Wikipedia talk:Article Feedback Tool/Version 5/Archive 5

Archive 1

←

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

15 ways to dislike feedback. Too many?

So, I'm rootling through feedback. I find some nasty racism stuff; don't like it. Hmm. How many options do I have to deal with it. 1) Is this feedback helpful? No. 2) Flag as abuse. 3) Hide 4) Request oversight. Or, I suppose, any combination of the same. Which would be about 15 options.

Are we sure we have enough options when we don't like feedback? Do we have a clue which we should reach for when we find that racist message? (No.) Have we perhaps gone a little over-the-top with this aspect of the feedback system? I can see how, on their own, each looks unimpeachable. It's only when you bring them all together that it starts to fail; not least when it appears that at least three are valid for the single racist message. --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:27, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

We're trying to work out a solution to these problems :S. I can't promise any immediate changes, I'm afraid - I've been told to wait for more data. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:34, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

I had the same problem once just by having the first two options. See Wikipedia talk:Article Feedback Tool/Version 5/Archive2#About the Central Feedback Page. Basically these two options create four categories including very strange stuff like an “helpful abuse”. Why do we need this? What should be flagged as “abuse” and what should be flagged as “not helpful” while not being an abuse? Where is the borderline? Why do we need these two different ratings? I find this very confusing. Isn't it enough to have one rating? Good comment vs. bad comment. Done. It's a matter of taste anyway.

And again what's the point of the “Feature” star? Is this some kind of “very helpful” rating? Like a third option, basically creating 2³ = 8 classes? Including the possibility to “feature” an abuse? Why? Why is it possible to simply set this star instead of using the helpful rating to decide how good a comment is? There is no way to find a consensus. Everybody can set and unset a “Feature” star even without providing a reason. Why is this option not a rating but a simple flag? Assume it is a rating, what's the difference to the helpful rating? Isn't it the same?

I forgot to include the “Mark as resolved” flag. This creates 2⁴ = 16 classes. For example, if a comment contains only gibberish I rate it as not helpful and as an abuse and flag it as resolved? Like this? Four clicks (the flags needs two clicks) to deal with an useless comment? Or is it enough to click “resolved” to make a useless comment go away? What's the difference? Is there a difference? --TMg 18:26, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Newsletter

So, I signed up for the "bi-weekly newsletter" back on August 15, and have yet to receive a copy. What gives? MeegsC (talk) 18:40, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Is your talkpage bot-proofed? If so.... ;p. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 03:44, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

No knowingly! How would I check? MeegsC (talk) 16:07, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Good question. All the mechanisms I know for bot-proofing a page aren't active - how very odd! Alright, I'll make sure to manually deliver yours in future :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:17, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Is there an archive of the newsletters? Link? thanks --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:57, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Not at the moment :(. I'll compile one when I have some spare cycles :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:17, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Group feedback by category

I would like to stress this again. We really need the possibility to group the feedback by category. For example I want to show all feedback in the Category:Computer science (and all sub-categories up to a certain level) because that's the topic where I work. I don't care about feedback in, let's say, the Category:Sports. I really think we need to know which articles in a category sub-tree are considered the worst. We need to focus on these articles. Why is such a vital feature missing? --TMg 11:22, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

I know; I've repeatedly suggested it, but there's a feeling that it's too great an amount of work for the time we have left :S. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:42, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Why not start simple?
SELECT article, COUNT(*) count FROM feedbacks GROUP BY article ORDER BY count DESC
or in other words, show a list of most commented articles.
SELECT article, COUNT(*) count FROM feedbacks WHERE helpful = 0 GROUP BY article ORDER BY count DESC
or in other words, show a list of most hated articles. What's the problem with adding such simple things? Add categories later. For example skip any recursion. Do a simple JOIN with a single category. That would be 90 % of what we need. Currently we get 0 %. It's impossible to do anything useful with the feedback scattered all around the project if you don't provide any tools to focus on the important things. --TMg 17:49, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

really need this features : it's unpossible to maintain without this add-on... Poleta33 (talk) 08:03, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Testing AFT on German WP / moderation system

AFT page, monitors view: both "hide" at the right side and "flag as abuse" (next to "helpful?")

AFT5 Page Comparative Wireframe: Readers View, Rollbackers View, Oversighters View

Hello there! We are discussing and planning to test AFTv5 on German WP. So we're having a close look at the feedback moderation system, because we have to assign "moderation rights" to user groups. Since German WP is running "gesichtete Versionen"/ flagged versions, we have a big user group with the right to revert vandalism/approve revisions in article space. We would like to make them Rollbacker / Reviewer (aft-monitor), so that they can "hide" abusive feedback too.

Now, I'm afraid that a Rollbacker / Reviewer (aft-monitor) gets a confusing multitude of moderation buttons (see 15 ways to dislike feedback. Too many?), for example both a "hide" and a "flag as abuse" button. Overall I think we want a lean and effective moderation system, because there are lots of concerns that the feedback pages turn into a trolls heaven. It should be clearer what "hide" and "flag as abuse" mean (in which cases to use it and what happens by clicking). Why do you need to "flag as abuse" if you can "hide" yourself (redundant)? And couldn't the "hide" button have a drop-down menu to select reasons for hiding: "non-sensical text", "insults", "Personal information", "other" (see full list in Wikipedia:Article Feedback/Feedback response guidelines#Hiding and unhiding feedback)? That would explain the functionality without having to search/find/read in help pages. Any opinions? --Atlasowa (talk) 11:54, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

So, I agree with the first of those suggestions - when it comes down to drop-downs, we'll run into the problem that there are edge cases where no drop-down applies :). We are making the field identify as autocomplete-able, so people will be able to easily input any rationale they see fit - or we might just remove it entirely, to be honest. Things that are hidden are usually hidden for obvious reasons :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:37, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

So, is it possible to give the Rollbacker / Reviewer (aft-monitor) group the right to "hide", but to spare them the "flag to abuse" button? (Which would be different from this Access and permissions table?)

BTW, our (straw?) poll on AFT is currently at 64 for, 18 against and 4 undecided (and it's only about testing 4 months on ~15.000 selected articles ^^). Exciting! :-) --Atlasowa (talk) 20:32, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Good luck then. Czech Wikipedia also has a poll, but only about "using some tool to get feedback for articles" because it started in times when AFTv5 was young. Last time I was there it was about half for and half against but successful deployment on German version should really change that. Go and crowd will go with you ;D --07:42, 1 November 2012 (UTC), Utar (talk)

Thanks ;-) Do you have a link to the Czech poll? The real vote will be after testing and that's gonna be a hard sell. Lots of "Bedenkenträger" (intranslatable german word for a person carrying doubts) - including me, kind of, sometimes ;-P --Atlasowa (talk) 11:14, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

The result (after one week) is: 78 for, 29 against and 4 undecided. So, the AFTv5 test on de-wiki is gonna happen! --Atlasowa (talk) 16:22, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

@Atlasowa: Well, I have just now found you have asked for it so here it is: cs:Wikipedie:Žádost o komentář/Hodnocení článků. I has started so long ago and is still going. Sorry for being a bit late :D . --08:18, 3 March 2014 (UTC), Utar (talk)

@Okeyes: Regarding "the problem that there are edge cases where no drop-down applies", that would be "others" :-P. I'm thinking of one "hide" button (for monitors) with a drop-down menu (or multiple choice?) of reasons for hiding that could be accompanied by the "request oversight" option. This would have several advantages: 1) It roughly shows the user in which cases to use "hide", without reading several FAQ/help pages and without a confusing multitude of buttons. 2) It gives a reason to the oversighter. 3) It produces data that could be used to improve AFT moderation and possibly improve/train abuse filters. Any thoughts? --Atlasowa (talk) 11:14, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

It would be nice but I'm not sure how much of a pain it would be - I shall ask :). 3 is unlikely - we'd have to build a way of evaluating this data, or the community would, and we don't run the abuse filter. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:39, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

AFT on French Wikipedia : the straw poll has began !

Hello all.

A straw poll has just been launched on French Wikipedia in order to decide to deploy (or not) the AFT. We are currently at the discussion phase, I hope we will start to vote in a two weeks' time.

If you are comfortable with the French language and the AFT, we may have a lot of questions for you. So, be welcome to help the discussion !

Bests, Trizek ^{from FR} 22:25, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Hello! Just wondering: Would you really call fr:Wikipédia:Prise de décision a "straw poll", wouldn't fr:Wikipédia:Sondage be more appropriate? And are you really deciding about a 100% deployment of AFTv5 in article+help space, not about testing AFTv5? What about the failed AFT4 vote of 2011, are people really understanding the difference between AFTv4 and AFTv5? (my experience: they don't, despite explanations. Maybe screenshots?) Please be aware that a "spontaneous" vote could quickly end up in a negative response and that it is very hard to overturn an earlier negative vote (from what i see on different Wikipedias, YMMV). --Atlasowa (talk) 16:18, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi,

Thank you for these comments.

We are working on this decision since months. The FAQ and the various questions suggest us a good comprehension of the differences between the v4 and the v5, and all the spontaneous discussions let us know a good conclusion of this prise de décision.

Fingers crossed ! :)

Trizek ^{from FR} 18:18, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Not showing up

Why is AFT5 not showing up on Folding@home? I'd like to fix this. • Jesse V.^(talk) 20:12, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Huh; that's really weird :S. Can I suggest removing "additional articles" and seeing if the random 10 percent lottery picks it up? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:09, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Nope. The old AFT4 shows up. • Jesse V.^(talk) 15:30, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Dagnabit. Okay, I'll see if we can do anything at our end :). If not it might need to wait for the big rollout. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:33, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Not showing up on Ecoute Article

Same thing here as I was trying to expereince on the tool on Ecoute. Any thoughts/help please?. Thank you. — Ludopedia^(Talk) 08:57, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Feature request

Would it be possible to have a drop down list of the codes at WP:FRG as reasons when hiding feedback? I think it would be a nice addition, particularly if the reasons were wikilinked to FRG. --Nouniquenames 19:02, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Resolve problems

I experienced a number of weird interface problems today using the Resolve feature at Special:ArticleFeedbackv5. Randomly, it seems to do nothing sometimes - I enter the reason and click "Mark as resolved," the message box disappears, but the "Resolved" text does not appear nor does the resolve appear in the item history. I tried manually clicking the "Mark as resolved" button, tried entering a summary and not entering a summary, tried doing CTRL+F5 to fresh the page and still could not resolve the item I was looking at (Special:ArticleFeedbackv5/Rockwell_scale/638032). Yet just a few minutes ago I could resolve other items with no problem. I'm using Chrome 23.0.1271.64 m on Windows 7 Pro. Eventually I loaded the page up in Firefox 16.0.2 and it worked there right away. However, even in Firefox I still have trouble entering the resolve message and pressing "ENTER" - it reloads the page, discards the message, and does not resolve the item. Dcoetzee 18:43, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

I later determined that my Wikipedia cookies had somehow become corrupt and lots of requests were failing, so AFT5 might not be responsible for this. Dcoetzee 22:52, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Getting responses to feedback to the people who leave it

Although AFT feedback is very useful, I feel like the people who are leaving it have no sense about where it goes or what happens to it. If we want to encourage good commenters to leave more feedback in the future, I think it's important to have a way to send them a response to their feedback, indicating what action we took upon resolution. This is especially important when the request is a reasonable one that we just can't comply with for legal reasons or for lack of access to the resources (e.g. include lyrics, include photo of a living person). One way to do is to simply add an optional field "E-mail address (optional)" field to the form, and to automatically e-mail them when the item is resolved with the message that was given. This could also potentially allow us to seek clarification from commenters who appear to have some legitimate issue but are difficult to understand. Thoughts? Dcoetzee 22:37, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Already in the features requirements for the next round of updates. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:38, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Feedback button nearly invisible

Hi. Looking for information about a GUI/button issue: Wikipedia_talk:Article_feedback#.22Post_your_feedback.22_button_nearly_invisible. Thanks. --Noleander (talk) 22:57, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Here is a screenShot of the problem I'm seeing:

--Noleander (talk) 16:40, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Same problem reported on german WP, see Screenshot. There are now Bugzilla:37431 and Bugzilla:42738, apparently "unconfirmed"? To see the problem for yourself click Yes or No: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schach?stable=0&useskin=monobook --Atlasowa (talk) 09:56, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for finally posting a reply here. I thought I was seeing things :-). The English WP example above is from the ACLU article at http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/ACLU. Of course, it may be caused by my particular preferences/skin settings (the example above is using Modern skin, but it happens in other skins also), in which case clicking on the Yes or No buttons at the bottom of ACLU may not produce the bug for others. --Noleander (talk) 00:51, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

User Okeyes (WMF) posted a note at Wikipedia_talk:Article_feedback#.22Post_your_feedback.22_button_nearly_invisible which says the problem is caused by Modern or Classic skins. However, that cannot be a correct assessment because it happens in all skins for me. Plus, the German example is using Monobook --Noleander (talk) 00:54, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

It is indeed not Monobook- or browser-only. Only Vector has the CSS for a blue button. All other skins do not. AFT did define the text color (white) though, making for a bad combo (light gray button/white text color) on all skins but Vector. https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/32072/ will undo said fixed white color. In Vector, button will then be blue with white text; other skins will have light-gray button with dark text. (by Matthias Mullie 2012-12-08 08:33:12 UTC at https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41653 )

--Se4598 (talk) 19:02, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Feature request: The more link at the bottom of longer feedback...

