A recent forum discussion led me to contemplate about the long-term goal of wikiHow and the purpose it serves.
Jack posted a very interesting response to the question of whether we had become the world's largest how-to manual already. His essential thoughts, summarized, indicated that we had a long way to go to become the largest.
Throughout the thread, various levels of thought came through showing what editors view as the ruler in measuring size. I even posted my own thoughts that we should be seeking to amass all of the how-to information possible in the vast reaches of human knowledge. Others compared wikiHow to all of the books ever written that speak to how to do something. Still others compared wikiHow to other how-to web sites like eHow.
Jack even went ruler-by-ruler comparing wikiHow to eHow, web site popularity and the like.
But is wikiHow the largest how-to manual on the planet? I don't think so. I think the largest how-to manual is in our collective brains. That is, human knowledge is a far larger how-to manual than wikiHow could ever be. Every day we are doing tasks that others can't perform. wikiHow itself weeds out articles about how to do something that violate its policies...but are nonetheless, a how-to.
That makes me wonder if wikiHow will ever be the world's largest how-to manual. It's certainly possible many years down the road. You might be asking, If the world's largest how-to manual is human knowledge, how will wikiHow ever pass that?! What many don't realize is that human knowledge is quickly being downloaded and dispersed throughout the world. It isn't a far reaching thought that one day we might just plug ourselves into a USB port.
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Interesting thoughts. Your post implies that wikiHow might never be the world's biggest how-to manual because of the policies that keep certain topics out. I do wonder if a how-to manual without such deletion criteria would even be possible...or would it self destruct? Would those controversial articles that wikiHow keeps out now stir so much controversy that the community would collapse on itself? I've seen long, drawn out and heated discussions over very mild, very borderline articles. Maybe the deletion policy is exactly what will eventually make wikiHow the largest how-to manual that would actually work in reality (balancing out the contributions of individuals with the opinions of individuals). I guess we'll have to wait and see!
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