wikiHow

umm, why?

wikiHow is a how to manual that is made to tell people how to do a lot of things. The fastest growing wiki in the world, it is visited daily by people from all cultures. wikiHow is available in useful languages such as Turkish and Persian and Hebrew and over 1 million people have learned how to upgrade to first class seats and to sleep when it is too hot, and even cook a snake! But there are some problems with some lesser quality articles, too.

People it was made for

wikiHow would sometimes seem to be specifically designed with the middle school mind in mind, if you don't mind my saying that. And if you one time i peed my pants and it made me think of you, then just mind your own business please. I don't usually talk that way, but I have been reviewing a few wikiHow talk pages in preparation for writing this article. And quite a few middle schoolers have stated exactly these words to those big nasty administrators who lord over the wikiHow THIS IS SPARTAA!. Some of the admins (who are NOT to be called janitors, because there is not that much trash on the site) lift weights, and are incredibly scary personages, so you really don't want to mess with them. They have the power to BLOCK you. And every middle school child wants to be one — an admin. Don't believe me? Just look over some of the talkpages of wikiHow admins and you will find tons of messages from middle school kids asking "do you think I would be a good admin?" Ahhhh! These innocent little kids have no idea what kind crap punishment they are in for if they get named to the admin position, because it can be something of a thankless volunteer job.

Creation

The creator of wikiHow wants people to share information on topics such as "Stay Close to Your Best Friend After a She Moved Away" and "Eat Less Lemon Juice", not to mention "Waste Time on the Internet" and, more recently "Annoy Administrators of wikihow". One day, sisters posted an article entitled "Meet Chayley Clouthier and Helsea Clouthier"; this was immediately deleted as a vanity article. Chayley and Helsea could not understand why wikiHow allows articles on topics like desks or dressers, but refuses to allow anything at all about tables where you can sit and brush your hair and apply makeup. After all, isn't that what life is all about?

After having their article very rudely deleted after spending a full three and a half minutes writing it, they were very stressed out. So the bubbly sisters went to watch TV, but first had to consult wikiHow to learn how to find their TV and how to watch it. They got quite hungry after watching a few shows, so they went back to wikiHow and learned about how to eat a piece of tropical fruit and also consulted the manual to unlock the secrets of how to eat a Mars Bar. But then they were also tempted to read how to be a couch potato.

Current state

The powers that be at wikiHow are currently engaged in a vociferous debate over whether to allow additional articles about cheerleading. wikiHow has 87.2 articles about how to be a cheerleader, every one of them substantially different than the next. In addition, there is an entire section telling how to become the captain of a cheerleading squad. The main components there are to "have fun!!!!!", to stretch first, and to smile. Luckily, thank GOD, you can learn this facial expression by reading wikiHow, because this particular topic is quite well covered right here. Believe me it is not as easy as it looks to perform this smiling caper. I know because I did it once, many many years ago, well before getting involved with wikiHow.

Editors

The administrators of wikiHow are very hardworking people who actually have no lives. Some are millionaires who don't really have to work. They do not have children, do not go to school now (though they had learned their spelling and grammar very well some time prior). They are very lucky to live in houses which never get dirty and to eat food which cooks itself. So they are able to sit at their computers all day long and just watch the crazy edits streaming in. They get to learn all about very difficult topics in life such as How to Use a Ruler. It is easy, and can be reduced to three steps, which an author going by the pen name 207.172.225.33 has very succinctly condensed to:

1. Find what you want to measure 6 FOOT 7 FOOT 8 FOOT HUT! or less).
2. Lay the ruler on it flat and go to the point to measure.
3. You can take it from here, dummy.

The administrator who saw that one must have been fatigued with having done wikiWatching all day, and so he clicked off on that edit, welcoming this instructive article as a full and valued member of the over 40,000 articles making up the wikiHow manual.

In the very near future, wikiHow hopes to have an article entitled "Enjoy Foreign Movies when You Dont Understand the Language" and another called "Find a Rich Man", but also, (do we dare to dream?) "What to Do at a Party when There Are Four Times More guys Invited Than pencils (Teens)" This would be as opposed to "What to Do at a Party when There Are Four Times More Girls Invited Than Boys (senior citizens)". That will have to be a whole different article and may not be able to be written for some years now, until all the middle schoolers who now haunt the halls of wikiHow are all grown up. It is believed that, to date, no one over the age of 19 who is not already a Power Editor, has ever visited wikiHow. The company will have a very bright future as the kids of the world grow up. They may continue to follow along as wikiHow enthusiasts even after they have mastered pimple problems, how to get-the-guy, how to look preppy while acting emo and dressing goth, and how to get up the nerve to talk to their crush who "goes to a different school but I live in Nevada because my stepfather got a new job last summer". wikiHow can only get better from here.

Example of a WikiHow page

How to Travel all around the World for less than $5

Author info

Last updated: December 21, 2024

Step 1. Go anywhere in the world you like, but don't spend any more than $5.

This is a great example of how WikiHow supplies concise, effective guides to many necessary travel short-cuts. For instance, you can't go wrong with this guide, can you? If you can, you are mentally ill. Incidentally, there is a WikiHow article on how deal with Mental Illness.

What you can do at wikiHow

As its name suggests, wikiHow is a wiki, which means you can change anything you see written there, from the details in the article about "How to Remember the Six Wives of Henry VIII" to the spelling in the article about "How to Pack for a Trip to Beijing". You just have to remember to press that edit button. Many of the six million monthly readers forget to do this and instead make long pontifications on the discussion page. But luckily someone has added a wikiHow article entitled "How to Find the Edit Button", which links to another article entitled "How to Press the Edit Button".

The article entitled "How to What to Do When You Press the Edit Button" was deleted by the wikiHow Formatting Police because the title did not make sense when started with the words How-To. However, the articles about the finding and pressing the button were kept. The wikiHow community is considering creating a forum to debate the merits of keeping articles about obvious tasks which tell how to find things, press things, sit on things, and eat things. One highly traveled contingent maintains that there are primitive peoples living in various sections of the world who have never seen a chair. It is believed that the first place such primitive peoples would turn for advice on how to sit upon a chair would be wikiHow.

Competitions

Going by its number of competitions, wikiHow is a hotbed of competitiveness. Although recent competitions have declined with the back to elementary schoolers unable to juggle homework loads with the high energy count of switching on the computer, there is one competition that remains outstanding and evergreen. It is wikiHow's Daily Stats popularity contest. This contest can be entered by pretty much anybody still living. You are ahead of the rest if you are incapable of leaving your chair or changing sites but it is known that some competitors take a pee on the odd occasion. Discussions rise and fall as frequently as empires concerning the benefit of removing visual gratification of one's edit count but at the end of the day, most users agree that there is nothing so entertaining and fulfilling as a wild online party with cake thrown in for the winner every time a new milestone in the competition is reached. One frequent winner has need of an online refrigerator to store all the cake winnings won so far, so things can't be all that bad in competition land.

Funny wikiHows

Funny wikiHows are not allowed at the site, because jokes have no place in a how-to manual. So another site, by the name of wikiHowl has come to the rescue to whisk all those articles away so they stop junking up the site with stuff about zombies and rabid monkeys and stuff.

Footnotes

Nominated Article

This article has been nominated for highlighting on the front page—you can vote for it or nominate your favourite articles at Uncyclopedia:VFH. Please see this article's entry.