Wikipedia talk:Article feedback/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Diagram

The diagram is broken in the Modern skin. slimeknight (talk) 23:34, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

The diagram is fairly incomprehensible, featuring re-use of the same unusual verb "to curate" for whatever 'readers' do to comments and whatever 'editors' do, and a series of unexplained icons in between. Cebderby (talk) 06:50, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Note: if you increase/decrease your font size, the words in the diagram suddenly appear/disappear accordingly. To confuse matters... in Safari on my non-Retina 17" MBPro, it doesn't show until I zoom font size up a level (FYI, I'm using... Standard Font "Times 16" + Fixed-width Font "Courier 13" — but surely those only kick-in on sites that don't define which font to use, so dunno if relevant anyway??). Works in Firefox though, so I really dunno?? Not ideal that it doesn't show properly in all browsers anyway IMO. Jimthing (talk) 04:04, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Hey guys; thanks for your feedback :).

I agree these issues could probably be fixed; I would note that, overall, I think this page and the associated tutorial are really well done, which is all thanks to Heather, our fantastic UI designer. Unfortunately because of time constraints and some other concerns she wasn't able to spend as much time on this as she would've liked, but I shall speak to people and see if we can have her brought back in to make these changes. No promises, though :(.

On the diagram front; it does make sense if you've used/seen the tool, but this is kinda a page for people who haven't yet. I'll bat ideas around, but it may be that we do nothing - at least in the short-term, our goals are making sure this works when we deploy more widely and fixing software rather than documentation bugs, although both are important. Just warning in advance. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 04:48, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Just having been to several editor engagement sessions at Wikimania, I was delighted to see the banner about the new feedback tool. However, when I clicked on it the first thing I saw was this diagram which I could not understand. I didn't know what "curate" means for either readers or editors, and couldn't figure out what the flow was supposed to be about. As a result, I did not even check out the links on the left, feeling that if it was about something as confusing as the diagram, I didn't want to pursue it further. Now, in fact, as a new editor I will, at some point, go back sometime and check out the rest of what's on that page but I am quite sure that if I hadn't already dipped my toe in the wikipedia editing waters, this diagram would have kept me away for quite awhile, until some other thing piqued my interest in editing. I would remove it, as a first step, while you are getting it re-designed, if it is practicable technically to do so. (I realize, however, that I am more affected by design, both positively and negatively, than many more-text-oriented users.) Summertime4 (talk) 19:36, 22 July 2012 (UTC)(talk) 17:42, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Fragmentation

Fragmenting the discussion about an article into two places (the talk page and the feedback page) is a mistake. It complicates the editing process, which introduces a negative barrier to editor recruitment and perhaps offsets the supposed bonus. As far as helping develop articles, from what I have seen, nearly 100% of the real comments generated by the Article Feedback Tool are valueless. In all its iterations, I don't know if I've seen a single article develop significantly (or at all) because of the Article Feedback Tool. AFT is just there. I really hope I'm wrong and it turns out great but my money is that this feature will just linger for years and years until it gets replaced with some other scheme. Jason Quinn (talk) 00:30, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Good points, all. But it is worth a try. GeorgeLouis (talk) 06:28, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

I think this feedback tool has a better chance to help us improve articles than the useless "rate this article" feedback tool that the last iteration introduced. At least this one lets people tell us what they think is missing, should they care to do so! MeegsC | Talk 11:33, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

I think the "feedback" and "rate this article" schemes are for different things. The feedback is for pointing out missing things, whereas the rate is more for praising/thanking an article for how accurate is is. They should be marketed to users for these two very different uses accordingly. Ideally doing them together would have been a much better idea, rather than just this feedback system alone, as they should really be complementary with each. Jimthing (talk) 03:49, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks all for your feedback :).
• Jason: on your points, as we've pointed out the research has shown that cannibalisation either doesn't happen or happens at such a small rate that it is completely offset by the edit bonus. Said research also shows that, actually, a large proportion of feedback is considered useful. On the talkpage front, I've already pointed out to you that, time and time again, people have found the talkpages a very confusing format in a lot of respects: this is what we've heard out of formal usability testing. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 04:51, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Ah, interesting, I already wondered if that might be the case. Which are those 'lots of respects' in which people find talk pages confusing? Where can we find the test results? I have failed several times to get groups of people to participate in a wiki, and some solutions might be found there. DirkvdM (talk) 08:48, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

The Usability Initiative is always a good (albeit now slightly dated) resource. I particularly like the Usability and Experience Study, which is a very broad-strokes view of issues normal (and in many cases clearly not stupid!) people have with using our software as it is at the moment. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:12, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Query

Is there a way to see which articles in a Wikiproject have the new feedback tool available? It would be nice to be able to concentrate efforts on those articles which readers find lacking. MeegsC | Talk 03:10, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, me too. Where's the universal link to the master log-page for these things? (according to the video it can be accessed via those pages that have feedback on them – but how can we get directly to that page anyway, without stumbling across it?). Please make it more obvious, as like so many pages on WP, they're all hidden away in the depths of the site, impossible to find quickly. :-( Jimthing (talk) 03:41, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

There's currently no way to find that, I'm afraid (on the "which articles in a Wikiproject.." front) :(. On the universal link - do you mean the logs of feedback acktions, or the centralised page? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 05:10, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Backlog and efficiency

Considering all other feedback methods have been backlogged for years, how do we ensure this is used effectively and doesn't suffer a similar fate of declining utility. Further I don't think this page explains the need/worth/purpose of this new tool well enough. I, for one, still don't see its usefulness compared to other tools. This lack of sufficient explanation likely will decrease its effectiveness. --ColonelHenry (talk) 03:13, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Also, too many articles are either badly written or stubs. They are created and worked on and interest was subsequently lost. They wallow in neglect. Many articles in which I've recently been interested were created in 2004, edited a few times and have not been touched since 2008. It's a problem that is epidemic in proportion. Then there's the problem of articles written in such a way that a layman can't understand. When a tag is put on the article because someone things the article needs to be dumbed down to be accessible, again it wallows in neglect. This is a big part of wikipedia's problem. When I see the talk page for these types of articles, there are unanswered questions--many several years old. How is this "tool" any different? What will this cause besides more neglected comments? there's no accountability or actual improvement to be gained by another "tool." --ColonelHenry (talk) 03:22, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

I suggest editing a little longer and maybe read WP:DEADLINE. This project has no deadline and fundamentally will never be "done". Also, edit frequency of an article is directly related to page views of that article. If it's never being improved, it's probably never being viewed meaning that there's no damage done. Likewise, if the article gets no traffic, it will most likely get no feedback via this tool.

