Thursday, July 26, 2007

Is it safe?

Recently, several article discussion (featured articles, actually) have revolved around the issue of safety and whether the article should even be on wikiHow, much less featured.

First, to be clear, a featured article is quite prominent. A link is on the main page, it is posted on the RSS feed, it is listed on the top of the list for the iGoogle gadget (which is default on the iGoogle page before a user modifies it), and it is on practically everyone's watchlist.

Second, the article itself is coddled once it nears its feature date. It is poured over by many editors looking for accuracy issues, spelling mistakes, grammar miscues...everything!

Finally, the article is featured and everyone sees it. Except a lot of people have an issue with the safety of it. Or even just the practicality. What amazes me is that, given the many editors who have looked over the article, people don't seem to realize that safety concerns have already been considered. It takes A LOT for an article to make through initiation, editing, tagging, more editing, discussion, more editing, and nomination. FAs are scrutinized top-to-bottom by so many individuals from different backgrounds, that it seems unlikely that an unsafe articles makes it through.

And yet...http://www.wikihow.com/Use-a-Paper-Shredder-as-a-Pasta-Machine and http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Caffeine-Jello-Shots are hot-button topics that make many people question whether wikiHow really has the readers' best interests at heart.

But no safety issues are raised with http://www.wikihow.com/Jab-in-Boxing. I think boxers have been killed by just the right jab in just the right place...

1 comment:

Nadon said...

It's impossible to kill someone with one jab in boxing, you need more than one otherwise it is not a jab, it is a straight punch. Jab is there to aim or blind the opponent, it's actually a slap to the face (and I don't remember reading someone ever being killed after being slapped once).