User_talk: Donagan/Archive1

Wow, keep up the awesome spellchecker work! Do you have questions about the tool so far?

Hi Donagan! While patrolling I was happy to see some great Spellchecker edits of yours! Thanks for your contributions!

Hi there!
Thanks for your great work on the Spellchecker! Keep it up. :)

Thanks for editing Save Money when Buying a House in Victoria, BC. I was just looking at the change you made while patrolling recent changes, and I think it might go against one of wikiHow's policies, so I undid it. It could be that I misunderstood your edit, though, so just let me know if you'd like me to put it back and we can probably figure something out.

GeGe

Hey Donagan! I saw all your edits from the spellchecker tool, and I wanted to say thanks for helping out. We always appreciate your help!

Thanks for correcting spelling, punctuation
and grammatical errors.

These minor changes help others
to understand an article.

Your efforts are greatly appreciated!

Keep up the great work!

GeGe :)

Hello. I've seen your name heaps on spell checks, good going. I did notice though that you changed a foreign word to an English one in an article where the writer fully intended to use the French word. I put the French word back in. If I was wrong, please let me know. I'm sorry I can't do a link to the actual article, I'm not a PC or laptop user so I have heaps of technical issues.

Your edit on Be a Ghetto Fabulous Girl (Tweens and Teens) looked good! :)

Thanks for your edits on Calm an Upset or Angry Child. Just wanna drop by and say that antagoniser is a british spelling and antagonizer is a american spelling. So both are correct. You don't need to change those spellings. Reply me to discuss ion brief.

Thanks for your edits on Enjoy Halloween All by Yourself. I patrolled your work in, however, I changed the capitalization of wikiHow, which in fact, does not begin with a capital letter.

Thanks for your edits on Create a Tekeporter Frame Image in Excel.

Nice work on Feel Good when You're Fat. Thanks for the helpful edit! It was even featured here: http://forums.wikihow.com/discussion/12228/community-achievements-of-the-week-9.9.14/

Thanks for your edits on Excavate a Trench.

Hi Donagan! I just want to congratulate you on your amazing efforts with the spellchecker tool! I have never seen a better spellchecker!

Thanks for your edits on Cook Broccolini. I never even knew there was such a thing!

Thanks for your edits on Get Ready for an Airsoft Game. Good catch, tricky word that.

l always love patrolling your excellent work on copyedits. So easy! Thanks for your edits on Prepare Tomato Dal and so many others.

Hello Donagan, I'm delighted to say that I have nominated your article, 'Invest on Prosper.com' as a Featured Article Canidate! Seeing how well and detailed your article was written inclinded me to place your article in that position! Great job dear sir!

You're very welcome Donagan! I'm glad to see someone who updates articles as different things happen on that particular site.

Nice catch for the spelling mistake on Become a Professional Dog Walker. Very much appreciated.

Thanks for your edits on Make Goggly Bracelets for Your Mates.

Just a heads up that I reverted your change of goggly eyes (bulging eyes) to googly eyes (jiggly eyes). I am pretty sure that goggly eyes is correct and needs to be whitelisted next time through the Spell Check app. (Look at the title.)

Hey there!
I know Adelaide already gave you one, but two can't hurt...

The Copyeditor's Barnstar

Donagan, I've seen your exceptional work on the spellchecker. Such dedication (and accuracy!) is deserving of this copyeditor's barnstar. Thanks for all your improvements here, and keep up the great work! :) Writing Enthusiast (talk) 18:11, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Edits like the one you made to Be Satisfied with Your Relationship help maintain and improve quality on wikiHow...Thanks for the helping hand!

You were even featured here :) http://forums.wikihow.com/discussion/12525/community-achievements-of-the-week-9.30.14/

Hey Donagan, thanks for fixing the spelling in my artcle. Looks good ! =)

Laura7491 (talk) Laura.

Thanks for editing our article!

