It has been one of the busiest months at wikiHow for a long time! I've spent this time away from posting patrolling, writing articles, and more importantly, thinking about blog posts!
Today, I'm interviewing Jack Herrick, the founder and CEO of wikiHow. Before I get started, I wanted to say that I sent Jack the interview a few months ago, and he said he was busy and he'd find time to do it. I even forgot about it! - Three months later, he responds! He remembers the little people, as well as spending pretty much all of his time at wikiHow - What a great founder!
Me: How did you find wikiHow?
Jack: I've long had an interest in building the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. The ability to offer a free practical education to people is one of the best uses of the web. I'm inspired by the idea of helping millions of people by offering free how-to information to the world.
The full story of how I started wikiHow by spinning it out of eHow is available at http://www.wikiHow.com/wikiHow:History-of-wikiHow
Me: What do you do most on wikiHow? (Patrolling, adding images, etc..)
Jack: I work on wikiHow pretty much constantly. :) 98% of that time is on back-office things in the wikiHaus that aren't immediately visible on the wiki. It might be things like creating new features, checking in our non-English wikis, reading the feedback we get from our readers, or dozens of other things.
Despite spending most of my time on back office things, I still contribute to the wiki itself on most days. My favorite activity has always been recent changes patrol. I'm nowhere near as productive as wikiHeros like BR, but I patrol at least a handful of edits a few days a week. I'll try a little bit of pretty much every other feature wikiHow offers too, but I usually come back to patrolling as my favorite. Patrolling is a great way to quickly see how things are going on the wiki, get rid of the garbage, thumb up the best stuff and see some of my friends and fellow wikiHowians at the same t
Me: What topic do you most write about?
Jack: I tend to write about random things I just learned. This often means I write about how to do something on my computers and other electronic gadgets. I spend the vast majority of my day in front of a screen so that is where I tend to be learning the most new things.
Me: Random fact(s) about yourself (wikiHow related, of course.)
Jack: I love surfing, but I'm not very good at it. My lack of skill doesn't stop me from surfing as much as I can on the weekends though. I've long been meaning to improve wikiHow's articles on surfing but have pretty much always failed to do a good job of it. I just don't think I'm a good enough surfer to tell others how to surf! So I usually don't edit the articles and hope that some day I'm a good enough surfer to be a good editor for the topic. I haven't gotten there yet. :)
He is too humble to say it, he's an awesome CEO, person and friend. :) I'm sure he'd be happy to welcome you to wikiHow. http://www.wikihow.com - Until next time!
June Days
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