If a reader provides many lines of text as feedback, that posting, when shown on the list of feedback posts, only shows the first few lines followed by a more link, which links to another page that shows the full text along with additional info.

It would be nice if clicking more would expand the posting on the same page, kind of like the way the {{Hidden}} template works. Thank you. Sparkie82 (t•c) 07:07, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

That'd be awesome - adding to the list :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 00:14, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Is there a bug in this feature? When I click on the More link for longer comments, the expansion page is not showing any continuation text, it is just showing the "additional details" about the feedback on the feedback. The feedback text itself still ends in "..." at the same char count. It would also be helpful if when typing into the feedback entry form, there was some indication as to how much of the comment would fit before the truncation. Teri Pettit (talk) 19:18, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Same problem with the broken "more"-button reported on german Wikipedia (Firefox 13, 16, 17; Opera 12.11). See also Bugzilla:42843. --Atlasowa (talk) 10:48, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

The problem seems to occur with Monobook-style, but not with Vector. There seems to be a lot of bugs with Monobook by the way...--Sinuhe20 (talk) 22:37, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

No, I have vector and i can't see "more" of the feedback on de-wiki and en-wiki. --Atlasowa (talk) 15:58, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Exempt

How do I make a page exempt from the feedback tool? Lynda is a dab page but it has the AFD thingy at the bottom. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 07:12, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

 Done Add the page to Category:Article Feedback Blacklist. There is still a reason to have the AFT on DAB pages (suggestions for inclusions for example), but I've removed it in this case. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 07:35, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

I can remove all abuse ratings, not only mine

Steps to reproduce:

1. Go to Special:ArticleFeedbackv5.
2. Find a comment that is flagged as abuse 1 or more times.
3. Click "Flag as abuse". The number increases.
4. Click "Flagged as abuse" to remove your rating. The number decreases.
5. Now you can click again and again and remove all abuse ratings.

My first idea was, this must be a client side issue. But it's not. Look at the activity log here: Special:ArticleFeedbackv5/Global warming/149308. As said above my proposed solution is to simply remove the abuse rating. Stick with the helpful rating. We don't need two ratings. (Web browser used: Opera 12.11, Windows 7.) --TMg 18:36, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Maybe this explains why no feedback posts have been hidden since a month.

The AFT moderation requirement of 5 different users flagging 1 post as abuse to hide it seems broken. Even the french asked if this could be changed, since 5 users is a very high threshold. I don't remember that this was answered in some way.

In the last AFT-Newsletter was announced that: "we're continuing to work on some ways to increase the quality of feedback and make it easier to eliminate and deal with non-useful feedback: hopefully I'll have more news for you on this soon :)." In the french AFT Office hour a mockup was posted for a moderation change: buttons for "inappropriate" and "not actionable". So, what's happening? Will this AFT moderation change be live on the german AFT test too? It would be very unfortunate if we start the AFT test on de-wp and after a few days the moderation is fundamentally changed and we have no documentation/help pages. Is there a timeline? --Atlasowa (talk) 11:12, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

I found some changes on the AFT5 Feature Requirements, namely on the Resolve tools. Looks good. Is there a timeline? --Atlasowa (talk) 11:58, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Not at the moment: we're talking through them now. Re no feedback posts being hidden, that's actually just that the toolserver tool is broken ;p. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:50, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

see also Bugzilla:39747 --Atlasowa (talk) 19:51, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

"View reader feedback »" broken

The "View reader feedback »" links on the talk pages are broken in the Opera web browser. Nothing happens. Not even an error message in the debugger. I see there is a click handler. Why is it there? Why not simply remove it? The plain href does work. I can right click the link and open it in a new tab, for example. --TMg 23:23, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Same error in IE 8 and Opera 12.11. --TMg 13:29, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks; I'll report it :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 00:23, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

are there bugs in Bugzilla: for the things you report?--Se4598 (talk) 00:12, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

90 percent of the time; this was the 10, I'm afraid. The fix should be here (to quote from our dev, with attribution, "IE provides no way to completely fix this, but it should now at least no longer break the link"). Opera should work fine :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 23:45, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Feedback response guidelines

There is currently a dicussion at WT:FRG on the formal adoption of the Feedback response guidelines as a Wikipedia guideline. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 08:29, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Hand-coding timescale

Is this an ongoing project or is it a trial with a fixed end point? I've explored a few of the links to further info, so apologies if I've missed this already being documented somewhere. I'm probably interested, but don't expect to be able to offer much assistance until later this month/into 2013. Thanks. -- Trevj (talk) 03:09, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Also see my comment on my talk page. Basically, what's the reason to rate every comment twice? --TMg 12:37, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Experimental validity. If we agree on the rating, then it was probably rated correctly. If we disagree, then one of us was probably wrong (or it's an especially difficult case). If many of "my" ratings disagree with everyone else's ratings, then I'm probably a bad rater whose responses should be ignored. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:08, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

As always, WhatamIdoing is correct here :). (As an aside, but on a similar subject - I actually did an experiment on IP/pseudonymous agreement rates a few weeks ago - they agree 60 percent of the time or so. Kinda interesting). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:22, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Don't you have enough rating data to calculate the standard deviation for all comments by a specific user? You know the user names of the people who wrote and rated the comments. You know how experienced the users are. What's wrong with the data you already have? Why a second interface for the same task? --TMg 01:47, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

I would really like to understand the value of doing the rating again with a different tool? Why not choose a random number of users, let them use the regular tool and compare their ratings to all others? But even then the value of such a comparison is very questionable. The current rating options are simply confusing. I would really like to know how the people use this. I assume it's a mess of up- and down-voting. What's the value of comparing ratings made by confused user with other ratings made in an other tool by a few hopefully less confused people? --TMg 18:26, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Comparing average responses only works if we can guarantee that the users are going to rate a large number of items and there is no difference in the items they rate. But if you rate random items, and I only rate ones whose articles I'm familiar with, or only controversial items, then our averages might differ despite using the same standards. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:35, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Indeed. There seems to be some confusion as to what we're trying to achieve here. What we're trying to find out is the overall quality of feedback. The problem is twofold:

1. most feedback monitors (and most feedback posts) cluster around controversial articles, for obvious reasons - high reader attention equals high pageviews and high editor attention, and high pageviews leads to a high number of feedback posts;
2. We have no way of ascertaining whether people monitor randomised feedback posts on even controversial articles, or just the most divisive posts (things that are obviously good/obviously need to be hidden).

In other words, we don't actually know the quality of the feedback we're getting: we know the quality of those posts that draw editor attention on controversial/high view articles. These are not the same things. Even taking a randomised sample of this pool wouldn't work, because our problem is with the pool we're drawing from. The solution is to take a randomised sample of feedback overall and measure both quality and user agreement there. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:47, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Button to hide or collapse Feedback box?

A german WP reader (IP) asked how to hide/not show the feedback box in the articles (which he described as "annoying", "distracting", "obtrusive"). As far as I can see, there is no way to do that? There are opt-out gadgets for logged-in users, but not for readers/ IP. In other default gadgets like ReferenceTooltips, we offer an opt-out for readers, so why can't readers hide/collapse the feedback box (which is in big type and not exactly subtile...). In the new Features under consideration i don't see a button 'X' to close the Feedback box. For some context: In the german WP there is a constant effort not to bloat the articles with navigation bars, stub-templates, wikiproject-links and other cruft. Therefor the AFT box really stands out (and it is big anyway). A button for readers and editors to hide / collapse / close / not show the Feedback box if they don't want to see it, would be appreciated. --Atlasowa (talk) 16:11, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

That makes sense; want me to add it to bugzilla? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:20, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

TMg commented that this feature would make the tool more complicated and possibly less usable - would it? I imagine an X button on the right upper corner of the feedback box to make it disappear (or behind the "what is this?" link?). The reader would make it reappear by clicking on "Add your feedback" under "tools" on the left side. And the feedback box would probably return anyway after some time, expired cookie. Correct? What do other people think? Was there demand for a hide/collapse button with the AFTv4 box ("Rate this page")? Yes, there was, even on Bugzilla:29303. Apparently, Jorm was concerned that a toggle link is problematic, but this was long ago. What's the potential problem? I think it would be fair to give readers an option to collapse this tool if they want. Other opinions? --Atlasowa (talk) 22:06, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

I'd note that the concern about AFT4 was mostly concern by experienced editors about experienced editors :). I don't think I brought up any problem - I offered to add it to bugzilla ;p. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:10, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

I'd really like to hear if there are objections or problems - or if everybody agrees this would be a good idea. Let's give this a week for thought before moving to bugzilla?

1) What would it be, hide or collapse? Any mockups from the positioning experiments that we could use?

ReferenceTooltips: Click the little icon in the top right corner (File:Cog.png) for options to disable.

2) How long would the choice of the reader (not logged in user) be preserved? Would the cookie persist 1 year, 180 days or 30 days? (Unless the user deletes it himself, obviously) There is an interesting thread on wikitech about default cookie time. For instance, how long does it work with the ReferenceTooltips for readers?

3) When hiding the tool, will there be a bubble telling the user how he can reactivate the tool and how long the cookie persists?

And thanks for offering to add it to bugzilla, Okeyes :-) appreciated! --Atlasowa (talk) 09:08, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

4) One more :-P At the moment, the reader that clicked "Yes" or "No" to the question "Did you find what you were looking for?" is presented with the textfield for comments. There is no obvious way to close it without commenting or voting. You can only close the whole browser tab/window or hit the browser "back" button to escape ;-) If there were an X button on the top right corner, readers would probably use that to close the questioning. It would be unfortunate, if the reader only wants to close this question/text field (that he may have used the first time ever) and unknowingly he is disabling/hiding the whole tool (on first sight). --Atlasowa (talk) 09:49, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

2) what about session cookies for those, who deny all other cookies? --91.34.129.230 (talk) 20:38, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Please note that the user asking for this feature is a very experienced user, he is just hiding behind an IP address. Even if you add an X button to the top right corner, what should it do? Hide all feedback boxes on all pages? For the current session only? For days? What if a user clicked the X by accident? Does he need to restart the browser to get the feedback box back? On the other hand, if the X does not set a cookie and hides the current feedback box only it's pretty useless and probably more confusing than anything else. An other solution is to not hide the feedback box but to collapse it. But why? What's the benefit of this? My proposed solution is: Make it very easy to add the feedback box to the AdBlock list or to a Greasemonkey rule. Basically this means to use a good, self-explaining ID. Maybe there is more you can do to help Greasemonkey users? --TMg 02:01, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi TMg, Redundanz schafft Sicherheit. So it's good to let many roads lead to Rome.

an icon(functionality) comparable to the Sighted versions. Addidional an "Add your feedback" in the "Toolbox" or "Interaction". --91.34.136.84 (talk) 16:24, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Please note, it's one WikiPedia. There are countless other Wikis. So Be bold. It is the choice of the users, how to participate. Asking the companies administrator to grant one local administrative rights to install a customized browser of ones choice?! Note too, it was an interested Wikipedia accout, who added and extended this section.

