How to Contribute to wikiHow

Happy 10 Year Anniversary, wikiHow! Thank you to the wikiHow community and to all of our fans. Together, wikiHow helps millions of people every day!

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   Do you love to write? Anyone can start a new page on wikiHow, even anonymous contributors! If you're not sure of what to write about, go to the Write an Article page and scroll down to the "I want topic suggestions" section. Type in a keyword and hit "Submit". This will give you ideas for articles that may not have been written about on wikiHow yet. Click on any red title to start that article.
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   Use the spellchecker tool to help fix spelling on different articles. Some articles have spelling errors in them, and there is a backlog of them that need fixing, so it's great if you could help out with that. Feel free to whitelist any words that are spelled correctly, but are flagged by the Spellchecker; wikiHow administrators and new article boosters will review them as soon as possible.
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   Are you a perfectionist? If you see any kind of mistake, you can always click on the "Edit Article" tab at the top of an article and fix it on the spot. You don't even need to register. You can also use our Community Dashboard tools to focus on problems like these:
   • Read our copyediting tips and use the Copyediting Greenhouse tool to tackle the articles that need help.
   • Check out our formatting guidelines and use the Formatting Greenhouse tool to reformat articles that need it.
   • Use generic pronouns to remove gender-specific language. Pages noted for needing gender neutralization are listed here but there are many across the site that you'll probably stumble upon.
   • Remove personal references like "I" and "me". The reason we avoid this is because personal reference tends to discourage people from editing a page. Try to substitute words like "you" and "your". A list of articles that need to have personal references removed is here.
   • Use the Cleanup Greenhouse tool to help out with articles that need all kinds of help: copyediting, reformatting, and other tweaks.
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   Help us patrol recent changes.On any wiki, there's a queue of Recent Changes (RC) that show every change or addition that's been made to the site and allows volunteers to accept or rollback those changes. Most of the edits made on any given day are helpful, and any bad edits (vandalism) are usually quickly reverted by an RC patroller. Would you like to help out? Check out how it is done in this article: How to Patrol Recent Changes on wikiHow.
   • Use the Quality Guardian to decide whether recently added tips and videos are a good fit for the articles they've been added to.
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   Do you like to organize?
   • Use the Categorizing tool. Categorizing helps our readers find the articles they're looking for. (Note that you need to be registered and logged in to do this.)
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   Do you like to take photographs or draw?
   • Look at our list of articles in need of step-by-step pictures. Consider taking instructional photos and adding them to articles!
   • If you like to draw, many of our pages need diagrams too. You can scan or photograph your drawings and upload them the same way you would a photo.
   • If you like or are good at taking screenshots, you can also look at our list of articles in need of screenshots. Consider taking screenshots and adding them to articles!
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   Are you good at fact-checking and research? Become familiar with our research standards and learn how to format citation links on wikiHow, then...
   • Try your hand at accuracy patrol.
   • Browse articles tagged as needing citations. Usually you'll see at least once sentence with "citation needed" at the end (e.g.^{[citation needed]}). Verify whether that statement is accurate and correct or remove it. Don't forget to remove the "citation needed" template by erasing {{fact}}.
   • Expand a Stub. Some articles are incomplete and need significant help to reach their full potential. Feel free to get involved with a major revision.
   • Browse articles tagged as being unclear and see if you can clarify or elaborate.
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   If you enjoy watching instructional videos, then help us add them to our articles. Go to the Video Adder to view articles that need videos, or go to any article that doesn't have a video yet and add a video.
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   Start a wikiHow in another language. Our goal is to provide a free multi-lingual resource to help improve the everyday lives of everyone throughout the world.
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    Offer thanks and praise to your fellow editors. Appreciate their excellence, enthusiasm and dedication. Add an award to an editor's Talk page. These acts of kindness increase the strength of our community.
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    Edit in the Topic Greenhouse. Choose a category of articles you enjoy and edit articles about them. Expand and improve them, or even a simple edit would help improve the article.
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    Go to the new pages list and edit new articles. Fix spelling mistakes on them, copyedit or format it, etc. Leave a message for the contributor that started the article, and if they're new, you can welcome them to wikiHow. Mention that they did a good job creating a helpful article, and give them praise.
    • Once you have some experience in reviewing new pages, you can become a New Article Booster if you meet the requirements. Boosters improve new articles and provide encouragement and friendly advice to new editors. All you'll need to do is take a 3-part test and have a valid email address.
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    Remember that contributing is about helping people learn to do things. A good article that tells someone exactly what they wanted to know, just once, is more helpful than a page that is read a lot but not genuinely helpful and useful.
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