Edits like the one you made to Find a Part Time Job (as a Student) help maintain and improve quality on wikiHow...Thanks for the helping hand.

Nice edit on Applied Renewable Energy Efficiently. Very much appreciated!

Thanks for improving Deal with Change. I noticed and appreciated your contribution.

Just wanted to stop by and say thanks for the edit you made to Stop Bleeding!

Nice job on editing Find Wild Edible Plants. The article is definitely better for it.

If you have a little time to spare, can you by any chance help out with patrolling recent changes? We need a few more people reviewing edits so they stop piling up on us :) Even a few minutes of patrolling would help. You seem like you might be good at it. I hope you try it out: Special:RCPatrol

Thanks for your edits on Make Cookies. In the future, please just leave pronouns alone. Thanks for all your hard work :)

Thanks for your edits on Put Up an Artificial Christmas Tree. There really is a word known as "cherishable". Here's it's dictionary definition. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cherishable Please stop correcting that word!

Thanks for your edits on Buy an EKG Machine. Wow that was an advanced spell check!

Thanks for your edits on Find and Analyze Demand Function Curve.

Thanks for your edits on Visit Epcot. Be careful of the German spelling.

Awesome work you did on Become an English Tutor!

Thanks for your edits on Forge a Signature. Awesome fix, as usual! We need an "intrepid spellchecker" template, just for you :)

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If you have questions please ask!

Thanks,

-Scars

Post it on your user page so everyone can see your hard work or I could post it! Remember this is for quality not quantity

Thanks for your edits on Choose an Engagement Ring.

Harry Georje is a renowned jeweler, not Harry George...LOLz!

hey how are you

Good question! Krystal puts a goal for us to focus on and then adds more once it finishes. A goal is a a accomplishment to achieve.

Well done Donagan! What can I say! You are such a great helper to this site and I am so happy to have someone as helpful as you in our community. You are constantly top of the spellchecker leaderboard and you have won many awards! I don't think I have really appreciated your work as much as I should but it is great! Be proud of yourself! Have you ever considered being an Article Booster? I think you could be great at it! Thanks for your time and everlasting impression on wikiHow!

Hannah Banana xox

Nice edit on Write a Guarantor Letter. Very much appreciated.

Edits like the one you made to Perform Iontophresis to Manage Common Diseases help maintain and improve quality on wikiHow...Thanks for the helping hand.

Thanks for your edits on Become the Alpha of the School.

Hi, Donagan,

I just wanted to mention you are doing an awesome job correcting spelling, it is very much appreciated.

Hey there,

Yes, I set goals for the widgets on the community dashboard, including the spellchecker. Not all of the widgets have goals. Basically, each widget has a number of things to do. I can set a temporary goal if the number is too overwhelming.

When you saw the spellchecker widget go to zero, that's because the goal was met, so I set a new goal around a week ago, but haven't changed anything since. The number of articles in need of spellchecking is always changing as more articles get added to the tool, and more articles get fixed. Currently, there are 13783 articles in need of spellchecking, and the temporary goal is 12518.

What do you think might be a better goal for the spellchecker tool? Any thoughts?

Great thoughts and questions.

Regarding the spellchecker widget: The current goal is 1353. Does that seem good? I'd be happy to raise or lower it just to try something different. And yes, your assumption is correct. Even though it says "until goal" right under the number, in reality most people don't even notice that. One day when we redesign the dashboard one of my suggestions will be to make that clearer, and perhaps allow people to toggle between the actual number and the temporary goal.

As for the age of our community, I could talk about this for a long time, but I'll try to contain myself to a few points. You are definitely right in that this site's volunteer base skews very young, and that as a result, this might deter many older people from contributing. I think you're onto something when you say it's a messy product of democracy. wikiHow was deliberately built to be open, friendly, and easy-to-use. When you lower the barrier of entry, and you have kids who have grown up using the Internet, that adds up to lots more young people feeling comfortable participating. Another thing is that the how-to realm will naturally attract a lot of younger people who are turning to the Internet to learn how to do things in their lives, whereas something like an encyclopedia or a citizen science project might draw a more mature audience.

