| s-1
| Jack Herrick, wikiHow founder interviewed by Wikinews |
| s-2
| Saturday, January 31, 2009 |
| s-3
| Herrick at RecentChangesCamp 2008 Image: ShakataGaNai. |
| s-4
| wikiHow is a wiki-based site which aims to 'build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual.' |
| s-5
| It recently published its 50,000th article, and to discuss what the site has achieved since its creation, Wikinews interviewed the site's founder, Jack Herrick. |
| s-6
| In the interview, Herrick explains what wikiHow is, why he decided to create it, how he grew it in size, and why he chose to use a Creative Commons license (HyperLink) for his site. |
| s-7
| Read below for more of the interview in full. |
| s-8
| Interview |
| s-9
| For our readers who are unaware of your site, could you briefly explain what wikiHow is? |
| s-10
| Sure. |
| s-11
| wikiHow is a collaborative effort to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. |
| s-12
| Our long term goal is to produce practical instructions on almost every topic in every language. |
| s-13
| We're quite far from our goals currently, but we take comfort in the fact that every month wikiHow gets noticeably better and larger |
| s-14
| We currently have just under 50000 articles and over 1000 featured articles. |
| s-15
| We hope that in time, we will have millions of articles with many of them having featured status. |
| s-16
| That said, we are realistic enough to realize that this goal will take decades to achieve. |
| s-17
| However, in terms of readership, we are probably the most popular single subject wiki after Wikipedia. |
| s-18
| We get over 14 million unique visitors per month (source: Google Analytics), which makes us the 135th most popular site according to Quantcast. |
| s-19
| [Note: The interview took place just before the 50000 milestone was met] |
| s-20
| Like Wikipedia, wikiHow is a wiki that runs on Mediawiki software. |
| s-21
| Our community is full of volunteers from all over the world. |
| s-22
| That said, we are quite different from Wikipedia in several respects: |
| s-23
| We are much smaller. |
| s-24
| The English wikiHow has only 60 admins, compared to the 1000 + on English Wikipedia. |
| s-25
| As a result, wikiHow is still at the size that every editor eventually gets to know other editors. |
| s-26
| We are run as a Hybrid Organization - a for-profit company focused on achieving a social good. |
| s-27
| This has several advantages and disadvantages when compared to the non-profit structure at the Wikimedia Foundation. |
| s-28
| We show opt-out advertising to anonymous visitors rather than ask for donations. |
| s-29
| Our advertising revenue funds community meetups and has even allowed us to donate over $ 60,000 to charities such as the Wikimedia Foundation and Creative Commons. |
| s-30
| (http://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:Contributions-to-Charity). |
| s-31
| In addition, we've used our revenue on things like buying carbon offsets to become carbon neutral. |
| s-32
| (http://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:Carbon-Neutral) |
| s-33
| Our community culture is focused on wikiLove and civility. |
| s-34
| As a result some folks believe wikiHow is a more humane and enjoyable place to work than other places online. |
| s-35
| Why did you decide to create wikiHow? |
| s-36
| I think that providing people with a practical education is one of the most empowering things you can offer a person. |
| s-37
| Imagine having detailed step-by-step instructions on how to do any activity you could imagine. |
| s-38
| How much more could you accomplish as an individual if you could learn any activity? |
| s-39
| I think that building a universal how-to manual would be a tremendous gift for the world. |
| s-40
| Knowledge is power and wikiHow has the potential to make all of us a bit more powerful. |
| s-41
| I've been interested in building a comprehensive how-to manual long before I first envisioned wikiHow. |
| s-42
| My first attempt at building this resource was a website I used to run called eHow. |
| s-43
| eHow was and continues to be the largest and how to website in the world. |
| s-44
| eHow contains copyrighted content run on proprietary software. |
| s-45
| When I ran eHow, the content was professionally produced and edited. |
| s-46
| This business model worked for producing content on topics that appeal to advertisers in languages like English that have large advertising markets. |
| s-47
| However, paying people to write and edit articles ultimately means that you have to make one of two sacrifices. |
| s-48
| You either 1) sacrifice on breadth and don't produce the topics that won't interest advertisers, or 2) you sacrifice on quality and produce content that doesn't cost much to write. |
| s-49
| I wasn't interested in making either of these sacrifices, as I think the world's how to manual needs to be high quality AND comprehensive. |
| s-50
| So ultimately I decided that eHow's model would not build the resource I envisioned. |
| s-51
| When I discovered Wikipedia, I recognized that the wiki model had the potential to build the how-to resource the world really needs. |
| s-52
| So I decided to sell eHow and use the proceeds to build wikiHow. |
| s-53
| Why did you decide to use a Creative Commons license? |
| s-54
| We use a Creative Commons license to give our community the right to fork (http://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:Right-to-Fork). |
| s-55
| In my opinion, people should be hesitant to contribute to websites where you only have the 'right to leave.' |
| s-56
| If wikiHow volunteers think our site is going in the wrong direction, they can take all the content and all the software and move the project elsewhere. |
| s-57
| This is possible because we release all of our software under the Open Source GPL license and release our content under a Creative Commons license. |
| s-58
| This right to fork guarantees that wikiHow, the company, will always serve the goal of the mission and our volunteer community. |
| s-59
| I believe that offering this right to fork has been a key element of our success thus far. |
| s-60
| My hope is that over time, internet users will demand this of any site where they invest their time in a way that creates value for others. |
| s-61
| That said, when we started out I didn't know the difference between the GNU Free Document License and my California Driver's license. |
| s-62
| As a result, we made some mistakes along the path. |
| s-63
| In retrospect, I think we probably should have selected the CC BY-SA license instead of CC-BY-SA-NC. |
| s-64
| At a minimum this would provide a helpful compatibility with other wikis and free culture projects. |
| s-65
| wikiHow now has millions of visitors per month. |
| s-66
| How did you grow the site to the size it is today? |
| s-67
| In December 2008, wikiHow had over 14 million unique visitors according to Google Analytics (Full data: http://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:Statistics). |
| s-68
| Quantcast ranks wikiHow as the 135th most popular site in the US. |
| s-69
| (http://www.quantcast.com/wikihow.com). |
| s-70
| wikiHow achieved this popularity for a few reasons. |
| s-71
| First, people around the world are desperate for high quality how-to information. |
| s-72
| People want to learn more practical skills, and for the most part the internet doesn't provide enough quality information yet. |
| s-73
| Second, we attracted millions of readers via the virtuous circle of wiki editing: We had some articles of mixed quality, and editors joined to improve those articles, which in turn attracted more readers. |
| s-74
| We continue to depend on this same virtuous cycle: More readers, means more editors, which creates better instructions, leading again to more readers. |
| s-75
| It is the same virtuous circle that Wikipedia has enjoyed. |