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Is "My Drafts" messing with your head?

Reducing edits to an article to a professional one, and having a hedge against frequent interruptions, makes it handy to save a draft of your wikiHow article and return to it at a later time.

However, there are things about working in wikiHow drafts, online, that are counter~intuitive to someone unfamiliar with it, as complete freedom of movement from the draft, to the article, to even the preview~you can have three different, "correct" versions, until you hit preview again, after "save draft"~is obtained. See "Discuss" for other scenarios.

For all but the lightest of edits, consider copy/paste to WordPad or Word, and back; you'll be glad you did.

For most editing, done in one session, you'll just use "Preview" to see your edit, edit some more, "Preview" again, until done, then "Publish." If you notice, say, the next day, that your edit didn't publish, you most likely forgot to hit publish--but you generated an auto-draft when you left the page--just hit 'edit' on the draft, amend if you need to, and hit publish.

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EditSteps

  1. Use the My Drafts Feature on wikiHow Step 1.jpg
    1
    Click "Edit" in an article and edit.
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  2. Use the My Drafts Feature on wikiHow Step 2.jpg
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    Click on "Save Draft" at the bottom of the Edit page.
    • The "Save Draft" button should then turn gray and display the word "Saved".

      Use "Save draft" instead of "Publish", except for the briefest edits; in that case click save draft before publishing, so you have a private copy for that (inevitable?) second edit...
  3. Use the My Drafts Feature on wikiHow Step 3.jpg
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    "Preview" your edits. Note that "preview", "article", and your just-saved edits to "save draft" (in the edit window) are all different until you "preview" (you haven't published yet, or previewed yet; you've only edited a draft, and "saved draft").

    Note that ANY other order in drafts may give you trouble. We have a discussion of the different possible scenarios in step 6.
  4. Use the My Drafts Feature on wikiHow Step 4.jpg
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    Re-access your draft. Click on My Drafts in the column to the right of any page, or click on the article you have a draft of, click the article "edits" tab, and choose "edit" in "Existing Drafts". Be sure you pick the right one; you can access the article from the "Existing Edits" window, or vice-versa.
    • The title of the article, in the "existing drafts" box, will be bold~faced when in the draft (when you've hit "edit" in the existing drafts box; if the title in the existing drafts box is not bold, you are editing the article. If you go into "My Drafts" and click on a title (instead of "edit"), you will be editing the article, and not your draft! Note that the title was not bold, but "edit" and "discard" were.
  5. Use the My Drafts Feature on wikiHow Step 5.jpg
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    Review the History page of the article, or click "Show changes" to amend, before "Publish". Any differences in your draft preview, and the current published version will highlight, allowing you to insert good edits since you saved your last draft.
  6. Use the My Drafts Feature on wikiHow Step 6.jpg
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    So then a preferred method for editing an article. (Go to) Article, edit (you can actually click edit, enter a character anywhere on the page, save a draft, and click "cancel"), save draft, preview, (repeat if necessary), show changes, amend (if necessary), preview, and publish.

    "amend" means to incorporate quality edits from a different latest publication from your first "save draft".

    To open tabs while editing a draft, copy/paste address from the draft page, AFTER you "Save Draft".

    The following information, concerning "drafts", will not immediately make sense to a beginner; but you may shortly need it.

    When you click "publish" on a draft, it publishes, overwriting existing published edits. This is an awesome responsibility, in a sense; learn how to do it correctly.
    • "How to Test the Draft Feature on wikiHow" is http://www.wikihow.com/Test-the-Draft-Feature-on-wikiHow.

      What these may not clarify is that if you click on an article' that you happen to have a draft saved of, and then click the "tab" edit or a blue "edit" button, (ignoring the "Existing Draft" draft box), and start editing, you are then editing in the currently published article (although it doesn't change until you hit "Publish"; and you could instead create another draft by clicking "Save Draft").

      You probably wanted to edit the draft you have saved by clicking edit again in the       "Existing Drafts" box (notice the Title of the Article change from plain to bold face type)--then click "Save Draft", then "Preview" again, to see your edits. Note that if you neglect to hit "Preview" after "Save Draft," you have saved the most recent edits, but you are reading from the previous "Preview;"       so no, you have not lost your mind.

      Now, click the "article" tab, and read the article. It is different than your last edits; and a quicker way to do what you just did is to click "show changes". We'll go through this a few different ways here, to show it to you from every angle (until you see the center, which is...)

      You can enter an article that you have a draft saved of by clicking (user page) my drafts, and the title of the article; and vice-versa-

      You can enter any (undeleted) draft of an article from the "edit" tab in the article, by clicking "edit" in the "existing drafts" box.
      • Of course, there is nothing wrong with editing and saving a draft (to edit further) of the current article, if that was your aim.

        Conversely, you can click on a draft of an article from your user page, in "My Drafts"; and then click on the title of the article in the "Existing Drafts" box, under page, and get...a view of the article as it is currently published (even though you clicked in the "existing drafts" box, you didn't click "edit") , no matter how old your draft is (notice the title is not in bold face). You are not editing the draft until you click "edit", in the "Existing Drafts" box. Clicking either the edit "tab", or a blue "edit" button, will not return you to your draft edit here.
    • Clicking "edit" in the existing drafts box, and "Show Changes" at the bottom, will give you a side-by-side comparison of current article and your draft.
  7. Use the My Drafts Feature on wikiHow Intro.jpg
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    Finished.
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EditTips

  • Drafts are saved for 365 days.
  • Click on Discard to remove a draft from the list.
  • Drafts can also be saved in Microsoft Word or the WordPad of your computer.
    • Saved in this way, you can still work on an article while remaining offline.
    • Copy and paste your article onto the appropriate Edit page at a later time; if you published an "inuse" on the article, no "amend" should be needed; if not, you can immediately amend. There may have been some good stuff just overwritten by your copy/paste in, and "Show changes" will highlight it.

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Categories: Writing and Editing

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