What's the benefit of this? Well, what's the benefit of allowing readers to click away the donation banner? Not to annoy? Why else would you say that the small size of the close-button is needlessly annoying? Why don't we put a huge colourful donation banner on top and a blinky feedback form underneath our articles, without options for closing/collapsing? Let them have cake greasemonkey tutorials! ;-) But seriously, how does it work with the donation banner? It seems to be a lot more complicated than session cookies for standard features. --Atlasowa (talk) 23:18, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

You can't add buttons all over the place to satisfy every need. But if there is a button I expect it to be accessible. I don't think you can compare the donation banner and the feedback tool. The banner is more like a one-time notification. "Did you know there is a fundraiser going on?" Yea, I know. Click. The tool is a tool. There is a very interesting presentation about the new Microsoft Office Ribbons. They basically removed the possibility to hide tools. People are scared of clicking these little X buttons because they don't know how to get a possible useful tool back. There are better ways. A collapse button would be acceptable, I think. --TMg 18:48, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

I can mark a post unhelpful multiple times

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T45208

Hello, here, it was possible to mark the post unhelpful twice. Click on View more actions... to see it. Thank you!···Vanischenu^「m/_Talk」 18:00, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Oh dear :(. Thanks for letting us know! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:20, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you···Vanischenu^「m/_Talk」 21:43, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Photos

I've been seeing a lot of "this article needs a photo" feedback, including on articles that already have at least one image. It's an especially popular comment at Dunning–Kruger effect, where I think it's meant to be funny (This article about incompetent people not knowing how incompetent they are needs a picture... of my co-worker.). I thought that this was just great demand for images, but I'm thinking that the example of feedback in the box is polluting the responses. Could we get that removed, or at least cycle through some other examples? Something open ended like "I think this page is missing information about..." might be useful. So might "You can leave this box blank if you don't want to comment". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:13, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

That makes sense; I'll see what we can do :). We are looking to make the distinction between yes/no and comments more clear - as you say, I imagine we're getting a lot of "I found what I was looking for, yes! Oh, it says I need a comment. Will it not submit if I don't need a comment? Oh, pics. Uhm. Sure. More pics would be nice." Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:19, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Good question. In the german AFT translation, we dropped the "needs a picture" suggestion for this reason and took a more ambitious example: (z. B. „Im Artikel fehlt die Geschichte seit 1989, so wie sie in E. Mustermann (2007) beschrieben ist.“) = In the article the history since 1989 is missing, compare E. Mustermann (2007). Maybe too ambitious, we'll see ;-). Testing different examples is an interesting idea. Regarding feedback without forcing comments, is this AFT improvement Post without comment (see mockup below) really coming in january?

Very simple, very good. --Atlasowa (talk) 21:04, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

It is :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:57, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Seems as a good idea to me. But how is it going to show in Feedback tab? Will it only change "X people have found what they were looking for" (good) or will it just post feedback with no text (bad)? And do you have "Are you sure?" message to show up when the reader clicks "Post without feedback" but feedback area is filled with something (not the pre-coded text)? --17:36, 18 December 2012 (UTC), Utar (talk)

There's no "are you sure" message, and it'll be treated in the same way that merely hitting yes or no is treated now :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:08, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Article Feedback Update (December 2012)

Slides from the AFTv5 report (2012-Q4)

Mockup of new moderation tools and filters under consideration.

Greetings, everyone!

I would like to share this update on Article feedback, which we just published on the Wikimedia blog.

This blog post includes key findings from our analysis of feedback and moderation activity — as well as an update on new features in development for this reader engagement tool. Our goals for these features are to surface more good feedback, reduce the editor workload and improve software performance for a full deployment. Many of these new features address issues you were kind enough to bring to our attention on this talk page.

Once these features have been developed, we plan to test them on 10 percent of the English Wikipedia, so we can hear from you about their effectiveness, hopefully at the end of January. In parallel, we will complete our code refactoring on a new database cluster by February, to improve overall performance. If all goes well, we plan to release this tool to 100 percent of the English Wikipedia by the end of the first quarter of 2013. We also expect more projects to deploy Article Feedback after this full release, and the current version is now under review by the German and French Wikipedia.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the community members who have helped us design and develop Article feedback this year. Some of you generously spent many hours with us on IRC, Skype and on this talk page, evaluating our options and guiding our next steps. Special kudos to Bensin, Dougweller, Fluffernutter, GorillaWarfare, Looie496, Risker, RJHall, Sonia, TheHelpfulOne, TomMorris and Utar, to name but a few. We're deeply grateful for your thoughtful guidance, which has helped us create a much more effective product together. Thank you all for being such wonderful collaborators!

We look forward to deploying Article Feedback widely next year, to encourage more participation from readers. We hope this engagement tool can help sign up new contributors, to revert the editor decline and provide new ways for users to improve Wikipedia together.

Happy holidays!

Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 23:00, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Re. "This tool is converting readers into new editors", it would be interesting know how many readers who do not post feedback go on to create an account. Without this information, it's hard to be confident that the feedback tool is having a significant impact in this respect. Also re. "Useful feedback is buried under a lot of noise", the quoted figure of "About 40 percent of the feedback was found useful by at least two evaluators" seems like it may be putting a positive slant on the results given that there were 20 reviewers. What percentage was found useful by a majority of reviewers? My own experience of reading feedback is that the vast majority is not constructive, and the minority that is constructive often isn't really helpful in improving articles. --Michig (talk) 15:41, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

There were 20 reviewers? :/. And people evaluated feedback in pairs - of N reviewers, all would be given a randomised sample of feedback in such a way that each piece of feedback was rated by two distinct people. Having 20 people review each piece would certainly increase our certainty, but probably not usefully, after a certain point, and would have reduced the statistical significance of the data overall by necessitating a smaller total sample. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:15, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

The update linked above states that 20 Wikipedia editors blindly assessed 900 random feedback posts for usefulness, so I guess there were 20 reviewers. Presumably more than two people evaluated each piece of feedback, as "About 40 percent of the feedback was found useful by at least two evaluators" implies, or does it mean 'by both evaluators'?. --Michig (talk) 15:50, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

There was some degree of overlap, to my knowledge, but dual agreement was the primary metric: the problem is that it might be A pieces of feedback reviewed by 3 people, B by 2 people, C by 4 people...and the only way we can use A or C is to massively reduce sample size. We've just finished another study into this, which should be written up in due course. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:58, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Removal of AFT5 from articles

I thought I'd let everyone know about this discussion regarding MZMcBride's removal of Category:Article Feedback 5 from articles. • Jesse V.^(talk) 17:49, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

I would like to repeat one of the conclusions of user MZMcBride: “The tool could then compile these responses into lists of the most (or least) interesting, funny, informative articles.”. Thats what I told you several times. To make this tool useful for the community we need such lists of articles. --TMg 22:57, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

See "filter by tag or category" here. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 00:48, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

View Feedback for this Article Does Not Work on Firefox Nightly 20

Hi, the feedback viewer is not letting Firefox Nightly users view it. It displays fine for a second, then disappears, replaced by "Sorry, your browser is not supported by this prototype. To see this page, please use a different browser." It works fine in Nightly 20, I can use the Feedback page by killing the Javascript (pushing the Esc key in that 1 sec window). Please fix this. Thanks—Kelvinsong (talk) 00:01, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Firefox Nightly....? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:14, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, Firefox Nightly, an alpha version of Firefox.—Kelvinsong (talk) 15:55, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks :). What I suspect is happening is that we've set up a "if the browser and version is not on this list, don't let it work" thing to avoid people being confronted with broken software...and the latest firefox alpha is not, unsurprisingly, yet on this list. I'll throw this to the devs. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:07, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, there should at least be a way to override it without having to scramble for the Esc key :)—Kelvinsong (talk) 17:28, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

• Now in gerrit; should be deployed soon enough :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:56, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Some initial impressions: issues with the question

I recently had a friend look at AFT5 for the first time. I found that they became preoccupied with the initial question and what an appropriate answer to it was. Quote: "Well, the main issue I have is that I'd like some way of saying, "Yes, this is what I searched for, but I have no idea what it says." I just mean that the question, "Did you find what you were looking for?," is something I find difficult to answer with "Yes" or "No.""

The question certainly has some issues - it's ambiguous (does it mean "is this article about the topic you were looking for?", or does it mean "does this article contain the information you were seeking"?). Not all readers come looking for specific information (some browse casually).

Although I realise it's a bit late in the game to talk about changing it, there are other good options for the question. A very common one I see on other sites, such as documentation sites, is "Did this document help you?" or "Did you find this helpful?" Some, like the Apple site, include an option like "It's good, but..." that helps deal with cases where the article was helpful in some ways but deficient in others. We could similarly do "Did you find this article helpful?" with options "Yes", "No", and "Yes, but..." or "Sort of". I think these would be clearer and less of a stumbling block. Dcoetzee 23:41, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

How to clear all the flags for a post?

I see here that under the activity somebody flagged my post as abuse, and then someone cleared all the flags on my post and I can't figure out how to do that on some posts, because some are flagged for no apparent reason or by mistake. JayJay^{Talk to me} 00:30, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

It seems to me you do that by featuring a feedback with some flags. Those flags are overwritten (cleared) in the process of featuring. See me featuring a feedback - the date and edit summary of clearing of flags and featuring is the same. --12:11, 29 December 2012 (UTC), Utar (talk)

Ahh I see but there should just be a button to clear all the flags IMO. Cheers, JayJay^{What did I do?} 17:00, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

There is, but it only shows up after 2-3 flags to avoid burning people out voiding individual flags.Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:56, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Changing or deleting my 'Mark as resolved' note

I want to delete or change my note after I Mark feedback as resolved. Can I do this by clicking on Unmark as resolved? Abductive (reasoning) 05:13, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

That will un-mark it, but your note will remain in the history - in the same way that making a new edit does not change the old edit's edit summary. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:52, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Hand coding

Hi. In this edit, I've signed up for "hand coding." I'm interested in evaluating what feedback is being marked as useful. In particular, comments such as "needs an image" are seemingly being marked as useful when they're not actually useful.

I believe this is part of larger stats manipulation scheme that attempts to justify the resources wasted on this tool, but I won't know for sure until I can see what is being marked useful and by whom. I'm looking forward to it. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 18:02, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

The last hand-coding session was completed last week; we're writing the results up now. If you have any evidence that we are deliberately or accidentally manipulating quantitative evidence I would like to hear it. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:05, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough. I suppose the results will include the feedback itself and its associated markings. I guess we'll see how everything was rated once you publish the results. :-)

Though I could swear I already read various claims about the effectiveness of the tool citing actual data. And I thought it was citing usefulness of the feedback (which is what I thought was being measured here). Hmmm. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:39, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, we ran an earlier study last year, soon after the feedback tool was released (it was primarily intended to gauge whether there was a difference in feedback quality depending on where the link was). This is a look at "now that the tool is no longer this Interesting New Button people want to submit test comments through or whatever, and it has abuse filters, what does quality look like". Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 23:52, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Direct Link to view article feedback

As an editor, when patrolling my watchlist, I'd like to see if there's feedback for these pages i'm interested in. At the moment, it seems that I must click on the talk page, then 'view feedback' to find the article feedback. Is there any more direct way, like from the main article page or the history page? —fudoreaper (talk) 00:48, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

There should be Feedback from my watched pages link directly in your Watchlist. Don't you have it there? --10:40, 8 January 2013 (UTC), Utar (talk)

If you mean an article-specific feedback view; we are actually building a more obvious link now :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:38, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses. I've used the system a bit more and can comment more clearly now.