In terms of having an age limit, there are a few issues. We do already abide by a law called COPPA by blocking any account which announces its age as being under 13, but children can still participate anonymously or by not announcing their age. This brings us to the issue that an age limit is pretty much unenforceable. Another issue is that while many youth might be weighing us down in terms of quality, there are a few who have been amazing contributors, and have practically grown up with the project. See User:RockyRaccoon User:Anson-S and User:IsabelleZita for just a few examples. It would have been unfortunate if they'd never had a chance to participate here.

I hope that somewhat answers your questions, but it's really more of a discussion that I'm happy to have because you raise some of the issues at the core of our project :)

As for the greenhouse, I think you mean hatchery, and no, it's not fully in place yet. It's been implemented to a degree in that when a new article is published, it's essentially invisible on search engines (i.e. de-indexed) until it gets approved by our community (I can tell you more about this if you're interested). This helps to remove the incentive to create new articles in the hope of glory and fame (something younger people tend to be more concerned about) and also hides low-quality articles from the public eye so they don't tarnish our image.

If you have any other questions or thoughts or ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Thanks for your edits on Stop Someone from Turning on the Cooler Too Often.

how do you write so much

you are so cool

We're still figuring out how the Hatchery will work. The rough plan is for every new article to go through a "sifting" process. Some articles might get automatically nominated for deletion. Algorithms can be good at picking up the worst of the worst. Others will probably go through some kind of rating tool. From there, some will sit in the hatchery, others will get sent to a tool we have called New Article Boost. And new articles by authors with a proven history of writing high quality pages will probably skip the Hatchery altogether and go straight to the public eye.

I can understand the frustration based on your exposure to articles through Spellchecker. On top of a disproportionate number of our articles being youth-oriented, an even bigger disproportion of our articles with spelling errors are youth-oriented. We used to have something called a "teen filter" so that editors using our tools could avoid such articles, but even though the idea was very popular, very few people actually used it, and we disabled it after finding it wasn't being used at all.

"Greenhouse" refers to a variety of tools, actually. The general term is for a tool that lets you flip through articles that meet certain criteria. The Copyedit Greenhouse shows you articles which have been manually flagged by a contributor as needing copyediting. The Format Greenhouse does the same for articles in need of formatting. The Stub Greenhouse will show you articles flagged as being barely helpful (articles that are in sore need of expansion) and the Topic Greenhouse will let you browse articles by specific topic. Any of these tools might be more to your liking because you can simply select all the categories except the youth category (and perhaps the Relationships category, because that attracts a lot of youth too). Here's a screenshot of the category selection dialog: http://screencast.com/t/yWYMsM47uX

I'm quite familiar with Wikipedia, actually! I even know a few people who manage the community there and follow a lot of the research about their project. I've been to two of their conferences (Wikimania). One thing worth noting is that Wikipedia has many, many more contributors than wikiHow. That adds quite a bit to the knowledge. Another thing is that while they have accomplished a high level of quality, they are struggling with the opposite problem--their active editor base is declining over time, and there is a struggle to retain newcomers who are discouraged by the interface and culture. There's a lot we can learn from Wikipedia and there's a lot they can learn from us too. We have rather opposite problems :) Have you ever tried editing there?

Hi!

I just wanted to let you know you've been featured in the Community Achievements this week! Thanks for all the great editing you've been doing! :)

Hi there :) Nice work on Get the Most Money for a Pet You're Selling! Thanks for the helpful edit! I really appreciated how you formatted the steps and fixed grammar and capitalization.

You were even featured here! http://forums.wikihow.com/discussion/13172/community-achievements-of-the-week-11.13.2014/

Thanks for these questions! It's been nice talking about these issues, I think about them a lot :)

So interesting that not feeling qualified is what deters you from contributing there. It seems like a paradox in that by building a very high-quality resource, you might accidentally intimidate or deter the people who could help make it even better. Maybe that's a problem we'll have one day, too!