Lots of people (not me) work hard on this feedback tool and dismissing it and suggesting that there's nothing to be gained by it is ill informed, illogical, and rude. They've seen a problem and worked to address it and frankly, you don't seem to have any better suggestions. I'm sorry to be so blunt but I feel that needs to be said.

This feedback tool, like the 4 iterations before it, will be revised and improved to not only allow readers to easily suggest ways to improve articles but help bridge the gap between readers and editors. If you have suggestions as to how to fix the problems you point out, there are several places where you can not only give your suggestions but actually contribute towards implementing your ideas and the ideas of others to improve Wikipedia. OlYeller21^Talktome 14:24, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

I am sure that ColonelHenry is a good Wikipedian who has made many valuable contributions to the encyclopedia, including the one here. Sincerely, a friend to all, GeorgeLouis (talk) 23:08, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

That's certainly possible, if not probable. I just don't like seeing people's hard work to improve the encyclopedia described in such a way, off-the-bat. OlYeller21^Talktome 20:51, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

How should questions be rated?

I would have expected more affirmative feedback (for instance: bird population is 27M not 15M), but most feedback seems to be questions (for instance: What was his mother?). Should such questions be rated as useful, because the information would indeed be useful? I see that for instance a feedback asking for the sexual preference of a politician as both downvoted and upvoted. Nicolas1981 (talk) 04:22, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

It depends on the question. The "rating" would be up to the person doing the rating — whether he or she thinks it is a good question, or a dumb one. That's how I feel anyway. GeorgeLouis (talk) 23:04, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

"I see that for instance a feedback asking for the sexual preference of a politician as both downvoted and upvoted." – I could rationally vote both ways quite easily in several ways, a couple given in each instance follow... UP because, firstly it's factual info worthy of being in a bio for an individual. Secondly, it may mean that a person in the public eye who may be homosexual makes the idea of homosexuality less threatening to those who may be prejudiced yet may admire that person otherwise. DOWN because, firstly it shouldn't matter what someone's sexuality is in the modern age (versus those from longer ago who may have had significant reasons to hide their sexuality in the age they lived in). Secondly, while homosexuality can still garner prejudice, it could be an attempt to use it as way of discrediting a public figure to the benefit of others (eg. political campaigns, et al) – poor show, IMO. There are ways around being so obvious of course, that can quash the debate; like the simple addition of "significant other: name" in the bio-box on the article page instead of a big song-and-dance section about their public coming-out for every person who just happens to be gay.

So given this, it really does depend on the question, and the instance, in every case – oh what fun, never-ending endless debate ensues. ;-) Jimthing (talk) 02:42, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

The question (ahaha) you ask yourself should be "does this question suggest things I should add to the article/fix in it?". If so, useful - if not (it's "why does he suck so bad?" or "can you help me with my homework?") then no. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 05:11, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Maybe I'm being too sensitive but I feel bad giving a thumbs down to a compliment. It makes sense but I'd hate to have the person come back and see their feeback with a thumbs down. No idea how to get around that other than to hide the post with no Yes/No. OlYeller21^Talktome 21:13, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

How should praise be rated?

Praise feedback (for instance: it is a great article!) is not useful, in the sense that it does not lead to a particular improvement. So, should praise be rated as "not helpful"? Nicolas1981 (talk) 04:48, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, simple praise or damnation both should be rated as "not helpful." GeorgeLouis (talk) 06:31, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes. Users wanting to praise/thank an article should be encouraged to use the pre-existing "Rate this page" box at the bottom of articles. (what would be great, is if a another button could be pressed next to such comments on this feedback system, for other editors to press, which would then add a standard notification to the commenters Talk page, advising them how useful their help would be when used instead on the "Rate this page" system. By saying your opinion is useful, is likely to persuade them to consider using it – you've got to market these systems to users better around here!) Jimthing (talk) 02:18, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Jimthing, the rate this page and article feedback tools are the same thing :). "rate this page" is the old version and is going to be replaced by article feedback, the new one.

Personally, I'd consider praise helpful. One of the things we've heard time and time again is that a lack of positive interactions leaves editors feeling isolated and doesn't exactly inspire them to keep plowing effort in. If people want to reach out and say "great job!" and make someone's contributions worthwhile, I think that's the sort of sentiment we should be encouraging :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 05:13, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

"mark as resolved" without featuring

Why do I have to "feature" a feedback before I can mark it as solved? It took me 30 seconds to find this out. I think "mark as resolved" should be available immediately. Nicolas1981 (talk) 04:42, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree. Why require two steps where one will do? MeegsC | Talk 01:45, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, what are you using "mark as resolved" to mean? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 05:13, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

