[HN Gopher] WikiHow's art is made by a network of freelancers, m...
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WikiHow's art is made by a network of freelancers, mostly in the
Philippines
Author : pslattery
Score : 239 points
Date : 2020-01-21 14:40 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (onezero.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (onezero.medium.com)
| musicale wrote:
| Wikihow is gold mine of often hilariously bizarre tracings of
| stock or staged photos.
|
| What surprises me is that there is no Wikihow filter for
| photoshop and instagram. So consider this my free gift to any
| enterprising HN reader who wants to make a small fortune with a
| wikihowification mobile app.
| mellosouls wrote:
| _Getting to the bottom of one of the internet's most ridiculously
| drawn mysteries_
|
| Seems like quite a snotty article tbh.
|
| WikiHow's art has always reminded me of "How it Works" style
| children's books, it seems functional and clearly has made an
| impression in some quarters.
|
| By all means shed some light on it if that's interesting; I don't
| see the need for the condescending attitude though.
| dlivingston wrote:
| Devoid of context of the parent WikiHow article, the images are
| often surrealist and bizarre, which is why they've become
| something of a subcategory of memes.
|
| Please look at the images in the article, if you haven't
| already. I made more than one audible guffaw just scrolling
| through them.
| [deleted]
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| Blocked reading the article because medium wants me to sign in.
|
| Is Medium now forcing people to create accounts to read posts or
| is it just a setting that this subdomain turned on?
| jonas21 wrote:
| At least for me, there's an "X" in the upper-right corner that
| dismisses the popup. I can also click anywhere outside the
| popup to dismiss it. Is that not the case for you?
|
| https://i.imgur.com/B7WFCcS.png
| [deleted]
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I've been told it's content creators that enable monetization,
| but I'm not convinced.
|
| Their loss.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Wouldn't be surprised if it's enabled by default or if they
| use some bullshit dark patterns to coerce users into opting
| in - it's in Medium's best interests to do so as they get a
| cut of any profits.
| sleavey wrote:
| It didn't block me, and I don't have a Medium account. Firefox
| 72 on Linux, ublock origin, Germany.
| tenryuu wrote:
| Wasn't blocked.
|
| Firefox 68,Mobile, ublock origin
| ravenstine wrote:
| Why is it always Medium that's blamed for this but not
| mainstream news websites? I'm pretty sure I've been paywalled
| by sites like NYT yet people keep posting links to them.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Because Medium doesn't author anything. It's as if NYT
| consisted of nothing but "letters to the editor" (without an
| editor and not in response to anything that was previously
| published, because they would be publishing nothing in the
| equivalent scenario) and then decided to put up a paywall.
|
| There are countless free (and even ad-free) text-only hosting
| options available. Medium provides nothing of value to me as
| a consumer. It doesn't even aggregates the content, people
| selectively post it to Medium themselves!
|
| I say this as someone that pays for about a dozen online
| newspaper/magazine subscriptions but will never pay a penny
| to access a site like Medium or Scribd or Quora or any other
| site that does nothing but make money off being the middle
| man.
|
| Anyway, it's all moot as Medium will inevitably shutter or
| pivot. Their model is dead, the only reason people chose to
| post to Medium is because it offered some views. If those
| views are killed off by requiring a paywall, then Medium
| itself becomes defunct.
| ravenstine wrote:
| > Medium provides nothing of value to me as a consumer.
|
| The value is that it's providing a platform to authors who
| want a platform where they know they'll get readers. I
| personally don't choose to use Medium anymore, but it's
| very easy to get people to read your content on there. In
| the past I've used places like Wordpress, Blogger, my own
| webpages, etc., and it took a lot more effort to get people
| to see your content. Whereas on Medium, it didn't take long
| to get people to look at my content. Few things I wrote
| went into a black hole.
|
| > I say this as someone that pays for about a dozen online
| newspaper/magazine subscriptions but will never pay a penny
| to access a site like Medium or Scribd or Quora or any
| other site that does nothing but make money off being the
| middle man.
