View source for Wikihow



=Description=

Mayo Foster Morell:

"Wikihow is a wiki for the collaborative writing of manuals on how to do things. For example, Wikihow
hosts article such as "How to Write a Demonstrative Speech" or "How to Find Work While Dealing With a
Long Term Medical Condition". In December 2009, Wikihow hosted over 66,000 howto
articles.

Wikihow is provided by the Wikihow enterprise. The WikiHow enterprise is a forprofit
company based in Silicon Valley. The Wikihow enterprise defines itself as “a forprofit
focused on creating a global
public good in accordance with our mission”. The enterprise is composed of five employees and the founder
acting as the chief, who work in a one-roomed office.


Wikihow forms part of the change of model within the technological industry following the dotcom
crisis in 2001. The founder of Wikihow was previously involved in eHow, a professional expertbase
model of know-how.

The high cost of expert-based
articles was putting too much pressure into hosting profitable
content and as well as invasive advertisement to cover the costs. Following the form of Wikipedia, the
founder decided to change the model to an open and collaboratively wiki based one in 2005. In 2009,
Wikihow is profitable by selective and optional advertisement. In contrast to eHow, Wikihow is based on a
collaborative wiki instead of a expert-based
content, and has a Creative Commons license instead of a
copyright license; it is run on FLOSS instead of proprietary software; and, it is essentially governed and
managed by its community rather than by the provider."
(http://wikis.fu-berlin.de/download/attachments/59080767/FusterMorell-Paper.pdf)



=Governance=

See: [[Wikihow - Governance]]

=Discussion=


==Wikihow as a [[Mission Enterprise Model]]==

Mayo Foster Morell:

"Putting the “mission first” or the “mission before profit” refers to a profit entity whose primary
mission is to accomplish a social good, while the business goal remains secondary. According to Jack
Herrick, founder of Wikihow, this results in a “hybrid organization”, which is something in between a forprofit
organization, a nonprofit organization and the state:

- “Traditionally there have been 3 typical organization entities which could be dramatically over
simplified as follows: Businesses (...); Nonprofits (...) and Government. Wikihow is an attempt to
build a 4th organizational structure, one might call a hybrid organization. It combines the best
elements of the 3 other structures: Like a nonprofit,
Wikihow focuses on fulfilling its mission to help
people; Like a government, Wikihow is building a public good like a library or a park that can be
enjoyed freely by all; and, Like a business, it uses profits to finance its operations, expansion and
assure stability for the project.” (J. Herrick, Interview, December 4, 2008).


The tension between the social basis of the mission and the need for the provider to be profitable is
also present in these types of profit provider as was presented with the corporate model of Flickr. However, in
the case of mission enterprises, these tensions seem to be more obvious in the relationship of the enterprise
with other enterprises, and the competition of the platform’s content with other “competitive” platforms, than
between the participants and the enterprises. According to Evans Podromou, founder of Wikitravel and
Identica: “As wiki service providers, we straddle two very different worlds: the competitive world of Web
business, and the cooperative world of Free Culture.” (E. Podromou, Open letter to Wikia).


Secondly, this model is characterized by the principle of netenabling in regards to the level of
freedom and autonomy of the participants. Autonomy refers to use of open standards (which facilitate the
connection between platforms), open data (which facilitates the flow of information and the freedom to leave)
and open source (which facilitates knowledge of how the program works and opens up the possibility of
collaborative improvement or to adaptation it to other uses). In these settings, the individuals and the
communities as a whole are also more empowered in terms of control over their production. This is illustrated
by legally and technically being allowed to leave the platform individually and collectively, through open data
and forkable content.


One of the strengths of this approach is that participants can have control over the platforms they
use and the data they generate. Furthermore, as not only individuals, but more companies start to use more
and more web based services, there is more pressure to ensure that data control is more favorable to
participants (M. B. Hill, Interview, October 25, 2009).
Examples of mission enterprises are Wikihow (a how to manual)."
(http://wikis.fu-berlin.de/download/attachments/59080767/FusterMorell-Paper.pdf)





[[Category:Companies]]