To me, "resolved" means that I've added the requested information to the article, or have explained (in the text box you've provided for such comment) why it isn't appropriate to add it to that article. So if I read something that says "Please convert the metric units to imperial units for us Americans." and I do so, why should I first have to feature that request before I can mark it done? To me, "featured" should be a way of marking something so that other editors know it's important to people, and it's pending. In fact, I'd like to see another filter — featured and unresolved! And once a reader suggestion is resolved, it would be great if the now-emormous block for that request was shrunken somehow — perhaps "hidden" (like navigation templates or comment blocks can be shown or hidden) but with a button people could click to expand them if they want to read old requests. Otherwise, the pages for some of our larger articles are likely to become overwhelmingly enormous. MeegsC | Talk 11:25, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Adding this as a different button is now on our to-do list :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:44, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for this! Speeds the process up a bit. MeegsC (talk) 21:44, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

No problem! :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:53, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

This "feedback" will be useless

This "feedback" will be useless - we know about multiple gigantic backlogs, it is better to somehow introduce readers to editing rather than making the division deeper. Bulwersator (talk) 05:50, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

+1. It's utterly nonsense inviting people on each articles to give their opinion instead of improving the article. It may be a useful tool on some articles, especially those that are protected. -- Rillke (talk) 09:24, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

-1, Not necessarily. While what you say is true, I think the idea here is that many people see gaps in an article which they cannot sort-out themselves due to lack of knowledge or having enough understanding on the topic concerned (I've often left talk comments because of this myself). Rather than attempting to add text to an article, which they realise is likely to be ill-informed, missing many vital facts, or only knowing half the info concerned with the omission; many users don't bother doing anything AT ALL. So this may be a way of encouraging per-article feedback on things that may have been missed or are unclear in said articles, so the more informed, topically aware editors, that may not realise something has been missed, can notice it and deal with it bit easier, and then hit "Mark as resolved" to archive it (archiving dealt with things being half the battle too). Jimthing (talk) 01:58, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

What Jimthing said. That's even before we get into "people find markup surprisingly hard to deal with" which is, I think, something that as editors we can often forget. We've actually found not only that a large amount of the feedback is useful (40-60 percent, depending on the metric, even without the edit filter or spam blacklist turned on) but that the tool actively encourages readers to start contributing themselves when previously they wouldn't have. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 05:15, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Regarding the "people find markup surprisingly hard to deal with", you may have noticed the efforts to change it with a WYSIWYG-editor. Pressing some nice buttons is far away from writing complete meaningful sentences. A more extensive comment about the latest developments is on my user page. BTW, I think you can write a good article even without a lot of knowledge how markup works. All you need are headings and how to include files.

If "readers" miss something, I don't know how this can be useful for "editors". It sounds simply illogical because editors are encourage to write about topic where they are competent in; not borrowing the next book they can find about the topic and try to construct a something.

Finally, I am not sure why there are talk pages anymore. Let's disable them because we can now use the feedback button. Perhaps improving Liquid Threads and using a more extensive label for talk pages would have been sufficient. Improving key technologies in MediaWiki is more important than wasting time for single-use projects. -- Rillke (talk) 13:07, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Article feedback page?

An article feedback page (linked from talkpage). The link there takes me to a random article. What gives? GeorgeLouis (talk) 06:27, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

You have to actually click over to the talkpage of the article it takes you to, then you'll see a "view reader feedback" link at the top, as explained at Wikipedia:Feedback_walkthrough/2. I was confused at first too, I think it would make more sense if the "article feedback page" link took you directly to the talk page, and it might also be helpful if below the "article feedback page" link there was an image like the one from the Barack Obama page at Wikipedia:Feedback_walkthrough/2, to show you what to look for. Hypnosifl (talk) 15:50, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Yeah; we're talking about changing it to a link to an example page. Added to the to-do list for the 19th :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 05:15, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Installation?

There's no clear instruction on how to add the feedback tool to a page manually - besides, presumably, a template, are other steps involved? --Lexein (talk) 10:16, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

I believe it's a core website feature meaning that it's being rolled out by WMF. Editors can't really add/remove/edit it unless they do so through the feedback tool project page. OlYeller21^Talktome 13:43, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

If you add Category:Article Feedback 5 it should add the form to the article (no promises, though! They mucked with how it is allocated). However, as OlYeller says, it'll eventually be rolled out to 100 percent of pages :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 05:18, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't get it

Funny, I look up things daily on Wikipedia, but I never saw this. But no wonder, the Golden-crowned Sparrow article has many posts, but where is the link to the feedback page on the page itself? Does one have to install a tool first? Then I really don't get it. Isn't it supposed to be for non-editing readers? In other words people who won't go too deep into Wikipedia itself? They'll never install it. But for whom is it then? Not for active Wikipedians, because they use the talk page. And what is the difference really? Am I missing something? Quite possible, because the explanation on this article page is too pimped for me to read it all, ie cut into snippets, something I hate (and which Wikipedia lacks, which is one of the many things I love about it). DirkvdM (talk) 18:00, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Check out the top of the talkpage :). I know, it's really obscure - I wanted something much more prominent, like another tab next to "talk". We'll have a talk and see if we can come up with something better. You definitely don't need to install anything on your machine. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 05:37, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I see it. But that's a link to view the feedback. I don't see a link to add feedback. And if I don't get it, casual readers certainly won't. Worse still, not every talk page has it, so if a casual reader figures this out, the fact that it's not always there will really confuse them.

Anyway, they have to go to the talk page first, so then they're already at the page where they can add their comments or suggestions. So what does it add? Well, the posts can be rated. But that feature could also be added to the talk page (maybe a 'best of the talk page' page?). Other than that, I just see the disadvantage that one can't react to the content (no threads). So what purpose does it serve? DirkvdM (talk) 08:39, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

DirkvdM, the link that allows people to add feedback is at the bottom of the article itself, in the same position the old "rate this article" box was. The new box says "Did you find what you're looking for?" with yes and no buttons. See the bottom of Golden-crowned Sparrow for an example. If you're not finding it, you're just not going far enough down the page!  :) MeegsC | Talk 11:31, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I see, I missed that one as well. :) I suppose that's because it isn't as transparant as Wikipedia usually is, with te whole thing in one place. Which, like I said, is one thing I like about Wikipedia. But then I'm not the sort of person this is targeted at, so maybe my problems with this are irrelevant.