|
| They make money by being a platform to voices you might not
| otherwise hear because newspapers and magazines pick and
| choose a small set of authors to write most of their
| content. If that's not your cup of tea, then it's not your
| cup of tea.
|
| I choose not to use Medium as an author, but I understand
| why people choose to publish on it and why some people
| would choose to pay for it.
|
| > Anyway, it's all moot as Medium will inevitably shutter
| or pivot.
|
| Like every other business conceivably?
|
| > If those views are killed off by requiring a paywall,
| then Medium itself becomes defunct.
|
| Is that actually happening?
| reaperducer wrote:
| _The value is that it 's providing a platform to authors
| who want a platform where they know they'll get readers_
|
| That's providing value to the authors, not the readers.
| ravenstine wrote:
| How are you supposed to read anything if _mediums_ don't
| exist? That's the value Medium provides to readers, and
| clearly Medium has a lot of reach, flawed their platform
| may be. It's not mind-blowing, but there it is.
| geodel wrote:
| > How are you supposed to read anything if _mediums_
| don't exist?
|
| Author's own blog or site. If they do not want to do it
| that's fine. They can chose Medium I can chose to not
| read.
| ravenstine wrote:
| You do realize that an author's own blog or site is
| hosted on a platform of some kind, right? Authors
| wouldn't be choosing Medium over setting up a Wordpress
| instance on HostGator if it wasn't easier and didn't get
| them readers.
|
| You can choose to not read Medium articles, but authors
| are using it for a reason.
| simanyay wrote:
| > Because Medium doesn't author anything
|
| OneZero is a publication owned and operated by Medium.
| jordigh wrote:
| Because Medium used to promise it would never do this.
|
| https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/03/the-long-complicated-
| and-e...
| ravenstine wrote:
| That's what people get when they take promises of any kind
| seriously. I'm not excusing Medium, but at the same time
| I'm not going to hold some kind of false expectation over
| their head.
| jordigh wrote:
| Oh, but we should hold it over their head. We very much
| should. Cynicism only hurts us and leaves us with a
| poorer way to communicate. Cynicism benefits Medium.
| munmaek wrote:
| Err, what? Just host your own blog. Problem solved.
| reportgunner wrote:
| Here's an outline link, also works in private tab for me.
|
| https://outline.com/wMXGZf
| derefr wrote:
| Weirdly enough, I think it only does it if it knows you've been
| logged into Medium on your device before, but are _currently_
| logged out.
|
| Probably because "analytics engineering reasons"--i.e. it wants
| to correlate the view with some account's clickstream, and it
| really _looks_ like that account should be yours, but it also
| knows that it's been a while and so it might now be a guest,
| and so has logged you out temporarily. But it doesn't just want
| to spawn a new temporary clickstream that they'll have to re-
| correlate to your account later, because that's costly to
| server resources in the O(N) case, and in 90% of cases, it
| still _is_ you browsing.
| davidwparker wrote:
| This isn't the case as I've never had a medium account and it
| still blocked me.
| dmos62 wrote:
| It didn't ask me to sign in, probably because of ublock origin,
| but none of the pictures loaded. Crappy platform.
| tsieling wrote:
| Press esc and wave that block away. For now, at least.
| puranjay wrote:
| Medium is quickly going down the Quora path for me. The content
| quality is becoming poorer as more and more people use it as a
| place to dump their zero-traffic blog posts.
|
| The aggressive content gating and pop-ups are another Quora-
| esque introduction.
|
| Just a case of being blinded by metrics. Adding an aggressive
| sign-up form might get you more emails and sign-ups, but it
| will also annoy away better quality users.
| kbumsik wrote:
| It is worse than Quora now because Medium not only requires
| sign-ins bit asks for subscription to read.
| bhouston wrote:
| Never put a blog on Medium. They want to charge me to read
| it.