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If you have questions please ask!

Thanks,

-Scars

Edits like the one you made to Become a Taekwondo Instructor help maintain and improve quality on wikiHow...Thanks for the helping hand.

Thanks for you help on Spell Checker!

Hey - Not sure if you're into reading academic studies but I thought maybe you would find this one interesting: http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/

Oh, bummer about having been discouraged early on. Was it your spellchecker edits that were reverted? Did people send you "nastygrams" about it?

Ultimately, User:JackHerrick is the founder and has the final call on what happens around here, and while he does guide the project, he's very passionate about collaboration and community (and the democratic principles that underlie this project). We do have a group of admins who can delete pages, change titles, and block accounts, but on the whole we're very careful about not letting people get drunk with power, so to speak :)

Here's the burning question: If Wikipedia asked you, "What can we do to encourage more people to contribute and add to the quality of our project?" how would you answer them?

Interesting suggestion! From what they've told me, and what I've read, they're not getting enough contributions, so setting restrictions might reduce contributions further? Many people are avoiding editing there at all, probably for similar reasons as yours (feeling unqualified), so they are suffering from lack of new information, and thus a lost opportunity for increase quality.

Would you ever consider going to a wiki conference? The Wikimedia Foundation (the nonprofit that sustains Wikipedia) has one every year. I've been to two and they focus in on exactly the issues we've been talking about (and then some).

Krystle

P.S. - By "nastygram" I meant a rude note.

Awesome work you did on Make a Present for Someone Who Is Hospilized!

Hey! I have a question about the edit you made to Write a Business History. I wasn't sure if you were trying to make the page better, or just experimenting, so I changed the page back for now. Either way, maybe I can help you find a better way to contribute here. Let me know if you'd like to discuss it!

Oh! My apologies. I misunderstood. They don't already have restrictions, and they're trying to figure out how they can get more people to contribute :)

Totally understand about group efforts. The conference can be a bit overwhelming. Some of their talks are online, though. If I come across one that I think you might find interesting, I'll send you a link!

And thanks. I really love this part of the country (the Pacific Northwest) for all its mountains. Are you a nature-lover yourself?

.....

-favorite sports- - rock climbing -rope climbing -gymnastcis -yoga and of course i luv the outdoors! XOXO Leafie

Yes, I'm definitely more of a hiker than a climber. My second picture is of Diamond Peak and that requires a little bit of precarious scrambling. It was worth it. I've never done rock-climbing outdoors and it's not something I've been super interested in trying. Walking up to the summit leaves me perfectly content :) And Lobo, too! He is a great hiking dog. Here's a better pic of him: https://twitter.com/krystlechung/status/475791398235815937

Thanks for your edits on Be Good at English. Please leave pronouns alone. Wordscramble is a game.

I just saw your helpful copyedit to Stop People from Spying on Your Computer. Thanks for the good contribution! You were even featured in our Community Achievements :)

How is your week going?

Pronouns are cities, people, games etc with a capital letter. They don't get spellchecked.....

Like the name 'Scarlett'....you wouldn't change it.

Happy Thanksgiving :)

Yes, the spellchecker mistakes them with incorrect words. Just mark them. Thanks! :) And have a great Thanksgiving

.hi..thank you so much...your edit on this article is very nice...keep on going...best of luck. Thanks for your edits on Live a Simple Life Like a Saint.

Thanks for editing Hand Raise a Kitten. I was just looking at the change you made while patrolling recent changes, and I think it might go against one of wikiHow's policies, so I undid it. It could be that I misunderstood your edit, though, so just let me know if you'd like me to put it back and we can probably figure something out.

Hey!

Would you be interested in receiving a special 10th anniversary card from wikiHow? I would love to send one to you. If so, can you fill out this form?