• When I view my watch list, I have a link "Feedback from my watchlist". This is handy.
• If i am looking at a diff for a page on my watchlist, there's no way to view feedback. I must go to the talk page to find the link.
• The link to article feedback is special somehow. Using Firefox on Ubuntu, when I control-click the link, wanting to open it in a new tab, it opens in the same tab. It's not clear to me why this is.

So my original point was: It seems kinda awkward for an editor patrolling his watchlist to find article feedback about a specific article; because i must navigate to the talk page, and then most of the time the article doesn't even have any article feedback. (since only 10% of them do). Okeyes suggests that's going to change, which sounds good to me.

It's also not clear the best way to say to a comment: "We won't do that, here's why", or similarly "Your contribution is misdirected, here would be better". I've been resolving them with comments. But I like what we have now, feedback from readers is a great way to motivate and coordinate editing efforts. —fudoreaper (talk) 21:06, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Direct reply functions, also on the to-do list, although I'm not sure how soon we'll get to that one :/. Thanks for the support! :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:19, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Formatting of the line at the top

The bit at the top says "68.100.92.188 posted feedback to Layer cake". Could we get that changed to something like "68.100.92.188 posted feedback to Layer cake (talk • history)"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:54, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I'll do what I can :). At the moment we're trying to put in a push to get in some new, in-depth features, which is cutting into our time for minor bugfixes (really we should try to put it the other way around, but...) Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:21, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Automatically hide blank feedback?

I'm (and other AFT monitors probably are too) a little tired of having to manually hide blank feedback; is there any way that the system can automatically remove blank feedback? If not, can a bot be created to automatically do so? The Anonymouse (talk | contribs) 18:51, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Unless you're looking at the "show me absolutely everything" view you shouldn't see it at all, and the same is true of readers and other editors. Have you considered just leaving it? :P. I'll ask if we can display it in some other format. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:23, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Yes, I'm looking at "All visible" so that I can catch everything. I would leave the blank feedback alone, but the feedback tool is so congested with blank feedback that we can't see as much of the real feedback. The Anonymouse (talk | contribs) 17:44, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, for future reference "all comments" shows, well, everything with a comment :). But yeah, I appreciate it's infuriating - I've been talking through various mechanisms to make blank feedback less disruptive. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 03:20, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Oh, now I get what you mean by "all comments". I will try to use that for now on (why didn't I see it sooner? ). But I still think that blank feedback shouldn't be allowed. The Anonymouse (talk | contribs) 03:47, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

The problem with that is it means we lose a lot of the data that can be used in aggregate (the simple yes/no). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 03:49, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Wow, that was a quick reply! Yes, but isn't the feedback tool designed mostly for gathering suggestions for improvement to the article? The Anonymouse (talk | contribs) 03:50, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

It is, but it's also pretty useful as a research tool :). Wikimania this year had User:Protonk, who had used AFT4 data to tell the future (he could predict precisely which articles would lose FA or GA status disturbingly accurately). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 03:52, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Interesting. Well, I'm happy right now with the "all comments" option. Thanks for all of your replies. The Anonymouse (talk | contribs) 03:53, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

No problem; let me know if I can be of any additional help :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 03:57, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Article feedback RFC now being drafted

Hi. Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Article feedback is now being drafted. Any and all users are encouraged to add a view or polish up the page. The RFC is scheduled to begin on Monday, January 21. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:39, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Help pages

The usergroup-specific help pages are extremely similar, to avoid divergent evolutions in the long term and unneeded maintenance difficulties, a template at Wikipedia:Article Feedback/Help could be created and usergroup-specific information added as needed. Also the page Wikipedia:Article Feedback Tool is the one linked from the AF interface, but it doesn't appear in the template above. On the other hand, Wikipedia:Article feedback is in the template but is not linked from the interface, yet seems more reader-friendly compared to the former which is more explicative. Shouldn't it be the other way around ? Cenarium (talk) 05:17, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Ok, for the second point it's because of the trial of version 5. Cenarium (talk) 07:00, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Yeah :). So, we're in this weird situation where because some of the pages are based on software, we can present different levels of readability to different classes of user, but where pages are based on templates, we can't (because templates don't really have native support for that). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 03:19, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Request for comment on Article feedback opened

Hi all,

The request for comment on article feedback has opened. All editor are invited to comment, endorse other users's views, and/or add their own view.

Thanks, Legoktm (talk) 01:11, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Why it it on Wikipedia space pages?

Why is the article feedback tool on this page Wikipedia:Redirect? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 20:31, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

One of our Fellows asked for it to be enabled for help and some policy documentation so we had a way of checking stuff answered the questions people had about Wikipedia's internal processes. Obviously, this will be turned off if/when AFT5 as a whole is. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:47, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

IP address publication

I suggest that people leaving feedback be warned rather more obviously and immediately that their IP address is going to be published for the whole world to see. Victor Yus (talk) 16:06, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, we have a patch to fix this waiting for code review. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:06, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply! (But isn't it enough just to change the message text? Does it really need code?) Victor Yus (talk) 16:20, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Unlike most aspects of the MediaWiki interface, the AFT does not seem to use the MediaWiki: namespace for its strings. Reaper Eternal (talk) 16:26, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Firefox Nightly 21 (again)

Once again, I am receiving the

"Sorry, your browser is not supported by this prototype. To see this page, please use a different browser."

message. I am using Firefox Nightly 21, and it displays fine before blanking the page to show the browser message. Can someone just get rid of the browser version check???—Kelvinsong (talk) 13:34, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, we're working on that; at the moment we have a large code review backlog that is being tackled. As you may be aware it's likely to shortly become irrelevant to enwiki users. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:32, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Source code showing

I observed this first on the page Ontario Association for Mathematics Education. PLURAL:1|one rating|1 ratings (enclosed with {{}}) shows up where it is supposed to say one rating. If it matters, my browser is Internet Explorer 8. 069952497a (talk) 22:27, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks; I'll see what we're doing on this :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:40, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Article feedback request for comments scheduled to end Thursday, February 21

Hi. This is just a gentle reminder that Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Article feedback is scheduled to wrap up on Thursday, February 21. Any and all editors are encouraged to participate in the discussion. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:38, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

As long as new comments are still being added, I don't see any harm in leaving it open a while longer, as Fabrice Florin requested. Wbm1058 (talk) 16:39, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Why not allow AFT/5 on disambiguation pages?

I found the tool moderately interesting on the household hardware article, but now would like to see it on hardware, to get feedback on whether readers are finding the specific type of hardware that they're searching for. I put that page in Category:Article Feedback 5 Additional Articles, but nothing happened. What's up? Wbm1058 (talk) 17:43, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

We disabled it initially because AFT4 wasn't on disambiguation pages (for obvious reasons - the sort of feedback it solicited wouldn't have been particularly helpful). We can certainly turn it on on disambigs if people want, but the current RfC suggests that turning it on at all on this project is unlikely :/. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:21, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for enabling it on hardware, a disambiguation which continues to draw ~750 hits per day. These must be coming externally from searches. I've stayed on top of new links to this dab, which are added fairly frequently, by promptly disambiguating them. Will be interesting to see what comments we might get at this point, as the disambiguation is now pretty well organized and complete. I wonder if all of these ~750 hits are real people, or if any are robots? Wbm1058 (talk) 16:21, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Another Feature Request

The version of AFT5 that I like the most is presented here as a wireframe mockup of what its filename currently calls AFTv5.10.20, Option 1. However, this dialog seems to me like it should have its sections rearranged and slightly redesigned in order for them to attain maximum effectiveness as a cohesive whole. May I first propose that the first section – i.e.: the one that asks users, "Did you find what you were looking for?" – have its answer-selection interface be changed from one based on buttons, which to me look somewhat final, into one that utilizes radio buttons? After all, most users, including myself, would expect clicking on a button to initiate an action that would probably lead away from the current article, and I don't think that we want readers to become confused over this. Second, might I add that having a text box between the two lists interrupts the dialog's look, sending it a position that I personally might describe as teetering on the edge of user-interface design's equivalent of a cliff above a sea of possible chaos? Moving it below the collapsible section labeled 'Tell us more (optional)' would preserve the dialog's uniformity. Finally, shouldn't the label system used for associating the comment box with the context of its contents resemble the tab styles used in switching between the multiple categories of feedback posts? I think that this kind of uniformity might make sense.
RandomDSdevel (talk) 16:30, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

We tried this option (and many more; we did a lot of A/B testing) and found it simply wasn't efficient; people didn't use some, and submitted more junk through others. We picked the current design because it minimised the stupid ;p. At this stage we're largely wrapping up features development, I'm afraid. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:24, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Oh, hmph; I prefer clicking stars to writing comments and was wondering how the Article Feedback Tool might accommodate everyone while still remaining useful. Could you show me where my idea, or, rather, its original version, might have been discussed and mocked up? — Preceding unsigned comment added by BCG999 (talk • contribs) 18:12, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, you've seen where it was mocked up ;p. I'll poke Fabrice, who made it, and see if he can elucidate on why this option wasn't used. I suspect the massively increased barrier to entry was our rationale, but it was rather a long time ago. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:48, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Could I see it mocked up with my suggested changes implemented, or do we have to ask this 'Fabrice' person to do that for us? I intended the middle 'Tell us more (optional)' part to be collapsible…

RandomDSdevel (talk) 18:08, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

This 'Fabrice' person is our product manager and is probably busy. I'm not sure what you're asking at this point - for the reasoning behind us not using the original mockup, for a mockup of your design, for a mockup of and research into your design...? On the second and third options, as I've said we're pretty much wrapped up and have shifted to getting the final version out and distributing it to other wikis; I'm afraid we're not looking into altering the feedback form so prominently at this point (it would require buyin from the english, french, german, hungarian and swedish communities) so it doesn't seem like an optimal way to spend time to mock it up :/. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:57, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

How about for the next version of the Article Feedback Tool?

– RandomDSdevel (talk) 00:20, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Article Feedback RfC closed

Thank you to everyone who participated in the AFT5 RfC, regardless of which way you voted. We are grateful for the amount of time people spent giving us feedback on its features, advantages and disadvantages; as volunteers, giving up this much of your time to talk to us is not a trivial thing. We continue to believe that an article feedback tool is a theoretical net gain, and hope that the 'opt-in' deployment we have compromised at will give people the benefits of AFT5 without many associated costs. If you want to have AFT5 deployed on an article you watch, simply add Category:Article Feedback 5 to the page and the tool will automatically appear.

In the meantime, we are busy planning deployments for many other Wikimedia projects where the communities have reached consensus in favour of the tool, including trial runs on the German, French and Hungarian projects - you can look at our deployments plan here. If you are aware of other wikis where AFT5 might be useful or appreciated, please drop a note on my talkpage so that we can discuss it, seek local consensus and investigate deployment options.

If you are interested in the other software we are currently building, you can sign up to the engagement mailing list. Our next project on enwiki will be Echo, a new notifications system. We hope you will give us feedback on it, as well; a lot of the discussions we've had about AFT5 have informed the things we're looking at for Echo as well as Flow :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:21, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

New version of Article Feedback

Hi, everyone! We're getting ready to release an updated version of Article Feedback (AFT5) on the English, German and French Wikipedias in coming days. I would like to give you a quick update on this multi-day deployment, which started today and will continue through Thursday, March 21 (for the French Wikipedia release).

