Therein lies the tension that makes wikiHow so spellbinding. It's a bare-bones SEO play, living and dying on the search queries of frustrated homemakers and maladjusted teens, but it's also, for better and often for worse, one of the web's foremost resources for the frustrated, annoyed, sad, or depressed. It lacks the scruples to compensate the army of contributors without whom its for-profit business model would quickly crumble, but thanks to the infinite idealism of those volunteer editors and a bounty of articles on navigating the terrors of adolescent social life, it is a place of startling warmth. It's one of those magical places where the collision between the web's structuring algorithms and its users' idiosyncratic humanity is on full display.
very informative assessment of wikiHow by Andy Cush, 4/7/15.