But still one problem. It just says "Did you find what you're looking for?", which doesn't really cover the ultimate purpose of asking for more detailed feedback. You only get that question if you click a button, which people who want to say more may not do because they don't know they're going to be asked that. Unless they've clicked one before. So that 'weeds out' the too casual users. Which might actually make sense.

Thanks for your patience. :) DirkvdM (talk) 12:31, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Also, the feedback feature has to be enabled. In "My Preferences/Appearance/Advanced options", at the bottom of the list. Uncheck "Don't show the Article feedback widget on pages". --Lexein (talk) 13:23, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, trust me, with the volume of feedback we're expecting, weeding people out is A Good Thing :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:08, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

IRC – really?

Why pick IRC to communicate this stuff to users? The average Joe using the site (especially plain Readers this is aimed at, never mind the people Editing the site regularly!) certainly doesn't use IRC and never will do. Surely a better communication/discussion method should be used here. (Jeez, I sometimes wonder who runs these new "initiatives" around here, the decision to do so is such a clear and obvious flaw, I don't know how it wasn't spotted before becoming live. ...Did anyone bother to check the graphic: it's buggered too, in Mac Safari at least!) Jimthing (talk) 01:42, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

That would be me :).

Just to clear up a misunderstanding - we're using IRC just to offer training and communication to editors during the first couple of weeks after deployment. For those not comfortable with IRC, there's the project talkpage, or my talkpage, or heck, my email address - all are linked. We're certainly not picking IRC as the sole, or even the main, method of communication.

Lemme be blunt - the process is not a perfect one. In a lot of ways it sucks. I knew about the problems with IRC and have for months - most people don't use it, it's very, very high-speed which means it doesn't scale well with large groups of people, it all operates by text which removes a lot of the nuance from any discussion - it has problems. The same is true of absolutely any medium we pick. If you can find me a free, transparent replacement for IRC that we can use to carry on that sort of live conversation I'll totally investigate using it.

But if this had been released 10 months ago, before I'd been hired, we wouldn't be having this conversation. There wouldn't have been a centralnotice, there wouldn't have been project planning on enwiki where over 150 users could participate in the 9 months that development took, and there probably wouldn't even have been IRC chats, flawed as they were. The first real notice most users would've gotten was when it was switched on everywhere. So, while I'm always looking for suggestions for improvement (if you've got them, I'll listen to them!) I do think it's worth noting that things are getting better :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 05:34, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

A note on reviewing feedback

I think it is great that we already have a good group of volunteers going through the feedback and evaluating it, but there are some nuances that some of you are not quite grasping. I'm talking specifically about requesting oversight of problematic feedback. The suppression policy only calls for such action in limited circumstances. This policy applies to feedback in exactly the same way it applies to article edits. "Normal" vandalism such as saying an article subject "is gay" does not qualify. Linkspam does not qualify. Voluntarily revealing one's own email address does not qualify. Outing of another user, extreme, libelous vandalism, apparent minors revealing too much personal information, these are the sorts of things that do qualify. I know with that button right there it is tempting to just press it whenever you hide something, but in most cases hiding it is going to be sufficient. The WMF and the community have made it clear to us that they do not want us suppressing everyday problematic edits, only the most severe, so we are having to reject a lot of requests that have come in to us over the last few weeks. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:55, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Are these coming from a wide number of users? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:12, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

It's not just one or two, but it's not every single request either. That's why I elected to post here but I do plan on giving specific feedback to individuals making such reports in the future. Feedback on their feedback on the feedback that is. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:44, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Preliminary numbers

Does anyone know how many "feedbacks" have been left so far? I ask because I just left feedback for an article and it registered as #137,452. I sort of hope we haven't gotten that much feedback yet. If so, we may be swamped once we hit 100%! :-) OlYeller21^Talktome 20:56, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

I accidentally answered my own question by finding this.

I have a question, what would be a good method or step-by-step to reviewing feedback? I'm finding some to be easy with WP:NOT criteria (someone asked for a pop singer's phone number). Others aren't as easy. For instance, a person requested more information on a subject whose article is a stub. I was considering adding an {{expand}} template but didn't as it's a stub. Should I simply rate the feedback with a thumbs up and move on or feature it as well?

Also, when should feedback be hidden? If it has been addressed conclusively? OlYeller21^Talktome 21:09, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

There isn't really a conclusive rule. At the moment we're relying on WP:REVDEL just because, well, there wasn't an applicable policy, but I understand people are trying to write some guidelines at Wikipedia:Article Feedback/Guidelines. On the fixing front - do what thou wilst :). It's okay to just rate it or feature it if you can't make the proposed changes yourself. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 23:06, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Moving feedback to talk page

As I go through feedback, it seems like it will be typical for feedback to be moved to the talk page for discussion. Creating a button/macro for this would be nice. The editor would read the feedback, wish to start a discussion for the feedback, click a button, and automatically be taken to a New Section page on the talk page with the feedback pasted in with a reference link to the comment itself. The title and the actual discussion would be all the editor needs to input. This could potentially result in several sections regarding the same topic, though. That would probably need to be worked out.

