Use the wikiHow New Article Boost App

New Article Boost (NAB) is a tool that experienced wikiHow editors with boosting rights can use to sift through new articles, and make sure that they meet the standards outlined in the Writer's Guide before promoting them to be visible to all readers. It's also a great venue for offering new authors tips and friendly encouragement. Once new articles go through the new article boost process, they are considered approved by our community and are available to a wider audience.

Steps

  1. Apply to become a Booster. If you meet the minimum requirements, you'll qualify for a test to become a Booster. As a New Article Booster, it's important that you're familiar with many of wikiHow's policies, and that you know how to give an article that extra "boost" it needs, when it needs it.
  2. Open Newarticleboost. If you are a Booster, you'll see a list of articles that haven't been boosted yet. The "Score" column displays an estimate of how promising an article is, based on an algorithm that looks at a range of factors for successfully formatted and thorough wikiHow articles. However, it's not foolproof, so the human eye of an experienced Booster is still very much necessary!
  3. Select an article by clicking on the title. At the very top of the NAB page is the title, the author, and a note about whether the page is a suggested topic.
  4. Focus on the idea of getting great content out to readers. New articles initially published on wikiHow are blurred out and remain de-indexed by search engines, until they're approved through the boosting process.
    • In boosting, if an article is in great shape or will get there with your editing, your goal is to polish it up and click Promote (or, the Rising Star). Pressing promote publishes the article by making it visible to search engines and stops blurring the text. Promotion can be used for great articles, or those you have fixed enough to be live on wikiHow.
    • If an article will take too much work to get "ready for readers," then you can click Demote. This will remove the article from the NAB queue but will keep it blurred and de-indexed. It will also place the article in the Articles-in-Quality-Review category.
    • Outside of the NAB tool, if an Admin or Booster finds a great unapproved article, they can also promote it by clicking Promote in the Admin tab; this will allow the article to be public and remove it from the Articles-in-Quality-Review category.
  5. Look over the potential merge targets. Boosters are expected to have a firm grasp of what is a duplicate and what isn't. This NAB window will generate a list of potential duplicates, but it's up to you to judge whether any of them really are.
    • Since this is a computer-generated list, it's not perfect. If you think we probably do have an article on that topic already, open a new tab or window and search wikiHow yourself.
    • If the article you're boosting is a duplicate, compare the two articles. Is there any information that can be transferred to the existing page? If so, scroll back up and click Merge and Demote next to the existing page. If not, you can either use the merge button, manually edit the page to include an NFD dup tag, or complete the merge and redirect the page yourself.
  6. Look over the article and improve it if needed. You can edit it by clicking the Quick Edit button at the beginning or end. Avoid adding templates if you're going to promote the article; as a booster, it's your job to go the extra mile and do whatever a template would call for before promotion. If you're going to demote the article, then you can add templates before doing so, if you think they'll help the article thrive in the future.
  7. Remove links that violate our policy. If any link provided leads to a reputable, neutral, and helpful website and seems to have been used a genuine source for information shared in the article, then assume good faith and keep it. However, if the link is obvious spam (for example, if it goes to the home page of a company or is aimed at selling a service or product, or if the author is placing it repeatedly in article after article to try to "build backlinks"), you can remove the link, or even add it to the Spam Blacklist.
    • If you don't have Administrator rights, a Booster will have to ask for the item to be blacklisted by typing this link on the "Spam & Sites to be Blacklisted" section of the ANB.
  8. Leave a friendly, personalized and encouraging note for the author. Do this even if the author is anonymous. It's especially important to be gentle if the author is new to wikiHow and might need some help understanding all our guidelines. For more details, see Resist Criticizing New Contributors on wikiHow.
    • Not every single demotion needs a note; in particular, articles that are spam, trolling/vandalism, or obvious jokes might not need that personal touch. However, if someone is genuinely trying to contribute their knowledge and just needs some help getting it up to our standards, drop them a line and offer them a thank you and some tips for editing the article. Reaching out in this way, even if the article in question isn't yet ready for readers, is one of the best ways to make promising new wikiHowians feel welcome in the community.
    • Here are some examples of notes you can leave:
      • Hey there! Welcome to wikiHow :) I just came across Maintain Scuba Gear and thought it was great! I did a little bit of editing, can you take a look here and let me know what you think?

      • Hi John!

        I really enjoyed reading your new article! I did edit them a bit, though, to fit in with our wiki guidelines. For example, I removed your picture from the introduction, and I removed personal stories/experiences. Since this is a wiki and all of our pages are products of collaborative editing, we try to avoid references to one author or one person's experience. I hope you understand, but let me know if you have any questions or any concerns about my changes.

        How do you enjoy contributing to wikiHow so far? Is there anything I can help you with?

      • (Left for an anonymous author) Hey there!

        Nice job on Canning Green Beans! It looks like it's off to a really great start. Do you do a lot of your own canning at home? That's not a part of food prep I'm very familiar with, so it was interesting to read about the process. Thanks for sharing it!

        Are you planning on writing more pages here? If you are, I hope you'll consider registering for an account here, so you can be recognized for your efforts. It also makes communicating easier, and all you need is a username and password (no email, no other info at all). If you choose not to, that's fine too! Either way, I hope you keep writing. I think you're good at it!
  9. Complete the Boost by choosing an option in the floating action menu.
    • Promote - Clicking Promote puts the article live for everyone to see, allows it to be indexed by search engines, and is generally a "stamp of approval" to the content from the community. Use it if an article is in good shape and ready for readers. Avoid promoting articles that still need a lot of cleanup, copyediting, or formatting.
      • Promoting with a stub tag: If an article is well written and off to a good start, but not yet detailed enough to really help readers, you can manually add a tag and promote it. This is an "in-between" option because any editor who comes along will be able to add more to the topic and potentially remove the stub tag, whereas if it's actually demoted, only a booster or admin will be able to promote it.
    • Rising Star - The star button, which is right beside the "Promote" button, promotes the article and assigns it a Rising Star. This recognizes that the author did a good job writing a new article on wikiHow. Generally, if the author made a good faith effort to write a helpful and informative page, it doesn't hurt to give them a nice pat on the back with a Rising Star.
    • Skip - Click on Skip if you would like to leave the article in the NAB queue for another booster.
    • Demote - Pressing Demote removes the article from the NAB queue, but keeps the text blurred and hidden from search engines. You should demote articles that would require too much improvement to publish on the live site.
    • NFD - If you think the article should be deleted for any other reason, select a reason from the dropdown NFD menu. The article will automatically have the appropriate NFD template applied to it, and will be demoted (removed from the NAB queue). If an article isn't a clear candidate for deletion but isn't ready for readers, don't feel you have to NFD it; it can be demoted instead.

Boosting Examples

Tips

  • Articles are listed in NAB one hour after they are submitted to prevent an edit war.
  • You can also access a Use Discussion Pages on wikiHow page without leaving NAB. Do this by clicking on "Discussion page" at the top of the NAB page.
  • Articles that have an {{inuse}} will not show up in NAB regardless of the amount of time they spend on the site, until a few minutes after the template has been removed.

Related Articles

  • Become a New Article Booster on wikiHow
  • Select a Rising Star Article on wikiHow
  • Not Process a wikiHow Article in New Article Boost
  • Boost a Lot of Articles in New Article Boost
  • Show Your NAB Count on Your wikiHow User Page
  • Patrol New Articles on wikiHow
  • Visually Recognize a Rising Star Article on wikiHow
  • Use the NFD Guardian App on wikiHow
  • Award Rising Stars to wikiHow Articles Which Were Previously‐Patrolled in NAB

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