Thanks for spell checking my article! Happy Holidays :)

tnx for the spell check!!!

Thanks for your edits on Write and Compile a Java Program on the Command Line (Windows).

I thought your edit to Be a Loyal Friend was great. Thanks for chipping in.

Thanks for your help copyediting articles and making them look better!

Nice work on Heal a Heartbreak. Thanks for the helpful edit - so thorough, as usual! Had you done a lot of copyediting and editing before you joined up here, or is this a new hobby -- and skill!! -- of yours? Either way, wikiHow is lucky to have you :)

Hah, I think so! You can almost get a kind of catharsis from it, I'd say. Glad you're finding it worthwhile! :)

Thanks for your edits on Bead on Your Clothing! Thanks for working so hard in the Spellchecker!!!

Nice work on Make a Activity Jar. Thanks for the helpful edits! You've obviously put quite a bit of time and effort into those edits. Spelling and grammar are really important!

Thanks for your edits on Teach a Puppy to Walk on a Leash Inside.

Thanks for your edits to Extinguish Maladaptive Behavior in Children with Disabilities Your doing great! Keep it up :) -WikiHow RC Patrol

You were featured here this week :) http://forums.wikihow.com/discussion/13743/community-achievements-of-the-week-12.17.2014/

Thanks for your edits on Play a Wheel of Fortune (WOF) Slot Machine. Love how you copyedited and made it more concise at the same time.

Happy Thursday!

Hello Donagan - you really have attacked the spelling! I keep going back to it but some of the articles are unknown to me so I keep going till I find something I feel confident with! Enjoy the rest of your day, kind regard Sarah

Thanks for your edits on Tell Someone You Don. Suggest title change.

I've no idea either!!!

Sweet, sweet edits on Become a Hunter. You really improved that aricle!

Hey there, nice spelling fix on How to Create a YouTube Channal Quickly :) And happy new year to you! Thanks so much for all the spellchecker work you've done this year!

Thanks for your edits on Chart Linear Area Between a Power Function and Its Derivative. I appreciate your Eagle eye! =)

Thanks for your edits on Create an XL Worksheet for Continued Fractions. I appreciate your eagle eye! =)

Thanks for your edits on Explore and Make a Caveman Costume. Thanks for correcting spelling

Thanks for your edits on Create Nearly Concentric Rings of Sinewave Spheres.

Thanks for your edits on Create a Chaos Ring of Sinewave Spheres. I appreciate it, Donagan.

Thanks for taking the time to help improve Open a Surf Shop!

Thanks for your edits on Create a Chaos Ring of Sinewave Spheres.

Thanks for your edits on Create Artistic Patterns in Microsoft Excel. Again, thanks for your eagle eye!!

Thanks for your edits on Have Some Quick Fun with Sine Waves on Cones. I sincerely do appreciate it!

Thanks for your edits on Have Some Quick Fun with Sine Waves on Cones. I really do appreciate it, Donagan,

Thanks for your help on "Solve Random Beads, Overlapping Spiral, Asymptotic Axes Problems" I GUESS, because every time I try to access the article, I get redirected to wikiHow's Home Page!!?? I've left Anna a not about it.

There! Now becasue of you, I can get back into it! It's the strangest glitch or hack I've yet seen ...

Would you do me a small favor, please? Would you go in and edit in a space or something innocuous to the following articles, please? How to Make Your Excel Curve Solid or Transparent, Analyze a Hyperbola, Approximate Arc Length Using the Distance Formula, and Create Lines of Sinewave Spheres in Excel , please? I'd like to be able to access them again. I'd sure appreciate it!

Chris G. = Xhohx

Hopefully, I won't have to clear my cache and cookies as Anna suggested. My problem was, I kept getting redirected to the wikiHow HomePage when clicking on links -- either in emails or in Related wikiHows or just about anywhere. But when you edited one of them, that email let me in!! So now hopefully, after I get done fixing a bunch of srticle names in my Relateds that Anna corrected, I'll get bk to that. Cannot thank you enough!!

