My Experience with Wikihow

My experience with Wikihow was challenging to say the least. Initially I thought this project wouldn't be that hard because I was passionate about the subject matter. I think this project was difficult for most people because finding a topic to write about is a tough decision. When you're passionate about something, you can write enough about the subject to meet the set criteria. I decided to write my topic about apps for Android devices. I constantly check out reviews for apps, and I always evaluate if these apps will help me out in the future. My experience with the Android operating system has always been positive so I'm definitely a lifelong fan. I have been using the Android platform for the last three years, and evangelize its features too all of my family and friends. Finding corresponding information for my topic wasn't too hard because I knew all of the information beforehand. Once I had all of my information, I was ready to begin my Wikihow post. We initially wrote our blog posts about our topics, so we had an idea of what we wanted to write. Learning how to code your page properly was one of the most frustrating aspects of the page. Sure you can copy and paste your text from your previous post, but you want to find ways to make your article stand out from the rest of the class. The smallest effects require special coding. For example, if you want to bold or italicize your content, you need a special coding around those words. Everything was going fine until I made it to the final edit. When I made it to the end, I thought my project was ready to be published. I made sure all of my spelling was correct; I made sure I had all of the my corresponding photos with captions, and I almost forgot that I wanted to add a video to my page. This video was only a minute and a half, but it shows the features of the program Superpower. It can be a quite difficult program to understand if you don't know what you're doing. All of the settings are dependent on one another so you have to make sure everything is correct.
The main feature of the site that I feel is completely backwards is attempting to add a video to your page. You would think this would be a simple process, but it wasn't. I couldn't figure out how to use this feature which is normally a simple process, but Wikihow made it so difficult. Other websites allow you copy the link from another website, and the site will embed the video for you. There was no way to upload your own personal video to the website whatsoever. You know it's a difficult system in place when you have to read a Wikihow article in order to try and get the video to work at all. Even after trying to follow the coding guide step by step, it rendered my video useless. I spent the entire class Thursday trying to get my page coded correctly. The thing that made me so upset is that I wasn't able to publish my video, and it was my own personal video. I always take pride in my work, and I wanted to further showcase my knowledge of the subject. The site wouldn't let me do that at all. This should be a feature that the site admins should really look into. I'm pretty sure that I wasn't the only one who had a problem adding their own video to the site. My text was formatted correctly, and my own personal photos showed up just fine. In the end, I posted a statement with my video link attached to it. It just took away form the visual aesthetic I was going for. That's not the only thing that upset me about this website.
I recently logged into the website to see if anybody posted positive feedback or criticism about my article, and to my surprise my article is marked for deletion because it isn't a how to guide. I was highly upset by this because my first heading informed the reader how to access the various app stores, and it also informed the reader how to install the various apps. My article wasn't even posted for a week, and it's already marked for deletion. My experience with this site in particular shows you how critical people truly are. Going forward, I will learn how to deal with criticism because people will never hold their tongue when they type online. Wikihow isn't the only site where people conduct themselves like that. To name a few of sites include; Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. I hated using the Wikihow website with a passion. I hope that I never have to use that website to publish another article again. Using Wikihow to find relevant articles isn't bad at all. I was reading a few of the articles before I started mine so I could see how to get started. The article database is immense because people always continue to add articles. Since there were so many articles on the website already, it was hard finding an article title that didn't share the same title as your article.
My final complaint about this site is that none of the posters are professionals in any particular field. You can have any user posting content that they may not have all of the knowledge about. This can lead to problems because many users will try to use this site as a reputable source, and this can lead into problems. I would never use this site as a reputable source, but if I needed general information about a topic, I would definitely check this site out.
In conclusion, I hope that the rest of my classmates had a better experience with the website than I did. Overall this project would've been better if we didn't have to include the Wikihow article.