wikiHow was introduced to the internet by Jack Herrick on January 15, 2005. This date was chosen to honor Wikipedia, which was also launched on January 15, only in 2001.
And silly as some of the illustrations might seem, wikiHow founder Jack Herrick says the goal of the platform is to give everyone on the planet a "practical education" – whether it's sexing turkeys, casting a love spell, or wearing fishnets.
Before Wikihow, Herrick founded eHow, a site with a similar idea but that paid its contributors. However, according to the businessman, this concept wasn't working.
Then, in 2004, he stumbled across Wikipedia. "It was clear it was going to be an amazing resource and become the best site on the internet," Herrick told WIRED. "And I said: 'If this works for an encyclopedia, does it work for a how-to guide?'"
He borrowed the open-source wiki software, and the next year released Wikihow. "Pretty much nothing happened," he recalled. "In those first days, we had almost no users, almost no edits. I think we had 2,000 people visit us that first month."
Herrick, who is still heavily involved in the day-to-day running of Wikihow, wanted to encourage people who did jump in and make edits to stick around. "Anyone who edited the site, I’d send them a personal note. It was that level of detail. I would look over every single change." And it slowly caught on.
Volunteer contributor Eric Wester first visited the site in 2007. "I don't remember the specific article that was featured that first brought me to Wikihow, although I was hooked pretty quickly," he said. Now, Wester does everything from writing articles to checking licensing on uploaded images, moderating pages for deletion, and helping teach new editors. "It's fun to be able to learn more about people's passions and then help point them in the direction of an editing tool that they might really find their niche in," he added.
Initially, the site only had Creative Commons images pulled in from Flickr or Wikimedia, but these were mostly generic and not instructive.
So to improve them, wikiHow hired a photographer, tasking them to illustrate a few articles. It worked, so more photographers were quickly hired. And they still do photography, but as you can see, there are some things you just can't photograph.
wikiHow didn't expect a strong reaction to its illustrations, nor the memes. The funny thing is that Herrick is actually aware of 'Disney Vacation.'
"Whoever is making those memes, super clever – very funny. There's some unbelievable stuff on there. It's comedy gold," he said.
These illustrations may be part of what has made wikiHow so famous online, but as WIRED's Nicole Kobie points out, what makes the site truly stand out isn't so obvious on its pages.
It's just a nice place to scroll through. Plenty of online communities devolve into cesspits of trolling and abuse, but wikiHow has managed to stay friendly. Let's hope it stays that way, too. Otherwise, where would we get all of these hilarious images?