Awesome work on spellchecker, as always. Sorry, but not sorry, for the deluge of thumbs up :) Hope things are going well on your end! I've been snowshoeing. A lot.

You did an excellent job for me today, Donagan, and I'm very appreciative. I owe you one, my friend. Are you able to absorb anything of the meaning of the articles you're editing? Evidently, you read quickly. I do not. I'm an etymologist by hobby, so I'm always thinking along the roots of what people are saying. It's a slow. but liberating, discipline. I also compare what's being said to math a lot and wonder how would one formulate what was just expresed in words? That's a bit tougher. Do you like Excel? How is it that you chose my articles? Did they come up on RC Patrol? Even so, thanks so very much again for being dead on; I did not need to roll you back once, did I? I put through a lot of changes to about 110 articles in a hurry at times, so it can be something of a battle with the newer editors. You're very good at this, so I hope you write a lot about your methods of contributing to life, because I think you've put some careful thought into it! :D

Best regards,

Xhohx, aka Chris G.

Indeed. I live outside the city, fortunately, in a more rural and quiet area, but it's still difficult to be inside after enjoying the great outdoors. BUT, I definitely don't mind the hot shower after a cold hike, ha! :)

Hey Donagan - Thanks for the Help Team post. I just checked out the Spellchecker and it worked for me, but our senior engineer, Reuben, is tackling a doozy of a bug at the moment, where links spontaneously redirect to the Home Page. It's icky! Is that what you were seeing? If so, it should go away - either after a few minutes, or when you close and reopen your browser, or clear your cache. Hopefully that helps, but I can keep you posted on when the bug has fixed - so far he's been working on it all yesterday and today but it's a tricky one to track down :/

Ugh, I'm sorry about that - the bug has been haunting us for a day or two now, and Reuben has been living and breathing it trying to figure out what's happening! The tricky thing is that the link behavior is different for different people, so a link that works for you won't work for me, and vice versa. Last time I hit it, logging out and back in helped to "cancel" a redirect that was persisting - maybe try that? Or clearing your cache should do it. But I'm hoping we'll get a fix soon - it's definitely off-putting!

Thanks - I'll tell him! Three gold stars for him when it's all fixed, for sure :)

I appreciate your patience! Glad the workaround helped, and sorry for the hassle!

Thanks! What workaround did you find for the Redirect Bug, pray tell?

wow! Great spellchecking out there!

Thanks once again for getting right down to those details that prove so irksome to thee, me and readers with good grammar.

Hoping you've already found this through experience, but Reuben did end up getting to the bottom of that pesky redirect bug. Sorry I didn't update you sooner, but I suppose no news is good news, as long as the problem stops, right? :)

Saw you out there, rockin' the spellchecks and copyedits as usual. Awesome stuff!

Not sure if you noticed but you got a founder shout out in this 10th anniversary forum post :)

Hope things are going well for you. I took yesterday off to climb Mt. Hood for the first time but the weather was uncooperative, so I "settled" and climbed a butte.

Thanks for looking out :)

We do usually ban people who persistently leave abusive messages like that. Almost all of them, though, will do it just once, and never return. Our first order of action is to send them a warning, which another editor did. It gets tricky with blocking anonymous IPs, too, because it may be one person who made the abusive comment, but another person might be using that IP the next day, and we don't want to block that person from contributing. So we try to avoid blocking IPs unless there's a stream of bad behavior and blocking is the only way to stop it.

Another reason I ask people not to rollback edits on my talk page is technical. Oftentimes, people are reviewing several messages added to my talk page. They see the abusive one, press "rollback" and end up removing 10-20 other messages along with it. Then I end up having to dig through my talk page history to find them to make sure I don't miss responding to people who asked for help.