| a5aAqU wrote:
| Try https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/styl-us/
| j45 wrote:
| I usually click on the X in the top right of the pop-over. Do
| others not see this/
| the_duke wrote:
| Blocking Javascript is what makes Medium usable for me. (eg
| with uMatrix)
|
| No article limits, no sign in dialogs.
| jpalomaki wrote:
| Lot's of images, similar style, creative commons license.
|
| This sounds like an interesting dataset for fun project to
| generate images based on descriptions.
| usrusr wrote:
| > wikiHow instructed these freelancers on how "to create the most
| instructive visuals for every step of every article."
|
| Hopefully written and illustrated in genuine wikihow style
| beamatronic wrote:
| Talk about dogfooding!
| oefrha wrote:
| Please don't editorialize titles, four out of five times the
| editorialized title is strictly worse, and often it's straight up
| _wrong_ , like in this case. If you don't like the original title
| due to omission of info, you can at least use the HTML title:
|
| > wikiHow's art is made by a _global_ network of freelancers,
| _primarily_ in the Philippines.
|
| (Emphasis mine.)
| dang wrote:
| The HTML doc title is "wikiHow's Art Is Made By a Global
| Network of Freelancers, Primarily in the Philippines". That's
| too long to fit HN's 80 char limit, so it looks like the
| submitter made a good-faith attempt at shortening it, and an
| inaccuracy crept in that way--quite a minor inaccuracy. The
| submitted title ("WikiHow's art is created by an army of
| freelancers in the Philippines") was still far better than the
| sensational dross of the page heading.
|
| HTML doc titles are a legit choice for "original title" in the
| HN guidelines' sense. In fact, they often say more directly
| what the article is about when the loudest title on a page is
| linkbait. That's exactly the case here, so I think the
| misleadingness of the submitted title ("WikiHow's art is
| created by an army of freelancers in the Philippines") was
| simply a casualty of HN's 80-char limit. That's pretty rare
| btw.
|
| I've taken a crack at shortening it in a more accurate way.
| colmvp wrote:
| OP's headline saves you a click, versus the original title: "We
| Finally Figured Out Who Makes wikiHow's Bizarre Art"
| oefrha wrote:
| Yeah, if you saved that click you also got the wrong idea. I
| even proposed a better official title. Makes me wonder if you
| read my comment at all.
| andai wrote:
| I know editorializing is against the rules but I love the
| current title, "WikiHow's bizarre art is created by an army
| of freelancers in the Philippines", it sounds so quaint and
| absurd.
| oefrha wrote:
| You can love what you love. I prefer a factual title.
| blackearl wrote:
| I don't see how the current title isn't factual
| oefrha wrote:
| I guess <em> isn't doing its job, so let me temporarily
| break the guidelines:
|
| "GLOBAL network of freelancers, PRIMARILY in the
| Philippines" != "an army of freelancers in the
| Philippines".
| tcookisfakeaf wrote:
| Let me save you a click, & the authors future banal
| efforts: utilitarian work is a global effort of
| freelancers. Some just have different obligations as part
| of their freelance work than others.
|
| Shock. Awe.
| lovich wrote:
| Those are functionally equivalent imo. The NYPD operates
| in other cities and countries. I wouldn't expect people
| to preface a description of them by saying they were a
| global police force based primarily in the Phillipines
| capableweb wrote:
| I don't think so.
|
| > GLOBAL network of freelancers, PRIMARILY in the
| Philippines
|
| Would mean: freelancers from all over the world, but most
| of them in the Philippines.
|
| While
|
| > an army of freelancers in the Philippines
|
| Would mean: freelancers from the Philippines, and only in
| the Philippines.
|
| At least that's my view as a non-native speaker, so maybe
| worth about 2 cents.
| onetimemanytime wrote:
| The adjusted title is factual. 2+2=4 is factual. A title
| is not, because whoever created it had a purpose in mind
| (I'm being generous.)