Just an idea. If there's a better place to give feature ideas, let me know. Looks great so far! I'm really excited to see how this changes Wikipedia. OlYeller21^Talktome 21:25, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

This is a really good idea; we're actively investigating it, I believe, for the next round of development :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 23:05, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

I had assumed this is what the "feature this post" button would do on the central feedback page; is that not correct? VQuakr (talk) 17:09, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Nope; it simply kicks it to the top of the "most relevant" list. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:22, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

That would be a useful feature to add then. The small minority of the feedback that is worth being featured should be directly posted to the talk page for better visibility as well. IMHO this does not even need its own button; featuring it should do both. VQuakr (talk) 04:23, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Good suggestion! It looks like it won't be included until the next development cycle (some time next year :() but I'm adding it to the list. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:45, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Feedback on Main Page articles

Did not even one of the proponents of this facility think that it might be a good idea to add the feedback template to each article linked from the Main Page each day during the trial period? This is, after all, the way in which most casual users access articles. How, otherwise, is one able to quickly find an article with the template enabled (apart from those shown in the examples)? Downsize43 (talk) 06:30, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Actually, most people don't access articles from the main page :). We've got Category:Article Feedback 5 Additional Articles which are particularly high-traffic articles selected to test it out on.

However, as you note, this is a trial period - mostly because we're still scaling the software so that it can deal with 100 percent of articles without breaking everything. So continuously or regularly adding a load of incredibly prominent articles would, as well as being a substantial amount of effort (you'd have to do it every 6 hours for DYKs, constantly for ITN/TFA, etc) is potentially putting pressure on the software. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:56, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Filter based on Wikiprojects

Can we have filter based on Wikiprojects ? -- naveenpf (talk) 11:17, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

That sounds like it would be very difficult; wikiprojects don't really exist in software terms. They're just pages and gubbins within mediawiki's content, not part of the software :). But Erik, the head of Engineering, has been talking recently about formalising the WikiProject model so we can provide more support for it - do you think this sort of thing would be useful if integrated like that? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:57, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

I think it's a very sensible suggestion, Oliver is right that better support in product for WikiProjects is in the pipeline, but having the ability of filtering the central feedback page by category (or by category of the associated talk page) sounds like a perfectly legitimate request that wouldn't need to wait for these changes in WikiProjects. In terms of timeline I expect the team will go through all non-critical feature requests only after the global ramp-up to the English Wikipedia is completed. --DarTar (talk) 15:22, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

If we have filters with Categories (recursive on sub-categories) will be more than enough --naveenpf (talk) 02:53, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Watchlist or a Cumulative Feedback Page

There are a few articles I pay very close attention to. It would be nice if I could either check a page or be notified when feedback is left for those pages. A feedback watchlist or a way to look at feedback for a list of pages would be nice. Is there any way to do this now or plans to implement such a feature in the future? OlYeller21^Talktome 22:53, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Yup; that's what we're looking into! As a standin, you'll be able to go to a special page (linked to from your watchlist) which aggregates feedback from all the articles you're watching. We may try and develop it from there or just leave it as-is, depending on what other demands there are on the devs' time and whether people are comfortable with it. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:20, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

What happens to feedback if no one is watching the page?

What happens to feedback if no one is watching the page? If nothing, then there is no improvement over the present system where a question on a talk page will often get no response. Downsize43 (talk) 03:13, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Then it appears in a centralised list of feedback from all pages, and has a higher chance of being discovered. And even without that, it's still a substantial improvement because the barrier for leaving questions or suggestions is substantially reduced. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:05, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Editors are contantly swimming is ocean of suggestions - see Category:Wikipedia backlog Bulwersator (talk) 12:55, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Those tend to be more vague, nebulous things; "this needs someone to copyedit all of it". "this needs to be expanded, without any definition of what is missing". "this is anglo-centric". AFT5 tends to result in precise points ("hey, you got this date wrong!" sorta thing) which is easier to action, and it presents them all together. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:52, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

So...... We have either 112371 (all comments) or 165495 (all visible) Of these we have 6997 helpful, 6376 unhelpful, 4683 flagged as abuse, and 117 resolved. From this, we can expect that about 7 out of every 18 will be helpful. We can also derive that only about one sixth of those received have been processed, and of those only about one percent have been resolved. Which brings me back to my original question!!! If a helpful feedback is received and no one is watching the page, what happens next? Could the feedback be referred to any recent editors of the page (if they exist) or to an appropriate project (or whatever) in the hope that someone will pick it up and run with it? Downsize43 (talk) 03:18, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Again, there's a centralised page where all feedback is listed; just because nobody is watching the specific page does not mean it will not be handled :). But remember, we're in very early days - it's only on 10 percent of articles, meaning a lot of editors are going to miss it. Once we up to 100 percent in September I expect the amount of feedback being processed to up substantially. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:35, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

AFT5 disabled

Hey all.

So, as of about 20 minutes ago, AFT is disabled on enwiki. We're not quite sure what went wrong at this point, but it started overloading one of the databases and Tim had to shut it down. I've let everyone know what's going on, and hopefully we'll have more information (and a solution!) shortly. Thanks for understanding :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:23, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

• Okay; now fixed! Thanks, everyone :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:32, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Insecure links

Links from Special:ArticleFeedbackv5 on "Learn more »" and "Help" both explicitally go to pages from the insecure http, links are suppose to stay in the existing security level. Regards, Sun Creator^(talk) 23:15, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Feedback from my watched pages »

This is pretty cool! Can we have the same thing to pages in Special:RecentChangesLinked, both are internally similiar I believe. Regards, Sun Creator^(talk) 23:18, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I spotted the new link on my watchlist and had a go at actioning some. I noticed that wikilinks do not work when entered into the 'action' boxes, can that be achieved? Does the person who entered the feedback know that something has been done about their post (do they get feedback in other words?) Good stuff. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 08:09, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Just noticed that editorial work on feedback does not show as a 'contribution', you could work solely on this stuff for a month but it would appear that you have been inactive, perhaps it's because it involves a 'Special' page? Only important to those with editcountitis I suppose but it might be useful to be able to go back to a particular feedback post without relying on memory. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 08:25, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

My experiences/feedback

I saw the watchlist tool today - it's not perfect, but good to see! I'm glad the tool is moving along but I think it is still a long way from providing an entirely useful process. Some comments from trying to handle feedback today:

• Significant numbers of feedback say things like "Yes" or "No", I guess because the first questions asks "Did you find what you're looking for?". This is, obviously, not particularly useful. Suggest A/B testing different ways of discouraging people from entering this sort of feedback.
• I'm confused with the processes available for feedback... There seems a big gap between "Mark Resolved" and "Hide". I presume the latter is for abusive messages, but hiding the yes, no's and nonsense would also be useful to remove clutter. I suggest a middle ground, or at least clearer guidance.
• Significant portions of the feedback are asking questions (for example "How do I...." queries). There is no mechanism to answer these queries or point them at the reference desk - so it clutters up the feedback and doesn't help the user in question. Which isn't good.
• The Watchlist layout is good to see. But it has way too much white space still. I'd suggest making it a lot more like the current watchlist layout. Perhaps with icons to represent the options (I admit to not being a fan of the feedback page layout).
• I know you link to terms, but no one reads those :) I'd suggest the feedback box needs to say clearly that things will be recorded in association with your IP address, and that that address will be public.
• There is no way to move feedback to talk pages (is there?). This seems like it would make it more usable. (I still hold that feedback should simply be posted on the talk page directly and skip this extra step, which is just too much complexity to be of any use to either the reader or editors)
• When marking feedback "resolved" or "featured" this should be posted on the user talk page of the person whose feedback it is - this would help address third point, and also create steps to involve the reader in Wikipedia (i.e. the engagement is not one sided - them screaming into the dark).

I have a list of other points but they are faily minor and I don't want to overload them :) This tool is certainly coming along in usefulness! --Errant ^(chat!) 08:45, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

P.s. I've been mulling this and I think the core of the problem is that the AFT has not been designed with best practices associated with soliciting feedback in mind - or at least not enough work to study the leading lights in this field has been done. For example; User Voice does a very good job in their feedback form of soliciting the right sort of feedback. --Errant ^(chat!) 14:05, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Poor design

If this is supposed to be a general-purpose feedback tool then it is badly designed. It has the appearance of being a one-shot Yes/No poll with no further purpose, and there is no clue, other than buried behind "What's this", that general feedback will be sought after replying. People may reasonably feel that answering such a Yes/No question is pointless by itself, yet may still have useful comments to make. 86.177.105.213 (talk) 17:32, 13 August 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.129.17.75 (talk)

"Article Feedback page not enabled for this article". Bug?

A feedback has been posted by IP address 84.22.32.198 regarding Reformatio in peius. I can see it from my "Feedback for pages watched by [myself]" page, but the Special page indicates "Article Feedback page not enabled for this article". Possibly a bug? Cheers, --Edcolins (talk) 14:31, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

I have the same issue with List of birds of New Jersey, which shows up in my feedback list despite the fact it has the old (i.e. rate this page) feedback tool at the bottom of the article! How did that happen? MeegsC (talk) 16:48, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

So, a while back a bug led to the form appearing everywhere and people submitted feedback for loads of different pages; this is probably why that's appearing :(. We ramp up to 100 percent of articles in September/October, and things should be sorted then :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:02, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Resolved

Thanks for the "Feedback from my watched pages" link; it will be helpful. However, it will be critical to be able to filter resolved items out from the list. Right now, with only a handful of watched pages that have the new feedback tool, I already have many pages of feedback to wade through — including many already resolved which are still sprinkled throughout the list. Once the new tool gets added to all articles, this is going to quickly get out of control, unless there's some way to filter the list down to only things still current, open and pending!! MeegsC (talk) 15:01, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Adding an "exclude resolved" filter, sorta thing? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:04, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

That would be perfect! MeegsC (talk) 18:07, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Now bugzilla'd, following some discussion with staff :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:19, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

• I was rather shocked that if something was marked "resolved", it didn't automatically disappear from my list. It's simply bad use of editor time to have to keep going through tickets that are already "resolved"; because of this, I'm not likely to click that link again until I know this has been fixed. Is there a way for people with hundreds/thousands/tens of thousands of articles on their watchlist to opt out of this feature? Can one opt out on a page-by-page basis?

  Incidentally, why does the "learn more" link lead to Wikipedia:Article Feedback/Help/Oversighters#Feedback_page? Is the landing page eccentrically titled, or was the link meant to go to a different page? Risker (talk) 21:28, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Special:ArticleFeedbackv5Watchlist

Two suggestions:

1. The special page and the title of the special page should be the same - or at least similar. How is someone new to Wikipedia going to make a link to the page if they don't know to look in the URL to find Special:ArticleFeedbackv5Watchlist? Neither Special:Feedback from my watched pages nor Special:Feedback work, but from the title you'd guess that one of them was the appropriate link.
2. There ought to be a link to remove a page from your Watchlist. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 23:34, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Also, its "learn more" links are broken. The "hide this page" and "request oversight" options have links in them, presumably to explain what they do, but they take you to Wikipedia:Article feedback's #hide and #oversight-request - neither section exists. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 23:39, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

What web browser are you using? Works okay with Safari... MeegsC (talk) 23:47, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Really? I'm using Chrome. I don't see how it could possibly work, though, Wikipedia:Article feedback doesn't have any section headings, let alone those two. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 00:14, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

When you say "make a link to the page", what do you mean? Users don't have to make those links; they'll be made automatically by Wikipedia. (Right now, they're not on all pages, but only because this is a testing phase.) Also, when you say the "learn more" links are broken, which links are you talking about? The one linking to the "Learn more" page (i.e. the Feedback project page works fine at my end. Does it not work for you? MeegsC (talk) 01:56, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I think we've been talking at cross purposes to each other.