We have now removed the older version of AFT5, which will no longer be available on the English and German Wikipedias for at least 24 hours (depending on how long it takes for the old feedback data to be merged on the new database schema). We will post here as soon as the new version is up.

In the meantime, you can try out the new version on prototype by following the instructions on this testing page.

This new version includes many new features requested by editors and other stakeholders over the past few months:
• Better feedback filters: surface good feedback, hide useless comments.
• Simpler moderation tools for editors: moderating feedback is now easier and faster.
• Separate reader moderation tools: encourages readers to moderate with their own tools.
• Feedback link on articles: shows up if there is useful feedback for your article.
• Auto-archive comments: remove comments that are not moderated after a while.
• Discuss on talk page: share useful feedback with editors on talk page.

As requested in the recent AFT5 RfC, this new tool will only be available on a limited number of articles on the English Wikipedia, in these categories: 'Category:Article_Feedback_5' and 'Category:Article_Feedback_5_Additional_Articles'. If you would like to get reader feedback for articles you watch, you are welcome to add that first category on your pages, anytime you like -- and the AFT feedback tool will be added on your page when we deploy the new version.

We'll keep you posted on our progress on this talk page in coming days. To learn more about this tool's deployments in other languages, check out this 2013 release plan.

Thanks again to everyone who helped us create Article Feedback! We hope these new features will help you improve Wikipedia with useful suggestions from our readers! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 19:37, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for improving the tool. I'm sure the other communities will make good use of it. Perhaps the English WP could revisit this tool in a year or two and see if circumstances have changed. I still think it could be really useful. --Noleander (talk) 20:23, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Noleander. I appreciate your kind words -- as well as your thoughtful suggestions in the RfC, which helped us improve the new version of the tool (e.g. the new 'Discuss on talk page' feature), as well as inform our plans for future products like Flow. We will definitely keep you all posted on how this tool is received in other communities, and would love to re-open an discussion with the English Wikipedia community once we have more data on its effectiveness overseas. To be continued ... Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 18:44, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

AFT5 Release Update 1

We are now in the process of converting all feedback posted on the English Wikipedia to a new database schema, and this is taking longer than expected. As a result, we need to postpone the re-deployment of Article Feedback on the English Wikipedia to Tuesday, March 19th by about 20:00 UTC, once last year's data conversion is complete (it's about 50% done as of this writing). We're sorry for this delay, and will let you know as soon as the new version of the tool is ready for testing on the English Wikipedia. This means the current tool will remain disabled until Tuesday, sadly. :( But you are welcome to try out the new version on prototype, as described in this testing page.

In the meantime, we are now aiming to re-deploy the new AFT5 tool to German Wikipedia today (on about 13k articles), if all goes well. We will keep you appraised on our progress. We also plan to deploy AFT5 on the French Wikipedia by the end of next week (just a dozen articles at first, going up to 42k articles in April). Stay tuned for more ... Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 18:44, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Feedback watchlist changes

I've just found my article feedback watchlist has undergone some major changes, so I came here.

For anyone who like me was using ?filter=comment in a bookmark, this must now be changed to ?filter=allcomment to get a similar effect. ?filter=comment now only displays featured comments, which is none at all on my watchlist (it seems I'm the only person to look at the feedback for the stuff on my watchlist).

All of the feedback for non-mainspace pages has disappeared. Has this been deleted? Or is there some other URL parameter that needs to be added to browse feedback for non-mainspace? I've tried namespace= and ns=, but neither seems to have any effect. (Is there any documentation for the URL parameters?) – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 00:40, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I got an email from MWF this morning saying they were going to be doing maintenance or upgrading to the tool. I'm in bed on my BlackBerry Curve 9330/6.0.0.706 and don't have access to the details at the moment, but I would be happy to share what they send me in about 10 hours when I get the my computer at work — T13   ( C • M • Click to learn how to view this signature as intended ) 01:12, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Technical 13 is correct; PartTimeGnome, see Fabrice's comment immediately above :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:22, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

When I try to look at my feedback watchlist, I get the message "Article Feedback page not enabled for this page." I'm guessing/hoping this is due to the current maintenance activity, and not an indication that I need to do something opt in to the feedback watchlist. --Orlady (talk) 15:41, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Should just be maintenance, yep; I'll post a notice when the new code is up, and if it reoccurs after then we can look for the problem :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:34, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

"Article Feedback page not enabled for this page"

Continuing the above subthread, I'm getting the above message now and have been for some time -- not sure how long but seems to me it's been a few weeks. I have a vague recollection I might have changed some preferences a while ago but not sure on that either. More info: Actually, after clicking (from Watchlist) "Feedback from my watched pages", I see a page full of feedback, but after a split second it's all replaced by this "not enabled" thing. Ideas? EEng (talk) 18:20, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi EEng, sorry for this inconvenience. This message is caused by the fact that we had to disable the Article Feedback v5 tool completely on English Wikipedia to complete the feedback data conversion and solve database cache issues, as described below. We now expect to re-enable AFT5 on En-wiki next Tuesday, if all goes well. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 20:18, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity... was I supposed to know that somehow? EEng (talk) 21:44, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

I sent out a notification to all AFT5 users - although I think my bot may have balked at your page for some reason; my apologies :(. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:57, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

How did your bot identify AFT5 users? I also did not receive a notification (hence my surprise when it broke). If the bot was only looking at people who have submitted or moderated feedback, it won't have seen me. I just read the feedback and implement any good ideas I see.

It would probably have been better to leave a holding message on the various special pages associated with AFT5, so passive users like me would know what's going on. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 23:48, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

I was about to predict that I can't be the only person whose time was wasted trying to figure out what's going on, and... so it seems. Why couldn't the Article Feedback page not enabled message be something that actually says what's going on? EEng (talk) 00:08, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Sorry to both of you - yeah, I pulled the logs from the database and used that to identify usernames. The message is automated and (I think) built into the software, so to update it to reflect changing circumstances would itself require deployments. The message also appears on articles which, well, don't have AFT5 at all, even when it's enabled, which would cause some confusion. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:00, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Sorry to press, but I'm not talking about articles, but the Feedback from my watched pages link on my watchlist. A certain amount of my time, and others' time (not just here, but at another noticeboard which then pointed me here), was spent trying to figure out what's going on. And I'm sure lots of others are frustratedly (if that's a word) checking their Preferences and so on to see if they checked some wrong box there, so that at 10 minutes * 10,000 editors = quite a lot of wasted editor time. I realize -- trust me -- the complexity of managing this kind of software effort, particularly the way in which early design decisions bind one uncomfortably downstream, but in the end that's not a very good excuse. It shouldn't be very hard to make it so we click Feedback from my watched pages and get some kind of message saying "Feedback temporarily disabled -- see [this page]", and if it is very hard, I'd like to hear that attention is being given to make it not-so-hard should similar circumstances arise in future.

Anyway, I'm still fundamentally puzzled. As mentioned above I do see the page of feedback for a split second before it's replaced by that message. Maybe that feedback suggests some useful change I could be making to an article (though, sad to say, it's been my experience that this seldom if ever has been the case, which makes all this wasted time that much more tragic). Why can't I be allowed to see it?

It's Saturday and you're probably working the weekend "up to your ass in alligators", as they say. But still, inquiring minds want to know.

EEng (talk) 17:36, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Then I'm as confused as you are :/. I'll poke the devs and see why on earth that is the error message. Seems rather odd. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 07:22, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

AFT5 Release Update 2

I am happy to report that we deployed an updated version of Article feedback v5 on the German Wikipedia this week, with many of the new features described above. The release went well and the tool is now being tested by German community members. You can see these new features in action on this central feedback page, where feedback from about 13,000 German Wikipedia articles is being collected. (If you would like to test the new features on the German Wikipedia, please restrict your posts and moderations to this minor article). If you prefer to test in English on our prototype site, visit this testing page. We've updated our help pages on MediaWiki to describe all the new features that are being deployed.

Next, we plan to deploy Article feedback v5 on both the English and French Wikipedias next Tuesday, March 26. Unfortunately, the English Wikipedia release had to be delayed so we could complete the feedback data conversion (now done) -- as well as disable the 'feedback from watched pages' feature (which is causing serious database cache issues). Note that AFT5 will only be enabled on an opt-in basis on the English Wikipedia, as requested by the community in last month's RfC; but a number of editors have already started to re-enable AFT5 for articles they are watching, and we hope the tool will continue to help them and others improve Wikipedia based on reader feedback in coming months.

Thanks for your patience during this complex, multi-site deployment. We'll post another update after we deploy the new features on the English and French Wikipedias next week. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 20:18, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Will the feedback watchlist be re-enabled at some point, or are the database cache issues unresolvable? – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:25, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

It will be, and they're not :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 03:15, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Hello PartTimeGnome, I am sorry to say that it doesn't look like we will be able to re-enable the feedback watchlist feature any time soon. The many database queries required to support this feature would require some form of personal cache for each user; at this point, we have not found a practical solution for continuously updating such a personal cache. So I'm afraid this feature will no longer be available when we re-deploy the tool on English Wikipedia, at least not in the near-term. But we will keep looking for solutions, as we fully understand the importance of this feature. Thanks for your understanding. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 18:31, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

AFT5 Release Update 3

We are very sorry for the delay in getting the AFT5 tool back up on the English Wikipedia. The issue that is holding us up is outside of our direct control, and related to a site-wide data migration from our old data center in Florida to the new one in Virginia -- which impacts many other applications as well. Our operations and platform teams have just now come up with a solution to this issue. So we will try again to re-deploy the tool in our next deployment window, hopefully this coming Tuesday. We will post on this talk page as soon as the tool is back up. On a more positive note, we released the updated Article Feedback v5 tool on the French Wikipedia a couple weeks ago, for evaluation by their community on this small sample of articles. We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who made this release possible, especially community volunteer Benoît Evelin -- as well as Denis Barthel, se4598 and TMg for the German release. We are very grateful to them and many others for their invaluable contributions -- and for their detailed feedback on this testing discussion page, which is helping us improve the tool for everyone. Stay tuned for our next update. Thanks again for your patience and understanding about the English re-deployment delays. Rest assured that this is as frustrating for us as it is for you, but we will get through it ... Onward! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 18:31, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Feedback and Audit

Hi, is there anyway to retrieve historic feedback from the Cararact page. I helped with a recent overhaul and am trying to compare feedback before and after as part of clinical audit within my hospital department. Thanks Aspheric (talk) 02:28, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Does the Cataract page no longer have AFT5? If so, we're going to release it as a data dump (hopefully) soon. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 05:11, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

It used to be top right on the talk page, ( a little bubble would come up ). I've tried changing browsers but can't find it any more. Are there any other pages I can use as a test to see if it's just a problem with my computer ? Aspheric (talk) 16:22, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi Aspheric. We're sorry that you are not able to see historic reader feedback for the Cataract page at this time. This issue should be easy to resolve, once we deploy the new version of the tool next week. At that time, you should be able to access that feedback again, in one of two ways: 1) if your article already had the 'Article_feedback_5' category, you should be able to access the feedback again by clicking on the 'View reader feedback' link at the top right of the article talk page, as you did before; 2) if you can't see that link, simply add the 'Article_Feedback_5' category to re-enable the feedback tool on that page, and you should be all set. Please check this AFT5 talk page on Wednesday to confirm that the new version of the tool has been deployed, then try one of these methods again. Sorry for this temporary inconvenience ;o) Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 20:10, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Hello, i'm afraid that the feedback tool still isn't working. How exactly do I add the 'Article Feedback 5' category to the page ? Thanks Aspheric (talk) 09:56, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

As the section at the bottom explains, the tool is not currently deployed. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:09, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

opt-in working

Hello! Is the opt-in option working? I'm not seeing the feedback form on the article I tried to include (Roddy Doyle) or on any of the other pages it's supposed to be included on. I tried purging, no dice. Thx, -- phoebe / (talk to me) 19:13, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Yep; see two sections above. To add new features we had to take AFT5 down briefly - unfortunately some problems with the deployment means that this will not be completed until *knocks wood* Thursday. Terribly sorry for the disruption :(. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:25, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, sorry for not reading closely. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 19:53, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

That's alright; sorry for the delays! :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:59, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Status

Is it working now? Not working? Only working for pages listed in the cat? When I visit pages that are listed in Category:Article Feedback 5, I find pages like Modafinil, but I do not find a feedback box at the end of the article, and I do not find a link to feedback on the article's talk page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:21, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

At the moment it's down; we're hoping that we can release today and have it work (crossing our fingers!). Whether it does or doesn't, I'll send out a newsletter telling people what's happening at our end and what they can expect. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:27, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Another update

Hey all. I'm sorry to say that some bugs have resulted in us still not being able to deploy the latest version to en-wiki - although one advantage is that, because it's functioning on the German and French Wikipedias, the eventual release here will contain fixes for several newly-detected bugs without us having to bother you with them :P. At the moment, we're talking about several weeks of wait, I'm afraid - although the fix itself is not complex, it's dependent on Platform freeing up time to make and deploy it, and they're currently rather busy. I'll let you know when I have more news. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:37, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Article Feedback Opt-in Version Now on English Wikipedia

New moderation tools and filters.

