Grimm's board-to-board with Littoface

I added some safety tips! Do you think it could use some more?

This is a good article on leash training a cat, however, I think we need some more tips and especially safety information in there.

When I tried this with our Sphinx, he was all claws and teeth one day, which I wasn't prepared for as he'd been calm and pleasant on our other walks. Another time a dog came up and tried to eat him, which caused him to climb up on my head (all claws again).

Neither of those were very pleasant experiences, so let's see if we can pleasantly forward our readers that unlike puppies, their cats or kittens can and will climb up them if they get scared.

Hey! Yep i've been doing sectional edits for articles that don't need too much work done, but those that have a lot of edits to be made, I move them to a google doc sp.I can go over them carefully, seeing the whole picture, and don't have to worry about accidentally losing my progress. I can link you to the docs if you like!

Hm. I would love to answer some questions. Let's do that once I get through your edits list? And I'll look around the pl checker (i was wondering what that meant anyway). I do wish the way to thumb up was right om the page though, way more intuitive!

Thumbs up can easily be done from the PL checker tool. You can get there by clicking the Community link, which is just to the left of the My Profile link at the top middle of the page.

Once you are on the community page, you can click the Patrol Recent Changes link, which is the first box on that page. This will open the Patrol Tool. There, you'll see four little tabs under the main green buttons. If you click the 'By User' tab, you'll be able to search for the user you want to give a thumbs up to - if their article is still in the patrol list.

For questions, it's very much a judgement call on your part. You should always use the correct answer, but there may be times where the incorrect answer has relevant points you could incorporate into the correct one. Generally though, the incorrect answer gets deleted, and the correct one stays.

If you'd like to practice answering some questions, please let me know. I can show you the tool we use for that, and explain how it works.

Hm here's another question: what should I do if two people answered a question with contradicting answers?

Thank you for the thorough answer, I definitely understand the questions process better now!

Images: The HOWikis standard is large full width images, but left or right aligned images aren't against the rules. It's just that square centered images are the preferred format. If the image you mentioned is good, why not center it and see how it looks? Just change |right| or |left| in the editor to |centered|, set the size to 600px, and see how it looks with preview. If it looks bad, cancel your edit and restart (since all you did was test how the image looked).

Questions: When someone asks a question, we prompt them for a little more information so we can have a better idea of exactly what they need help with. For example:

Question: "How do I tie my shoelaces?"

In this case, does the person want to know how to tie a single knot, a double, or perhaps they are trying to tie boots, which might be different if they have very long laces. Suddenly a question that seems very obvious and simple on the surface to the person asking the question becomes impossible to accurately answer.

Examples like this taught us that while everyone wants help with their question, not everyone knows how to ask for that help with relevant information. That is what the second part of a question is - relevant information. It's where we get more information from the user. This helps us, but it also lets us tweak a question so that other people reading it get the help they came for too. Here's what the first example should look like in our new system.

Question: "How do I tie my shoelaces?" I want to join the military, and I'm already in ROTC. The problem is that my boots come untied whenever we have to run. I'm too embarrassed to ask anyone to show me how to tie the laces, but if I keep tripping and falling, they'll kick me out. Help!

See how a little extra information completely changes the question and the tone of it? Now, if we have the same question asked multiple times, we can either delete the extra ones, or change them so that more people are helped. The most important part being that we never want to have duplicate answers on the same page.

A more important thing to remember is that when you see the same question over and over again, there's usually a problem with the article. Even if the article has good information, it might not be reaching everyone who needs help. In these cases, it's a good idea to double check the article. Many times you'll find that key steps were unintentionally skipped by a writer who was very knowledgeable about a topic, and forgot what it was like to be a new user.

For example, a computer tech might say to download and install a file, or clear the browser cache, never considering that the average user has no idea where their downloads folder is, or what a browser cache is. This would leave the user lost, and they would ask for help. As a result, you would see many questions about downloading files or clearing the cache. These sorts of questions are all an indication that an article needs some work (which is why it's being edited).

Does that all make sense? We've continued tweaking the system to guide people towards asking better questions, which lets us give them better answers. This helps more people. and that's what we're all about. It's also why we're always interested in suggestions that might improve the question and answer process.

I have looked over your edits, and they're great. We can absolutely edit and remove duplicate questions that do not add anything new, though for a little bit, I prefer that you mark them so I can check first.

In terms of editing question text, we try to avoid doing that all at once on an article with more than 15,000-20,000 or so views, as it's bad for the article. That's why I sent you lower view articles. We also are adding in bold italicized subtext to questions where it does not exist, or updating the existing subquestion texts to be bold italics.

Please have a look at the changes I made, and let me know if you have any questions. Good work. Thanks!

• blue monster laughter can be heard in the distance*

Have a great weekend. I'll be around if you need me. I heard there were snacks somewhere, but I can't seem to find them.

Yes, you did good, and now shall be punished with more articles. ;)

Hmmm... (checks library)...

Ok, these are a little different, but feel free to pick and choose if you don't know about one, or prefer not to address it. They will work a little differently than some of the others, as these are more seasoned (higher view) articles, and I wanted to make sure you did ok with the others. For these, edit them up, make sure the images are big and centered (replace as needed), and answer any unanswered questions you are comfortable answering. Each time you finish one, let me know so I can go in and check it.