1. When I "make a link" I type [[Special:ArticleFeedbackv5Watchlist]] to create Special:ArticleFeedbackv5Watchlist. Usually I do this by copying the large, bold page title at the top of the page and putting brackets around it. This doesn't work with the ArticleFeedbackv5Watchlist, because the page is located at a place that is completely unrelated to its title.
2. The "learn more" links are broken not because they don't lead to Wikipedia:Article feedback, but because they lead to sections of that page that don't exist - Wikipedia:Article feedback#hide and Wikipedia:Article feedback#oversight-request. Not to mention that there's no text whatsoever on that page that explains what those buttons are for. In particular, how does the oversight request button request oversighting? (I assume it goes to Special:EmailUser/Oversight but I haven't tried it.) --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 23:32, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Hey; sorry for the delay in replying. Yeah, those really should be cut off (the sub-link thingies); I'm pretty sure that's a bug that will be fixed in Thursday's release, though :). The page title, I think people will probably go "no, keep it as it is", with the rationale that this setup is actually more logical. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:07, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Sure, the current page title is more logical - but perhaps the Special: page could be moved so it is also at a logical location? The concern here is usability and new users, after all. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 19:55, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Guidelines on editor usage?

Each feedback post offers the following options:

• Feature this post
• Mark as resolved
• Hide this post
• Request oversight

Are there any guidelines on an editor should use these options?

Some guidelines too on rating posts and flagging abuse would be useful too. I presume it would largely be up to the individual themselves, but some guidance wouldn't go astray. --RA (talk) 08:12, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Some people are trying to write some at Wikipedia:Article Feedback/Feedback response guidelines :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:41, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! --RA (talk) 19:13, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Posts with no comments

There are dozens and dozens and dozens of feedback posts coming in each hour with absolutely nothing in them. Surely they can be converted to simple yes/no counts without creating up pages and pages of white space?! It seems to me that we should only have to "resolve" items that actually have suggestions in them. Otherwise, this is going to completely overwhelm those few who are trying to deal with it. MeegsC (talk) 14:47, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

That's a great idea; I'll see what we can do :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:45, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! It's helping a lot with the sheer volume.  :) MeegsC (talk) 12:23, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I see you haven't done this one yet. Waiting anxiously; the floodwaters are rising fast! :P MeegsC (talk) 21:14, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

The report I got from our devs is "it already does that" - it clearly doesn't ;p. I'll follow up and see what the heck is happening. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:16, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, when I posted on 8/19, I thought it was working. But over the past few days I've been resolving LOTS (see my public log for examples) that had no comment in them. MeegsC (talk) 22:22, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

He says he's working on it - we kinda knocked him off his game by turning up and going "can we have this new feature by Thursday, please?" so it might be some time. The new feature is interlinking it with the "protect" function, though, which is kinda important. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:05, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Copyright violations

I'm sure this has already been covered, but given the Foundation's - and particularly the Foundation's legal counsel's - comments regarding the viewdeleted permission and copyright/libel, any posts that are "hidden" for those two reasons should not be visible to anyone who has not passed an RfA. As expressed in those posts, any more liberal policy likely exposes the Foundation to significant legal risk. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 19:49, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

We ran the current setup by general counsel and he was fine with it :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:22, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Good to hear. :) --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 13:26, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Filtering system

Two requests, two easier than the other:

1. Add a filter for all unresolved feedback.
2. Alternatively, add a "negative" check box a la "invert selection" on Recent changes.
3. Extend the system so that we can filter multiple things at the same time a la advanced Special:Search. --Izno (talk) 21:22, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

   That would be cool :). I'm not sure how feasible it is to add them in this iteration, but I'll ask, and worst-case scenario we can add them next time we review the software. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:03, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Self-feedback review and multiple feedback review

I see that in Feedback Post #265638 by User:Pererbilt1 marked his own feedback "Julian assange, should be awarded the nobel peace prize..." as "helpful". Also when I marked the feedback as "unhelpful" by error for the second time it was accepted and counted. Shouldn't both such actions be disabled? --ELEKHH^T 23:00, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Indeed; known bug :). We're working on a fix. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:02, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

The case of Tony Farmer

Here's an interesting case. The former NBA player Tony Farmer shares his name with a recent high school basketball player who was just sentenced to jail. Unfortunately, a lot of the people leaving feedback here at seem to think the two players are the same guy. I've just hidden a bunch of comments, but it would be good if someone else could help keep an eye on things, because of all the potential WP:BLP violations. Zagalejo^^^ 07:02, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for letting us know :). We're currently building a semi/full protect feature in which will hopefully help in these cases. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:58, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

What the crap?

If you look into the details of this feedback, you see that the system flagged this as spam three times. What gives? --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 15:30, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

That...shouldn't be happening. I thought we'd fixed the abuse filter issues? I'll fling it at our devs; thanks for reporting it :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:51, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Ah; it's probably IP abuse :S. For some reason the system is flagging any IP action as from AFT5. We're fixing it in a patch deployed literally today :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:52, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Great, thanks Okeyes! --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 15:47, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Editor engagement

I think a crucial part of this process should be informing users that their feedback has been resolved/featured/marked as helpful/whatever. I imagine many of the people who leave feedback don't later return to the article and check the feedback page - they may not even know how to - so it would be easy to assume their comments have simply been ignored or gone unnoticed. Even if they do find their post again, IPs can't see the percentage of people who marked it as helpful, or any of the accompanying comments in the activity log. For Article Feedback to be a useful editor engagement tool, it needs to be a little less one-sided. I don't know exactly how this could be accomplished - I was thinking an automatic notice could be posted to the user's talk page when their feedback is mark as featured or resolved, but since most feedbackers (feedersback?) are IPs that could be problematic. How about having a link to "My feedback" at the top of the page, or in the sidebar? DoctorKubla (talk) 12:17, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