Moderation tools close-up.

At long last, I'm happy to say that we just released an updated version of Article Feedback (AFT5) on the English Wikipedia today.

This new version of AFT5 is now available on an opt-in basis to editors who would like to get reader feedback for articles they watch, as recommended in the recent community RfC.

How to get feedback for your articles
To enable feedback on your articles, simply add this 'Article_Feedback_5' category on those pages -- and the AFT feedback form will appear at the bottom of the articles. To view more feedback, visit the Central Feedback page -- or check out this list of pages where editors have already enabled the Article Feedback tool (click on the feedback link at the top of their article talk pages).

New features
The Article Feedback tool now includes many new features, which we developed earlier this year, to reduce the editor workload and surface more useful feedback. Here are some of the key features we're introducing in this version:

• Better feedback filters: surface good feedback, hide useless comments.
This feature now provides new filters on the feedback page, as requested by community members. The 'Featured' filter is shown by default and only list posts marked as 'useful' or 'helpful' by moderators. The 'Unreviewed' filter lists all posts that have not yet been moderated. These separate filters surface the best feedback in the default view, and make it harder for a casual user to see feedback that has not yet been moderated. If you are an editor, click on 'More filters' and check out some of the other filters to see comments which have already been reviewed (such as 'Resolved', 'No action needed' or 'Inappropriate').

• Simpler moderation tools for editors: moderating feedback is now easier and faster.
Based on community feedback, we've streamlined the moderation tools, to help you review new feedback more effectively. To try out this new feature, click on the 'Unreviewed' filter on the feedback page: the new moderation tools on the right now make it very easy to mark comments as 'useful', 'resolved', 'no action needed' or 'inappropriate', with a single click. In the interest of time, you are no longer required to add a note for each moderation (but can do so by clicking on 'Add note'). If you change your mind, simply click 'Undo', then select an other moderation tool. Moderated feedback is then moved into the appropriate queue, which editors can view under 'More filters'.

• Separate reader tools: encourages readers to moderate with their own tools.
To simplify the user interface for editors, all the tools you need are now included in the moderation panel on the right. Readers have their own set of tools, which let them mark comments as 'helpful' or 'unhelpful', or 'flag' abusive comments. These reader tools are now only shown to anonymous users (and new editors), below each feedback post. This lets them pre-moderate comments on their own, to reduce the workload for editors: for example, inappropriate feedback can be removed quickly, if flagged by multiple users.

• Discuss on talk page: share useful feedback with editors on talk page.
This feature makes it easy to promote a feedback post to the article talk page, so that editors can discuss it in the same place where they already have conversations about article improvements. To test this feature, click on the 'Discuss on talk page' link for any feedback post that has been marked as useful and which you think deserves to be brought to the attention of other editors. For feedback that is not deemed useful, we provide another tool, 'Contact this user', which lets you post a comment on the user page of the reader who posted the comment. This feature is intended as the first step towards a tighter talk page integration that could be continued in future releases.

In coming weeks, we plan to introduce a few more features, such as:
• Feedback link on articles: shows up if there is useful feedback for your article.
• Auto-archive comments: remove comments that are not moderated after a while.

To learn more about these features, check out these two pages:
• Testing page: helpful tips on how to test the new tool.
• Editor help page: frequently-asked questions about this tool.

Besides these new features, we have completely overhauled the back-end database for this tool, so that it can scale up to support millions of comments per month for all the wiki projects who want to use it. This is one of the reasons why it took us so long to re-enable the tool on the English Wikipedia, where we had to update all earlier comments to the new data format. We apologize for that long delay, which was also due to side-effects from our recent migration to a new data center for Wikipedia.

Please let us know what you think of this updated version. If you encounter any technical issues, you are welcome to file a bug report here on Bugzilla.

Next steps
We are now wrapping up development for this project, and will collect community responses for the next few months before building any more features. But your recommendations will be invaluable when we are ready to start work on the next version -- based on upcoming community votes on the French and German Wikipedias later this year. We'd also like to take this opportunity to thank all the community members on the German and French Wikipedias, who worked beyond the call of duty to help us test and improve this tool, so we could redeploy it in much better shape on the English Wikipedia.

For now, we hope that you will find these new features useful. Our goal for this release was to surface the best feedback from our readers, while making it easier for you to moderate their comments, so you can focus on improving your articles.

Thanks again for your patience and helpful recommendations throughout this development process. Onward! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 22:23, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Where to gather current feedback?

The "Discuss on talk page" feature is grand. I think that addresses many of the concerns of people who thought it was premature to roll this out. A remaining area of concern is with the way commenters were prompted: it would be nice to include a flexible way for communities to alter the template that the AFT textarea is filled with. For instance, we could try a template that asks for a relevant citation.

I hope another public discussion about how this is working - including a summary of its progress on the German and French wikipedias - is started in the coming month. – SJ + 00:34, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Iirc the template exists in the MediaWiki namespace. On the German and French projects - there is a public discussion about how things are working there, on the French and German wikipedias :). It's been going for several months now. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 00:43, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Feedback from my watched pages?

I logged out, cleared my cache, logged back in, and still don't see the "Feedback from my watched pages" link directly on my Watchlist page. Is this a bug or has this feature been removed? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 01:08, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Hello GoingBatty, I am afraid we had to disable the feedback watchlist feature, for technical reasons. The many database queries needed to support this feature do not scale well across millions of comments and were slowing down our servers. We know how important this feature is, and will keep looking for ways to re-enable it in coming months, when we have more development resources. Thanks for your understanding during this limited testing period. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 08:55, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

So they way we find out if there's feedback on pages in which we have a special interest is... how? EEng (talk) 12:12, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

If an article is in Category:Article Feedback 5 (e.g. Stephen King), then the top of the corresponding talk page has a link that says "View reader feedback", which takes you to Special:ArticleFeedbackv5/Stephen King. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GoingBatty (talk • contribs) 16:39, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi EEng. Indeed, if an article already has the 'Article_Feedback_5' or 'Article_Feedback_5_Additional_Articles' categories, a link at the top of its talk page will take you to the corresponding feedback page, as GoingBatty said. If an article doesn't have any AFT5 category, there will be no link on the talk page, but it may still have some feedback collected before the AFT5 tool was disabled; you can access that feedback at this URL: 'Special:ArticleFeedbackv5/<article_name>' (you are also welcome to re-enable feedback for that article by adding an AFT5 category). Starting next week, we plan to display a more prominent feedback link on article pages, that will show up below the title, if there is featured feedback for articles that have the AFT category. I hope this helps. Please let us know if you have any more questions or comments. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 17:13, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

No it doesn't help, and yes I have some comments. The idea that an editor must visit an article to know whether there's feedback is completely absurd. The fact that you can post the above with a straight face (so to speak) and without apology shows that this team is completely disconnected from the way editors work.

It was bad enough that one had to click a special "Feedback for my watched changes" link -- the existence of feedbach should just show up on the watchlist like everything else. Why didn't you just have feedback go onto the Talk page, or a special subpage of Talk (as suggested here) so it shows up in the watchlist? When I said (in that same post) that "All this accessory apparatus storing feedback in some mysterious place seems unnecessary" I thought I was merely pointing out a suboptimal-in-retrospect design choice, not stumbling on a nest of incompetents.

I pray someone can help me see this in some other way, but it's hard to conceive of what other explanation there could be. What a colossal waste of resources! The rest of us are volunteers but you're paid to know what you're doing. I have a mind to bring this up at a higher level within WMF.

The first thing I would discuss in such a communication is the extent to which your next post here shows any glimmer of comprehension of how seriously fucked up this situation is.

EEng (talk) 01:37, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

EEng, please try to remain civil. Do you have any idea the sheer volume of feedback some articles get? Having it posted to the talkpage would swiftly overwhelm the talkpage - ditto having it appear in the watchlist. Having it posted to a sub-page of the talkpage, one that consists merely of a normal, sandbox-like wiki page, would make moderation incredibly hard, particularly on high-volume articles. Fabrice's comment makes clear that we are actively looking for better ways to make feedback accessible - coming back and slamming him for that seems like it's probably not going to help. I have no problem with people taking issue with our design choices; I find it offensive, however, that you would immediately jump to "they can't have considered these problems, what idiots".

Feel free to bring it up "at a higher level within WMF". I would suggest that when you do so, you try to be more polite about it. I take no issue with people going "you screwed this up", but I'm confused as to why you think the way you're phrasing things above is helping. Do you think people are more or less likely to listen to you if you refer to them as a "nest of incompetents"? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:35, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

For articles that have feedback but are not in one of the AF5 categories, should we have a bot add the AF5 category, so te existing feedback is easier to get to? GoingBatty (talk) 23:36, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, GoingBatty. We definitely want to provide a better solution to make you aware when there is feedback for your articles. We would rather avoid having a bot add the category to tens of thousands of articles right now, but are exploring a simpler solution which would show the feedback links on all articles that have feedback. Our proposal is to show the feedback link on the talk page for all articles that have feedback, even if the category has not been added for that article. We would also do the same for the upcoming feedback link on article pages, showing it for all articles that have featured feedback. This may not be a perfect solution, but at least would make it easier for editors to see if there is feedback for articles they work on. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 16:19, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I am pleased to see that the AF5 tool has been re-enabled. It remains unfortunate that there is no easy way of tracking Article Feedback on Articles that I have given, or received feedback though. Is that correct, that neither use case is possible at the current time? I wasn't sure. Second question: What is the proper procedure for feedback that is positive, but has no substantive content? Since the AF5 tool prompts with "Did you find what you were looking for?", some users will say, "Yes! It is perfect!" or "Found what I needed" or even just "Thank you." Does the tool collect that information and aggregate it? Is there any action item required when I review articles with feedback, and see those entries? Thank you! --FeralOink (talk) 13:38, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi FeralOink: Yes, you've guessed it — there is no easy way to check whether feedback has been posted to any articles you're keeping an eye on. Right now, you have to go to each and every article, and check the feedback link from the article's talk page. Not ideal, by any stretch of the imagination! The software boffins are reportedly trying to come up with a better system; hopefully they'll find one soon! As to your second question, the proper procedure for positive feedback that includes no substantive suggestion for improvement is to mark it as "No action needed". It will still show up in the list, so those who've been working on the article will see the "pat on the back". MeegsC (talk) 14:52, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, MeegsC! You confirmed what I suspected for my first question, and answered my second question in full. I like the Article Feedback Tool. I hope it will be useful and sufficiently cost-effective that it survives. --FeralOink (talk) 19:37, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Unintuitive opacity change