Regarding Mt. Hood, I'm not much of a mountaineer at all :) The only reason I was going to go is because I have a very experienced friend who invited me along, and she has all the know-how and equipment to make a beginner like me feel safe about it. Climbing in the winter is less than ideal, but climbing in the summer is so incredibly crowded, and with that you have to worry more about inexperienced people ahead of you slipping and running into you with their crampons...I guess I trust nature more than I trust people in some ways? :P

Anyway, thanks for being a part of this project. You remind me a lot of Maluniu, who was mentioned in that thread, quietly chugging away making dramatic improvements while no one is looking :)

Hi Donagan,
You nicely improved the flow and ease of reading for Use Tricks to Increase Willpower and Eat Less, an article which I started. Great work on smoothing out some awkwardness. Thanks, Gary

Hey there,

I've been notifying you about being featured in community achievements for a long time and I wanted to check in to see if you would still like to be notified. Please get back to me as soon as you can, as community achievements are posted weekly, and I don't want to constantly spam you with messages! :)

Thanks for the CFEs swapout, Donagan!

Thanks for your edits on wikiHow_talk:Help Team.

Huh. That's weird. Do you happen to have a screenshot of the error message that you're seeing? Thanks.

I created a bug report thread to help spread what you're seeing. I also agree with you. It is time to pay Reuben a visit.

Hey Donagan!

Daniel let me know about your Copyedit woes. A couple of things could be going on -- do you by any chance have a particular category selected? That can reduce the number in the queue, since there are far fewer in a given category. You'd see that selection here and can select all categories instead, if so. It's also possible that you've skipped past a lot of articles in the queue, so those ones aren't appearing anymore. If that's the case, I believe clearing your cookies would "refresh" that for you. Let me know how that goes and we can dig on from there! :)

Heya,

Ok cool - thanks for ruling out those possibilities. Helps get to the root of things and eliminate issues along the way! Reuben isn't our "tool man" but if we can figure out a bit more about what's happening and I can reproduce the situation, I can get one of our other lucky guys or gals to add it to their to-do list :)

I know our tools do sometimes throw up some errors like that - as you speculated, sometimes from momentary overload! Lots of editors in those tools, especially Spellchecker. If we can pin down a particular scenario it's happening in, though, beyond just regular ol' temporary hitches from limitations of our tools/servers/etc, then I'd be happy to file a bug. I just had a go at Copyedit Greenhouse and skipped over about 30 articles without seeing the message, but it might depend more on time of day and current use, or your own previous use and skips. So I'm going to keep poking at different times of day and see if I get any joy that way so that I can make a screencast and try different browsers/accounts at the same time. Reproducing a bug is the hardest part of fixing it ;)

Definitely agree that I'd like to interrogate some electrons! By the way, if it's any help editing-wise in the meantime, do you know about going to the Copyedit category to find articles there, too? You can do that outside of the tool, if you'd like, here. Same works for Cleanup and Format, too, so if you're jonesing for some editing candidates, they're never too far away!

The copyedit/cleanup distinction is, well, a bit hazy, hah. I generally use "cleanup" to mean "it's got issues!" -- ie might need copyedit, format, reworking of advice, removal of links, etc. Kind of a catch-all. Whereas for copyedit, I try to just use that one if there are any only issues with the writing (spelling, punctuation, etc). I think of "copyedit" as more of a task that anyone with good writing skills could tackle, even if they're not super familiar with wikitext or our guidelines, whereas clean-up takes a bit more wiki knowledge for our formatting and guidelines. But honestly, that's just my take on it, and I think more often than not they get used interchangeably :)

Nice work improving How to Make Time to Play Music!

Hey! I think I've mentioned the "hatchery" system to you before, we just launched it! This generally means that new articles won't be publicly searchable unless they get community-approved. Big step forward in improving our quality image.... Jack announced the details here. Check it out :)

"Who are the NABers?"