I think these are all good ideas, but they may have to wait :(. We've hit "feature freeze" and won't be adding any new substantial enhancements; however, there are provisional plans to revisit this in a year or so and look at AFT6, as it were. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:27, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Wow, that's disappointing. It's frustrating to have a tool that kinda works — but not as well as it could do — when with a bit of effort it could be much better. Let's hope the "provisional" plans are firmed up in something less than a year, and that the gung-ho folks currently using it haven't given up by then! MeegsC (talk) 01:11, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree lots of the potential power of this tool is in truly closing the "feedback loop" and connecting feedback-givers and feedback-receivers. No firm promise yet, but we may be able to look into the possibility of notifying IP users of feedback responses as part of the Echo project (which is all about developing a better standard notification system).--Eloquence* 06:20, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Demands for pictures that can't really be provided

A lot of the comments on my watched page feedback are demands for pictures of things that cannot be illustrated due to copyright or other related issues. These are not really resolvable so maybe there could be an option to mark such things as "Request for copyright-protected material cannot be resolved" or similar, or have something at the top of feedback page briefly explaining that images may not be available due to copyright laws? Mabalu (talk) 15:57, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Is hard to draw a line though between what can and what cannot be obtained. Many picture demands can be resolved with a bit of effort, either by direct request from copyright holders who are often willing to release images, or through fair-use uploads. --ELEKHH^T 20:28, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

There are many things that can't be easily resolved. Another is requests for 'how to' which is within WP:NOTHOWTO. Regards, Sun Creator^(talk) 21:04, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

I'd argue that these are very easy to resolve. The resolution may not be that which the reader would prefer (i.e. we can't add the picture, or provide the "how to" steps), but it is a resolution! MeegsC (talk) 01:07, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Automatic response to feedback

I notice there is a lot of feedback asking us to provide articles in PDF form. We already do so, but the "Download as PDF" link is hidden by default in the sidebar, I believe. Would it be possible to automatically provide instructions on how to download a PDF version of the article if the feedback contains the word "pdf"? —Ruud 02:17, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

It would be possible, theoretically, but I would strongly recommend against it. The feedback on our article for "PDF", for example, is likely to contain a lot of people asking very different questions that happen to include that word :). I suspect it would end up being a rather inaccurate filter :(. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 05:52, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

This type of feedback is IMO also useful to surface issues with our user experience. If it's a commonly voiced request, we should consider making this feature more prominent.--Eloquence* 00:07, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Is statistical analysis of the feedback being kept? Do we know what percentage is actionable, what percentage is pure drivel, what the major types of "additional requests" are and how frequently they occur? Do we have baseline data from the initial set of articles to see if the assumptions remain valid as the dataset expands? Risker (talk) 21:34, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

We did several rounds of hand-coding with a pool of Wikimedians; the results can be found at m:Research:Article feedback/Quality assessment. We're not currently doing a followup, although it would be interesting as we expand :). I would say that a followup now is not going to be accurate; the mechanism that was used to decide if the form would be displayed favours high-profile articles, which could be why the quality isn't looking so good at this moment. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 07:33, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

The previous research seems to reflect a much higher proportion of 'useful' comments than I have seen in the feedback popping up on my personal tracker, which I'd currently rate at less than 20% (and that's if I count all compliments as "useful"). This may be reflective of a small sample size. I suppose the next question is whether or not things are done with "actionable" feedback, particularly if the majority of people watching an article do so for anti-vandalism (rather than content improvement) reasons. Risker (talk) 14:07, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree; I believe Dario is producing some data on that as we speak :). It's worth noting that as of last night Special:Protect has an option to turn AFT5 off for various classes of user - if you're experiencing high volumes of useless feedback on certain articles, you may want to take advantage. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:34, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Dang!

We're back to lots and lots of blank feedback forms again. I thought this had been fixed?! Please move this one up the priorities list; we're already drowning under a sea of useless feedback "suggestions", and this isn't helping! MeegsC (talk) 01:09, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Comment-based is an improvement

The new comment-based form is much better than the numerical grades. It is much more feasible to respond to specific, actionable shortcomings. The numerical grades were always suspect, and there was nothing specific one could do in response to poor grades. --Noleander (talk) 19:31, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Great to hear you like it! :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:37, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Flagging one's own post?

Wondering about whether those providing feedback should be able to flag their own posts as helpful. I've seen a lot of junk posts in the last few days (along the lines of "HE SUCKS") flagged as helpful by the same person who made the comment. That doesn't seem particularly useful! MeegsC (talk) 19:54, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, known bug; we're working on it :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:54, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Combine rating and feedback

So far I'm not enthusiastic about this feedback possibility. I've got nearly 450 pages on my watchlist, but hardly seen any useful feedback. And I miss the ratings. Is it possible to combine both? Joshua Jonathan (talk) 08:24, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

So, we tried; we actually found that including both features reduced the quality of feedback :(. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:37, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree. Although the ratings weren't particularly helpful either, as people tended to rate based on their like/dislike level for a particular topic ("I'm pro-life so the Abortion article gets bad notes from me!") I have over 5000 pages on my watchlist and I still have to see a single useful comment. I think there was 1 (one) that had a valid point to make, but was inactionable anyway because of a fundamental lack of independent sources on the kind of info requested (submission and rejection rates for a specific academic journal). Wading through all these comments and having to mark them "resolved" ("I was looking for info on how to treat my sore knee and didn't find it!" So what are you looking for on the page for the BMJ, then?) seems to be an absolute waste of valuable editor time. I understand that the foundation wants to try to involve readers more, but as far as I see, it's just another opportunity for Randy in Boise to shine... Sorry, but I won't be wasting time on this tool again... --Guillaume2303 (talk) 09:10, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Adjustment to feedback filters

Looking at feedback for article on my watchlist, there does not appear to be a way to view all feedback except what is marked as "resolved." Can the filters be adjusted to be check boxes rather than a drop down, more like what is used at Special:NewPagesFeed? VQuakr (talk) 03:07, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

I understand that would be a lot of work, technically-speaking :(. We should add it to the wishlist for when we make another pass, though :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 03:38, 7 September 2012 (UTC)