On the Special:ArticleFeedbackv5 page, there's an interface on the right to take action on comments ('Useful', 'Resolved', 'Undo', etc.) but the opacity change is a bit weird: the icon is faded out when hovered upon (or over the associated text). This is a bit unsettling: Traditionally, on web sites, when a change in opacity occurs, it's the other way around: elements are originally faded out, and they become opaque and more visible when hovered upon. I think it would make sense to reverse the current behavior here, to be in line with the traditional behavior. guillom 14:27, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

You are right. However, I think the current solution is a very good compromise. Reversing the opacity would make the symbols look ugly. I suggest a color change instead. Or even simpler: Change the hover state from opacity: 0.4 to opacity: 0.2. This will make it more clear. Pau? --TMg 12:33, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

With a lower opacity there is a risk of the actions looking as disabled (in part because of the gray background). I would propose a transition from opacity:0.9 (initial state) to opacity: 1 (hover state). It is a subtle highlighting but since links are already underlined when hovering this may be enough. Icons will be looking a 10% lighter than what they used to, but cannot be misunderstood as disabled. Pginer (talk) 15:40, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Text for IP comments

• There is an inconsistency between feedback posted from an IPv4 address and from an IPv6 address. The former is presented like so: "63.76.20.66 did not find what they were looking for", while the latter reads: "A reader did not find what they were looking for. Posted anonymously from 2602:306:c474:a8b0:d09f:1940:8ec." I don't see a reason to have a different presentation and text for IPv6; in my opinion, the text should be the same.
• Also, I'd avoid using the term "anonymously"; IPs are far from anonymous, and actually reveal more than a username.
• Last, in the case of the IPv4 text, it feels weird to read that "[An IP address] did not find what they were looking for". An IP address isn't a person. An IP address isn't looking for anything; one of the person using that IP address is. It's like saying "101 Market Street didn't find what they were looking for".

For all these reasons, I'd recommend using this text in both cases (IPv4 and IPv6): "A reader did not find what they were looking for. Posted from [IP address]."

guillom 14:27, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Archived comments?

In the "user's manual", it talks about the system automatically archiving comments after some period of time (based on the number of unreviewed comments that have accrued), and then mentions that editors have the ability to review automatically archived comments and sort them as per "regular" comments. But I can't see how to get to those archived comments. I notice that scores of the comments on Golden-crowned Sparrow have disappeared in the past two days, so I'm assuming they were "archived". Any suggestions? MeegsC (talk) 15:04, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Have you tried checking under 'hidden'? I think that's the (non-optimal) solution we came up with. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:37, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

HI MeegsC, we have not yet turned on the 'auto-archive' feature, but expect to do so next week. For now, check the filters under 'More', as suggested by Okeyes (WMF). Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 17:32, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Integrate with Notifications?

Have you considered integrating with Wikipedia:Notifications? For example, giving an option to receive a notification when someone gives feedback for an article you created? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 23:00, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Yep; it's on the Notifications to-do list :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:41, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Watching feedback?

Hi, is there a way to watch the feedback received in the pages I'm watching using AFT5? If there is a way I can't find it. I guess editors are not supposed to remember to click manually "View reader feedback" periodically on those pages? Other than this, I love this feature. Thank you!--QuimGil (talk) 16:39, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi QuimGil, thanks for your inquiry and kind words about AFT5. Unfortunately, we had to disable the 'feedback from your watchlist' feature, for technical reasons. The many database queries needed to support this feature do not scale well across millions of comments and were slowing down our servers. We know how important it is to be able to see feedback about pages you care about all in one place -- and will keep looking for an alternative way to support this use case. One possibility would be to give you the option to get notifications when feedback is posted for a page you started (or when feedback is found useful for pages on your watchlist). Would that solution be helpful to you? Thanks for your understanding during this testing period, when our development resources are very limited. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 23:49, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

There are about 200 pages in en.wiki that I watch and I'm willing to help improving. I haven't created any of them, so the features for pages I have created are of little use for selfish me in this context (but I see their point and I welcome them). Getting a notification for feedback found useful in a page that I follow is also good, of course. But here is the problem: in order to evaluate a piece of feedback as useful you need to be aware that it has landed in the first place. I am the typical editor that would assess promptly feedback received in the pages I watch, in order to raise the attention of others. But if that implies that I have to remember what pages in my watchlist have AFT5 enabled and check them manually every now and then... well that won't work.--QuimGil (talk) 05:43, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree with QuimGil on this point. If no-one knows that feedback has been given it is wasting the user's time. I don't have time to go through a hundred or so pages every few days just in case someone has left feedback, when the usual answer is no, and the usual feedback is not useful. A watchlist facility is an essential part of a useful feedback system. In fact from an engineering point of view, a measurement is not feedback until it is connected to the control system where it has an effect on the system. This is a crippled feedback system. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 10:11, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Improvements to "View reader feedback" in Talk pages

As far as I can see the "View reader feedback »" link is static and always present when AFT5 is enabled. Some ideas:

• Activate the link only when there is feedback. It is quite frustrating to click every now and then only to see that nobody has left any feedback yet.
• Show me how many comments are there / since my last visit. This would be ideal. "View reader feedback (15, 7 new)" or something.
• Are there items requiring an action? Let's highlight this, then. 1 comment with action required matters more than 17 comments requiring no action.

--QuimGil (talk) 05:50, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

That's a bug, it's being fixed. (2) would require substantial architecture changes; I want to make clear here that AFT5 is pretty much 'done'. It's not something we're dedicating serious resourcing to; we're fixing bugs, but not looking into the development of substantial features. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:44, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Feedback link

A few days I noticed we had a feedback link on all talk pages. This took me a while to work this out as I spent time looking for the category on the page ... (This could be a good idea; I was considering a template based on {{Old peer review}} to place on articles that had feedback, but I was considering turning off article feedback.) However, now I can't see the link on any talk page. Edgepedia (talk) 12:07, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Yup, it seems to have vanished, after working well for a short while. Any news?Lacunae (talk) 19:40, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi Edgepedia and Lacunae, sorry for this inconvenience. We had to pull back the feedback link on the talk page last week, due to a bug. It is now back, along with a separate article feedback link, as described in the update below. We hope these links will work for you now. Enjoy ... Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 01:20, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Article feedback update (May 2013)

Feedback link on article pages

Hi folks, here's a quick update on what we've been working on for the Article Feedback project in recent weeks.

Here are some of the revisions we deployed on the English, French and German Wikipedias this week:

• New feedback links on the article and on the talk page, with slightly different behaviors:
  • talk page link: shown to anyone, when there is any feedback for articles that have the AFT category (this was temporarily removed, so we could fix a bug)
  • article page link: shown to editors only, when there is 'featured' feedback for that article (read the full specification)
• Updated article feedback form with new privacy statement letting anonymous users know they will be identified with their IP addresses (T45237)

Most of these revisions were made based on community feedback and we would love to hear if they work for you. If you come across any bugs, please report them here, or post them on Bugzilla.

We're now focusing on these final features, most of which were also requested by community members:

• Enable or disable feedback on a page (see feature requirement)
• Auto-archive unreviewed comments (see feature requirement)
• Final UI tweaks on the feedback page (less visual clutter in the header, clearer labels)
• Updated metrics dashboards (with new moderation actions)

Last but not least, we are also considering a new 'feedback notification' that would let you know when new feedback is added on pages you watch or started, as discussed in the above section.

These final features should be deployed in the next few weeks, as soon as we get them code-reviewed and tested. Once these features have been released, we will wait for the results of the community votes on the French and German Wikipedias before considering further development on this project. We hope you find these new features helpful, and will post another update here once they are all deployed.

Thanks again to all the community members who helped us create this new editor engagement tool. We are very grateful for all your help, and look forward to releasing this tool more widely on projects that want it in coming months. Onward! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 01:16, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Can't find mark helpful

So, I was reviewing some feedback, and I see a useless post. I want to mark it unhelpful. I already marked it unsuitable, but I want to find the helpful/non-helpful button. I can't find it anywhere! It says that it's at the bottom of the page in the help, but it does not show up. Could anyone help me? Darrman (talk) 10:24, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

The help page is outdated; I'll add that to my to-do list :/. Unsuitable == unhelpful. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:52, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

A quick way to enable or disable feedback on your pages

Click 'Request feedback' to enable reader comments

Hi everyone. I'm happy to say we just deployed a new way to enable or disable feedback on any page.

With this new enable/disable tool, editors can quickly request feedback when they are looking for reader suggestions on articles -- or disable feedback if there are already too many comments to process.

This new feature supports the following use cases:

• Enable feedback from the article page
• Disable feedback from the feedback page
• Re-enable feedback from the feedback page

These tools are outlined below, and described in more detail in these feature requirements.

• Enable feedback from the article page
  

Editors who want reader suggestions for their pages can enable feedback for articles without any comments by clicking on a "Request feedback" link in the toolbox section of the left sidebar (see screenshot to the right). This will cause the feedback form to appear at the bottom of that page, inviting reader comments.

• Disable feedback from the feedback page
  

Click the 'cog' icon to disable feedback

Editors who want to disable feedback for any article can quickly do this on the feedback page, by clicking on the new 'cog' icon at the top right of the page, then clicking on "Disable feedback on this page" (see thumbnail).

• Re-enable feedback from the feedback page
  

Click 'Enable feedback' to get more reader comments

Editors who want to re-enable feedback for any article can quickly do this on the feedback page as well, by clicking on the "Enable feedback" button at the top of the page (see thumbnail). Note that if you are an administrator, the button will say 'Change Protection' and will display the Protect article tool, where you can enable (or disable) feedback for different user groups in the Article Feedback panel.

Please use this tool responsibly and only enable feedback if you plan to monitor it periodically, to avoid increasing the moderation workload for other editors. To learn more about the enable/disable tool, check our feature requirements.

This new feature was deployed yesterday on the English, French and German Wikipedias, along with some UI tweaks to simplify the feedback page. It was developed by Matthias Mullie and designed by Pau Giner -- in close collaboration with TMg and other German Wikipedia community members, to whom we are deeply grateful.

Please let us know how this tool works for you. If you come across any bugs, please report them here, or post them on Bugzilla. Enjoy! ... Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 00:26, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

@Fabrice Florin (WMF): - Thanks for providing this information. I'm glad the team is working to improve the article feedback mechanism. Could you please clarify what you mean when you say "their articles"? Do you mean editors can only enable feedback for articles they've created, or editors can enable feedback for ANY article, or something else?