• Calculate Your Expected date of Delivery for Pregnant Moms - not being a mom, I thought this might need some of the same attention the sweet boyfriend article got ;)
• Make Ayurvedic Hair Oil at Home as a little blue monster, I prefer not be oiled, but perhaps you might know about this sort of thing?
• Q&A from above if you're still feeling slick after editing the first one.
• Choose clothing colors that complement your skin tone this is why there are no adult beverages allowed in the library.
• Prevent and Reduce Oily Skin on Face car wax for the win!
• Write a Letter of Accepting Invitation as a writer, you might have some 'different' suggestions.
• Write a Letter of Invitation just in case the first invitation didn't reach you.
• Find the Signs a Girl Has a Boyfriend there is a reason the person who wrote this isn't in a relationship.
• Detect if your girlfriend likes another guy at last, we have tricked a lady into revealing the secrets of womankind!!
• Perfectly Relax the Hair hairdryer + Grimm = puff ball. Not cool.
• Tell if Your Boyfriend Is Obsessed with You because sometimes, the eject button isn't easily accessed.
• Darken Greying Hair Using Sage maybe you know some secrets from the other side of the world?
• Make Your Boss Fall in Love with You I tried this on our boss. It totally didn't work.

Also... and this is important when you are looking over the questions, if you see one that is repeated (not unique), please write in the article (DELETE), and let me know when you are done so that I can look it over and delete any duplicate / identical questions. Later you'll be able to delete them, but I need to see what you consider to be a duplicate first, to make sure we're on the same page.

Questions are automatically generated by the system the first time a user asks one. You can see this if you open a private browsing instance, or if you are on a different desktop system, and navigate away from a page.

You'll get the message that the user has written a certain number of articles, has a particular rank, and is ready to answer your question.

If you'd like to add a question and answer to one or more of your articles, just let me know, and I'll ask a question (you just have to promise to answer it).

To see when someone has asked a question, you need to have the 'watch' box checked when editing an article.

Since you asked, here are some articles I think would benefit immensely from your expertise. What I'd like to see with each is:

• Correcting the in article titles so they are only on one line.
• Making sure the articles make sense to you (some might not).
• Fixing up any grammar or sentence structure issues. If something is just awful, let me know, and we can either rewrite or delete.
• Removal of any reference to I. This implies ownership, and shouldn't generally be used in a wiki.
• Changing images from |right| or |left| to be |centered| and 600px. Use the first article below for an example of what to do, as I've already changed the image position for the first step. That way you'll learn a little more about manipulating images at the same time.
• Any updates or other additions you think will add value to the articles too.
• Answering any questions you are comfortable answering

Here are four articles to start with. Note that any of these you aren't comfortable with, just let me know.

• Get Kids Started Drinking Water Early
• Train your Parakeet to Talk
• Choose the Best Cage For Your Bird
• Make Bath Time Fun for Kids

I'll be sending everyone a notice on Monday with a list of new titles too, so keep an eye out for that. As ever, let me know if I can be of help or assistance.

Check now, and you'll see where I removed the |right| attribute, and changed the width to 630 so it meets the header image standard. All better. Thanks for the edits!

That's because the system keeps images with a paragraph when they are either left or right aligned, but will default them to 600px when they are centered. I'll pop in and fix it real fast so you can see what I'm talking about. And, thanks for fixing that up. I'm trying to get my Tatarka to test drive that recipe, so we'll see. :)

Hmmm. I made some edits, but for some reason my splitting the paragraphs made them not all wrap around the picture. Not sure what to do about that!

...That comment was terrible in the best possible way.

Interesting, this is different from how I make it! I may have to try this recipe when I'm done editing it haha.

I was thinking that you should write an article on cooking birds too - just the bad ones, and then I discovered this article on How to Make Great Chicken Kiev, and I thought that you could kill two birds with one stone (I'm almost out of puns) by editing this.

The first paragraph starts out ok, and then just gets horrible. It's way too wordy with no real meaning or direction. Besides, you might know some secrets for roasting disobedient birds you'd be willing to share with the rest of us.

Ok, got to fly. Off to play golf. Hopefully I'll get a birdie (out of puns now).

It didn't hit me that even the egg article is bird related until you said that. Thanks! I wasn't sure what to set it to, now I know. :D

Just looking over the great meme you put in this article on boiled eggs, but it was blurry. This is often caused by the browser resizing images. I updated the image size in your article to correct this. In the future when you put images in, the main meme should be set to 630px (you have to do this in the article editor). You can see my edit by checking the article history, and comparing the change I made to your last edits to the article.

Other article images usually don't have to be set to a particular size, as the system manages that, but if you notice a blurry one, set it to 600px, which is the system default.

Thanks for your articles. Looking to see what's cooking or flying to coop next.

And I am just a mama who over-researches everything! I made some small edits. (: I'll add an answer to the bird question right now.

Got another question for you (right up your alley). It's at the end of the article. click here - thanks. Please link your own article on birds in the answer like I did with the baby food question. Thanks.

here Ugh - links

I linked you [[Make Homemade Insect Repellent for Babies#Questions and Answers|here] - please check and update my answer if necessary. I'm just a papa. Just edit as needed. :)

Oops, my webnimal language skills are rusty. :P