| tptacek wrote:
| Saving a click is probably an anti-goal of HN article titles.
| onetimemanytime wrote:
| in this case, I say it's OK
| solarkraft wrote:
| I honestly prefer a headline that tells me a bit of the
| main point over one that doesn't.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Saves more than a click because it requires you to sign in to
| read the article.
| grammarxcore wrote:
| This isn't paywalled Medium content so you can simply find
| the close button and click it, be it on the sliding banner
| or the modal.
|
| That being said, that action does require an extra click.
| kohtatsu wrote:
| It requires sign-in for me.
|
| > To keep reading this story, create a free account.
| owlninja wrote:
| There is an 'X' on the modal window.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| suggested title is 8 characters too long for submission.
|
| on edit: changed original to suggested as being clearer.
| Supermancho wrote:
| I've never heard of the WikiHow site. It's one of a near-infinite
| number of engrish permutations that is never ranked in any of my
| searches or my parents' or my wife's. For a moment, I suspected I
| was missing out on something...nope.
| bluntfang wrote:
| is "army" the correct term here? It isn't used in the article.
| [deleted]
| tobenortobe wrote:
| I have noticed this long ago when they put frozen tongue
| instructions[0], yet still i find instructions quite informative
|
| [0]https://m.wikihow.com/Remove-a-Stuck-Tongue-from-a-Frozen-
| Su...
| deerIRL wrote:
| https://outline.com/wMXGZf
| scohesc wrote:
| Man, what is that headline font?
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| Its onezero-yellix-alt
|
| From the Type Foundry from whence it came:
|
| _Yellix is a mono-linear geometrical sans-serif font family.
| It was designed in the time I fell in love with Paul Renner's
| first sketch of Futura and I also explored stylistic sets, so I
| added a lot of strict and cold alternatives ("a, g, m, n, r, t,
| etc."). I enjoyed having the possibility to create tensions
| between circular and square shapes. You will also find less
| geometrically based alternatives. Yellix has horizontal or
| vertical terminals and the circle forms are punched into the
| stems._
|
| More here if you're interested:
| https://displaay.net/typeface/yellix/
| oefrha wrote:
| We need a "Getting to the bottom of one of the internet's most
| ridiculously designed title fonts."
| jaynetics wrote:
| It's hilarious. I've just learned a bit of Cyrillic during
| holidays, and even I can hardly stop reading it as "OpeZego"
| and so on. It must be almost unreadable for people from the
| many countries with a Cyrillic alphabet.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| You can't imagine how often it happens when someone is trying
| to appear "Russian" or just trying to be fancy. As a native
| speaker, you can't help but keep reading it in Cyrillic, and
| the result is completely garbled.
| RandomGuyDTB wrote:
| The hall of fame includes "Tetyais" and "Boyadt".
| milankragujevic wrote:
| Well, it's not unreadable at all, though a bit ambiguous, for
| me. I think people who's native languages only have Cyrillic
| letters don't struggle with it as much as some people who's
| languages have two official alphabets - i.e. my native
| Serbian, which has Cyrillic and Latin alphabets, that are
| equally taugh in schools, accepted by the government and un-
| prejudiced (well, other than extreme right people who force
| Cyrillic as the only "true" alphabet [sigh]).
|
| However, it's extremely rare to see Cyrillic mixed with Latin
| letters in a word or sentence and have it intentionally mean
| both, so my mind doesn't interpret it like that. That's why P
| is not R to me or C is not S...
| beamatronic wrote:
| This is the perfect opportunity for a new wikiHow article!
| paulpauper wrote:
| wikihow is a cancer on the internet, clogging google and google
| image results with inane how-to guides .for the purpose of
| generating ad revenue. It is not just that the guides are bad but
| they are engaging in keyword spamming by creating guides for
| things that don't even make sense
| frenchyatwork wrote:
| Web search is hard, and Google's results aren't stellar. News
| at 11. Why do you think we're on HN?