They are editors who pass a test that I administer. NAB stands for "New Article Boost". I happen to think you would be a good one, by the way :) How to Become a New Article Booster on wikiHow

"Do they work alone or in collaboration with each other?"

Sometimes they take turns improving an article, but generally it's a solitary affair. Only one booster can boost an article at a time.

"Have all searchable articles been boosted already?"

Nope! There are around 17,000 articles that have never been boosted.

"Can any searchable articles be retroactively remanded to the hatchery?"

Not really, but they can be deindexed if someone places a template on them like {{stub}} or {{nfd}}

Good questions, feel free to send more!

Thanks for your edits on Run a Dog Sled Team. You're work is always high quality!

Thanks for your edits on Model Your Own Iris in Excel. I was looking and looking for that little creep!! Ha! I noticed it but then I could not find it again no matter how hard I looked!! Glad you found it -- thanks!!

Some good news for both wikiHow and me -- between my two accounts, I surpassed 400,000 article views today!!  :D YAYLY!! Thanks for all your help!!

Thanks for your edits on Buy Gold Bars. Been loving seeing your Topic Greenhouse edits, Donagan! Cheers for doing such a thorough overhaul :)

Nice to see you hanging out in the topic greenhouse :) If you see any articles that are high quality and accurate, can you note them? They might be good candidates for the verification "stamp of approval" stuff that I'm working on: http://forums.wikihow.com/discussion/14618/congrats-to-our-first-quality-checkers-/p1

That's great feedback. Back in the day, our finance and business categories were so awful. That topic just isn't very wiki-friendly, probably because it's not as fun to write or read about for most people.

Right now it's kind of like the Wild West for verification. Almost every category needs a good review from this perspective. Lately I've had a lot of people working on easy crafts like origami. Some people are testing recipes. Others are testing mobile device articles. Generally, I'm looking for topics that people can follow and test in a reasonable amount of time. Do you happen to have any hobbies or interests that would lend themselves to this kind of testing? We don't necessarily need experts. Like with recipes, we want to verify that the instructions are good enough that someone who ISN'T a chef can successfully make whatever the article is outlining :)

Give it some thought! This is a great project with people who take quality seriously and it'd be great to have you involved.

Great edits!

Hey Donagan! I was patrolling recent changes and saw your good edit on Buy Gold Bars. I just wanted to say thanks.

Nice copyedits you've been making! How are things going? :)

Saw your message to Adele -- we can also always use your special talents over in Mathematics, Donagan!!  :D You're awesome!!

Hi Donagan,

That is a legitimate concern! I've seen discussions in the forums about this from before my time, and from what I understand, it is easier for younger wikiHowians to fix these articles since they are related to their age group; adults tend to have a harder time editing these articles. In addition, it's important to keep in mind that although many young wikiHowians may be negatively impacting our quality, many have also matured through wikiHow and been some of our most amazing contributors :)

I do feel that the new Hatchery helps hide some of these articles from readers. The articles can be easily "demoted" through new article boost so that they don't tarnish our public images. But, I do have to commend you on raising one of the issues at the core of our project! Would love to discuss this more if you would like.

Adelaide

Thanks for your edits on Do Common Ratio Analysis of the Financials. Can't say I quite agree, but I'm willing to defer to your editing know-how!!  :D Thanks, Donagan!

Wow. You have such a mature perspective. No, I'm not an admin, but I've gotten to know many admins who are wonderful assets to this project. :)

Adelaide

Teresa (Ttrimm) just gave me an RS on the article a little while ago, so I definitely did the right thing with respect to your edits there! Let's see how it goes and whether there's any confusion on the readers' part, shall we? I am too given over to capitals anyway, so I think you're right, really and truly, after all. in those instances. I'm not concerned about it. Let's let it go since I value your editing skills and would like to see you continue to apply them in this area when you get a chance. Thanks again, Donagan!!  :)

btw, your Talk Page is getting a little long in the tooth; you might want to archive most of it? Just a thought ...