how to do thousands of things, wikiHow allowed a community of volunteer contributors to build something even bigger and better. On April 28, 2006, eHow was sold to Demand Media and wikiHow was launched as an independent site on its own www.wikihow.com domain.[8] wikiHow reached 50,000 articles on January 27, 2009.[9] On March 11, 2011, the number of how to articles hit 100,000. As of June 11, 2014, there are over 176,000 articles, about 904,000 registered users, and over 15.9 million edits made.[10]
Content and article format[edit]
Workshop on women on wikiHow at Wikimania 2012. wikiHow is a wiki, which is a website that anyone can edit. wikiHow operates on open source software and an open content licensing model, allowing free use and community ownership of the content.
Any visitor to wikiHow can create a new page and write about how to do something. Articles posted on wikiHow follow a standard format consisting of a summary, followed by ingredients (if any), steps to complete the activity, along with tips, warnings, required