|
| In terms of cancer, wikihow is pretty benign. I rarely use
| Google these days, but when I did, having results full of sites
| that use worse dark patterns like pintrest & quora & linked-in
| links was pretty common place.
| [deleted]
| drewbug01 wrote:
| > wikihow is a cancer on the internet, clogging google and
| google image results with inane how-to guides .for the purpose
| of generating ad revenue. It is not just that the guides are
| bad but they are engaging in keyword spamming by creating
| guides for things that don't even make sense
|
| [citation needed]
|
| But, seriously - you're alleging that they're a content farm.
| Can you substantiate that at all? Because from where I sit - as
| a former employee - I can attest that people working there
| genuinely believe in their mission to "teach anyone how to do
| anything." Moreover: it's a wiki! You can edit it! They have a
| thriving community of editors (not paid editors: community
| editors!) who work on the site, and frankly I don't think that
| describes content farms.
|
| Calling wikiHow a cancer on the internet is just a huge
| overreach - there are actual content farms out there doing what
| you allege. wikiHow isn't one of them. It's absolutely fair to
| criticize the quality of the articles if you wish - but again;
| it's a wiki. Feel free to get involved if you don't like the
| quality.
| Slided_Guy wrote:
| Yeah wikihow is improving the internet with much needed
| articles like "How to be Random" https://www.wikihow.com/Be-
| Random
| drewbug01 wrote:
| Fantastic that you don't need the article. I'm sure you
| also don't really need this article:
| https://www.wikihow.com/Tie-Your-Shoes
|
| Have you considered that there might be people who would
| find that article on "being random" interesting or helpful?
| Consider just for a moment, the perspective of someone who
| isn't what we'd call "neuro-typical" - someone with an ASD,
| for example. Such an article might be _incredibly_ useful
| to them.
|
| But hell, if you feel that strongly:
| https://www.wikihow.com/Nominate-an-Article-for-Deletion-
| on-...
| tehjoker wrote:
| I find the content and art on the site really cute and
| heartwarming and occasionally useful, so thanks! There
| are so many memes on Twitter that use a funny wikiHow
| image.
| TheNorthman wrote:
| I have ASD and while I've never had any reason to visit
| "How to Be Random", I've had plenty of use for similar
| articles on wikiHow. This even extends beyond the social
| arena one might imagine I'd need help with. Other topics
| people with developmental disorders might face
| difficulties with are exactly the topics handled by
| wikiHow. Washing clothes, for instance. While saying the
| wikiHow has been formative of me would probably be over
| the top, it has guided me when I didn't have the mental
| capacity to seek help elsewhere.
| vbtemp wrote:
| > wikihow is a cancer on the internet, clogging google and
| google image results with inane how-to guides
|
| This 100x over. I've been trying to find a convenient way to
| block the domain from all my devices. It's all just utterly
| content-free cyber squatting.
| zadkey wrote:
| On a tangential note, there is r/disneyvacation/ that pokes fun
| aty the bad drawings on wikihow and recaptions them.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| There's also /r/notdisneyvacation, for image-caption combos
| that can't be made more bizarre if you try.
| ryanmercer wrote:
| "WikiHow Image Macros" on Facebook does similar and is a
| constant source of entertainment for me and a few friends.
| jordigh wrote:
| Not tangential: it is mentioned and linked in the article.
| greatgib wrote:
| Thank you very much OP for the clear title that save me a lot of
| time not wasted figuring out the reply to the clickbait title of
| the original article. If only the guys that are posting New York
| times articles and co could do the same...
| peterwwillis wrote:
| _" To keep reading this story, create a free account."_
|
| This is actually great. I won't create an account, so I've spent
| a lot less time reading empty posts on Medium and more time just
| going about my day.
| andai wrote:
| ctrl+shift+n
| RandomGuyDTB wrote:
| ctrl+shift+p on firefox
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(page generated 2020-01-21 23:00 UTC)