WikiHow Review

Good Features

  • WikiHow makes it very easy to update information, all users need to learn is some basic wiki formatting syntax. Information tends to be more up to date because of how easy it is to modify documents. Also a history is kept of all changes made to a current document so that users can see exactly what has been changed since the last revision and also how up to date the information is.
  • Pages can also be easily referenced from any other pages, which means that if content is broken up into different components it can be reused in several places and also updated in just one spot. Links to non-existing pages can also be put into a document and can be assigned to others to write.
  • There is also a discussion tab that allows users to provide feedback on a page. If a page doesn't make sense or something still isn't clear this area can be used to inform the author that changes may need to be made to their document.

Bad Features

  • Anyone is able to edit any page on this tutorial site. While this is nice for certain things, there needs to be some regulation as to who can edit what pages.

Missing Features

  • Page permissions could be added so that certain content is only accessible to some people while not to others.
  • rating system would make it much easier to view how helpful a certain page is. Comments are good for what to improve on a page, but a ranking system would make it easier for authors to see which pages appear to need the most improvement. A similar rating system that would be nice would be: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305741
  • Home Pages for classes would group all relevant information for a class onto one page. Content from around the site could be included on this page, but all the links found on this page would be relevant information for the course and / or subject material.
  • Quizzes for certain pages to assess how well the material was understood. These quizzes could also potentially allow users to see more pages in this category. This would basically be like an authentication system used to block tutorials that may be beyond a certain users understanding at some point in time.
  • Time to complete tutorial (an estimate on the top of the page that lets a user know approximately how long it will take to cover the material in this tutorial)