Also, does this make Category:Article Feedback 5 obsolete? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 03:03, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

It's not limited to articles you created, of course. The idea is: If you want to work on an article (no matter who created it) and you want feedback, then you can easily enable or disable the tool (for unregistered users) without adding or removing categories. The new feature will make the categories obsolete some day but currently they still work. --TMg 10:02, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, @GoingBatty:. As TMg said, you can enable or disable feedback on any article for which you would like reader suggestions, even if you did not create the article (I tweaked the update above to make that clearer). The AFT categories will continue to work, but we encourage folks to start using this new tool instead, for consistency. Also, we would like to remind folks to use this tool responsibly and only enable feedback if you plan to monitor it periodically -- to avoid increasing the moderation workload for other editors. Hope this tool will make it easier for you to improve articles based on reader feedback. Cheers. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 16:34, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Where can I see how often the AFT5 is activated/how many articles allow feedback, over time, especially since opt-in by registered users is possible? Is there a log (link)? Looking at the Article Feedback v5 dashboard, I see more feedback posts since June 8, but these seem to come almost exclusively from registered users? Shouldn't the dashboards [1], [2] also show the number of articles with feedback activated? --Atlasowa (talk) 13:20, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

It would be helpful if there was a log of when feedback was enabled or disabled on a page. Is that in the works? Pseudonymous Rex (talk) 21:19, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Category merger proposed

See Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2013 June 9#Category:Article Feedback 5 Additional Articles.  Sandstein  10:58, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi Sandstein, thanks for letting us know about this proposal to merge the two AFT categories. I wanted to let you know that these AFT5 categories may not be needed much longer, as the new 'Enable/disable tool' is now our recommended feature for enabling feedback for articles (instead of adding AFT5 categories) -- and we have already already enabled feedback for all pages that had one of these categories. The only purpose these AFT5 categories now serve is to offer a list of articles that have feedback enabled, but our developer Matthias Mullie is looking to provide a separate list of feedback-enabled pages. Once that page is available, I don't know of any reasons why we should keep the categories. So if you can wait another week or two, we can save you some work and all make a more informed decision about both categories at that time. Thanks again! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 21:14, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. I'll mention this in the merger discussion and recommend that the discussion not be closed until then.  Sandstein  08:51, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Do we actually have the ability to track who is enabling/disabling feedback, without the category system? —WFC— _{FL wishlist} 01:55, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

No, we don't. Even admins who forcibly lock feedback out for an article don't generate a log entry when doing so. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:31, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Code available

Hi, is there any way I could take a look at the JavaScript (or whatever language was used) code for the feedback box which appears at the bottom of pages? Regards, Sir Rcsprinter, Bt (chatter) @ 21:17, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Not sure if it's there, but the main MediaWiki page for it is here :) Charmlet (talk) 23:31, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

I've already looked at all that; it's not there. Sir Rcsprinter, Bt (constabulary) @ 15:58, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

links to the git repo live here. Generally-speaking, all code for MW extensions can be found on the pertinent Extension:-prefixed page on mediawiki.org. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:11, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Feature idea: forwarding to another article

Several of the feedback items I found were good suggestions, but were more appropriate for a different article. Would it be a good idea to add someway to forward a suggestion to a different article? It could be noted what the original article was for posterity. A good example is the article wiki, which gets all sorts of inappropriate feedback, but in many cases (like United States, which I recently cleaned out) the suggestion is good for a sub-article because it is too detailed for the main one. -- Beland (talk) 15:25, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Updating queue counts

When I click "Refresh lists" at the bottom of the page, the counts next to "Featured" and "Unreviewed" don't update. The only way to update them is to refresh the page, which loses the sort order I selected. This is mildly annoying because I am using the counts as a motivator, targeting reduction to a specific number. -- Beland (talk) 16:24, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Need for feedback to be more specific

Feedback like "More information please" is a waste of time for the user, who thinks he is doing something useful, and the editor, who gets no actionable information. If there is a message to the user who clicks on "No" in the feedback request which ask them to be as specific as possible, we might get a lot more useful feedback.

• If the answer to "Did you find what you were looking for?" is "No" the obvious next question is "What were you looking for?" • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 08:12, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Quitting the feedback window

There should also be an obvious way to quit from the feedback system without giving feedback for those who realize that they don't actually know what to say, so they can do so without wasting more time and probably putting in something irrelevant or abusive just to get out of the system, and maybe never attempting to give feedback again.

• I eventually found the little back link mark (<), which is inadequate. It is not obvious either in purpose or that it exists. The feedback system is aimed primarily at users who are NOT skilled editors, so everything in it MUST be clear, simple and unambiguous.
• Try a red button in the RH lower corner labelled Quit feedback for nice and clear and user friendly. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 08:12, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Protection tool and information issues?

I have edited Kermit Gosnell. I went to see the feedback, and was told (as an administrator) that it was locked down for feedback, and a "change Protection" button is shown. Issues that may exist:

1. Page offers a header ("feedback is disabled") and a button to "change protection" but no protection log is displayed. I'd expect it to show admins the protection log by default here, beneath the "feedback is disabled" header, for ease. (We don't show the protection log for articles themselves, but I think on the feedback page it's more useful to show it).
2. Protection log does not obviously show what protection was applied, and any details. The log doesn't even mention feedback protection being applied at all, although apparently it should be doing so, so it's difficult to see how to check the protection settings which have been applied to the page's feedback in the past.
3. There's no policy related to page protection (disabling) feedback, or when, or how long. This page appears to be indef feedback blocked (it's July now) and I'm fairly sure that was inappropriate or unexpected duration. But protection policy is silent on this, and on when it may or may not be enacted or removed, the feedback page is silent about a reader's recourse when feedback is disabled (eg "what to do with feedback they believe valid, or to request re-enabling of feedback), and there is no link to relevant policy or guidance from the "feedback is disabled" or "change protection" section.
4. Afterthought - do special pages that report long-term protection also include long-term feedback protection?

FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 16:35, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

FT2, I don't think the feedback is protected; AFT is just disabled on that page, because it's now opt-in and I don't see the AFT category in it. Feedback is currently not accessible for any page (even those which opted in) because only Special:ArticleFeedbackv5 is working, so I suppose it's on the way of being completely removed shortly.

As for logs, I filed bugzilla:44377 some time ago. --Nemo 12:33, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

This talk page

From monthly report: «we plan to make AFT5 available to other wiki projects in coming weeks, as outlined in the release plan. For tips on how to use Article feedback, visit the testing page, and let us know what you think on this talk page». Considering that AFT is dead and buried on en.wiki, it sounds very silly to keep maintaining the "central" discussion about it on en.wiki; please move to mediawiki.org as soon as possible. --Nemo 12:27, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

"reader comments" link on article

Thanks for the hard work on this tool! I like the focus on increasing feedback and converting non-editors to editors. I do have one minor concern... as a newer editor, I was initially confused by the placement and wording of the comment link ("[x] reader comment(s)", right at the top). It looks somewhat like the comment links you see nowadays on news articles, which typically link to forum-style interfaces where readers argue about the underlying topic. Perhaps the phrasing could be clearer, like "article feedback and suggestions".

Also, since this is meta content about the article, wouldn't it be better left to the Talk page? One idea would be to convert each Reader Comment into a new Section of the talk page, to which editors could directly respond as usual. This would seamlessly merge the "editor" and "non-editor" commenting functionalities, rather than maintaining them separately.

My apologies if this feedback is redundant with prior discussions, as I'm just jumping in now. Proxyma (talk) 22:42, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

FAQ

This may have been raised before, but I'm seeing a high frequency of posts that either ask for more pictures on TV series (i.e. copyright material). Would it be helpful to have a per article FAQ, same as we can on the talk page? Edgepedia (talk) 05:46, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Is there any way to turn off feedback through a template, or for a class of pages?

The Article Feedback things began appearing on individual nominations of WP:Featured picture candidates - a type of page for which questions like "Did you find what you were looking for?" aren't useful, and for which all feedback should be on the page itself. Can I add a category or the like to one of the FPC templates to keep this from appearing?

Also, any chance of prominently linking to the actual documentation from WP:Article Feedback? It's incredibly hard even to find this page, let alone one that would answer my questions Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 20:29, 21 July 2013 (UTC) ɱ̍

According to Wikipedia:Article Feedback/Feedback response guidelines#Disabling feedback, you can disable feedback 3 ways:

• Protecting AFT on that page (admins only)
• Removing Category:Article_Feedback_5
• Adding Category:Article Feedback Blacklist

--Michaelzeng7 (talk) 18:53, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

On some articles feedback can be turned on using 'Enable feedback' in the toolbox in the list on the left hand side of the screen, and off on the feedback page by clicking the cog in the right hand corner and then disable feedback. Could someone who understands why this works on some articles and not others update the documentation? Edgepedia (talk) 21:10, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 23:31, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Why can't I do anything to this feedback?

I addressed the issue in this feedback. I tried to mark it as such, but I notice all of the controls for this piece of feedback are missing. I see them for the other feedback on that article. What's going on? Jackmcbarn (talk) 18:22, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Re-enabled on all pages

With gerrit:72496, approved on July 9, AFTv5 was re-enabled on all pages of en.wiki. To add feedback, the user has to click "Enable feedback" in the sidebar's toolbox; after clicking, AFT displays at the bottom of the page and the toolbox link turns into two links "Add your feedback" and "View feedback". The otherwise uncomprehensible July status report links the list of pages where AFT is used, which is necessary now that the categories are no longer complete. --Nemo 09:04, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

When i enable feedback AFT5 appears at the bottom then 24 hours later i have went in to these articles and it is no longer enabled. Is the only way AFT5 can be permanently on through the cat or is this a bug, i ask as the cat has been removed from articles on the grounds it has been depreciated like here by User:MZMcBride. The only reason i have found this is i went through a large volume of articles that i placed the cat on to reenable the feedback.Blethering Scot 21:31, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps the wiki has built up a resistance to AFT. :-)

Every article has a talk page for feedback and discussion about the article subject. Are talk pages deficient? If so, what is lacking and how can we correct it? --MZMcBride (talk) 04:27, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

For instance ive enabled on Heart of Midlothian F.C. every day for the last three days, it seems to be there for a day then its gone. The feedback through AFT is far better than you would get through a talk page and the direct question and visibility is probably what does that. Editors should be able to properly choose to have it enabled if they wish for the feedback seems not possible through software. Blethering Scot 18:58, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Article feedback log cannot be filtered properly

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T46377

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T56404

When using the "Article Feedback Activity Log," if an IP is entered in the "Performer" box, or if anything is entered in the "Target" box, no results will be shown, even if a log entry that matches that criteria exists. Example: Special:ArticleFeedbackv5/Common_snapping_turtle/0501a580dd51cc146adc842b2b77e796 is not visible in the log if 207.118.242.184 is entered in the Performer box, or if Common snapping turtle is entered in the Target box. The log entry exists, though, and can be viewed at [3]. The only filtering that does work is that entering the name of a user account in the "Performer" box works properly. Jackmcbarn (talk) 20:52, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Also, why doesn't the Article Feedback Activity Log track who enables and disables feedback on pages? I re-enabled feedback on Laurie Island after somebody disabled it, but I wish I could discuss with that user why they disabled feedback. Altamel (talk) 17:14, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Altamel, you should file a bug for that. The quickest solution to the problem is to disable the new untraced system for enabling/disabling and use the category instead; for this you should file a request in bugzilla under Wikimedia>Site requests (Disable wmgArticleFeedbackv5EnableProtection) as it's a simple configuration fix. Otherwise, you can add another bug like bug 44377, but that requires coding and may not be fixed for many more months as the previous logging bug. --Nemo 12:07, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice, Nemo, but unfortunately the category system isn't going to work as MZMcBride emptied out the article feedback tool category, and to echo WaitingForConnection below, the current enable/disable system doesn't tell us who is doing this. I don't have any experience with Bugzilla so I have no idea how to file a bug request. Altamel (talk) 03:16, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

I replied more generally in the section directly below this section. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:23, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

The category system was not great, but the status quo is far worse

Is there consensus not to use this system at all? If so, fine. If not, then please, PLEASE bring the categories back, at least as a temporary measure until we can bring some accountability to the system. At the moment, it appears that anyone can anonymously activate feedback at a whim, anyone can anonymously de-activate feedback at a whim, and most disturbingly of all, any admin can anonymously lock feedback without anyone else being able to discern who or why. Chivas USA being one example: I haven't got a clue whether that was legitimate administrative action or abuse of the tools, and even if I did know, my understanding is that there is no way of telling who locked it [I am not necessarily asking for feedback to be enabled on that article, it is simply a good example of the problem] —WFC— _{FL wishlist} 23:33, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

The consensus from the previous RfC was that editors could opt-in to having article feedback on specific pages, but no full-scale implementation of Aft5. On the flipside, a mass removal of Aft5, as evidently happened, goes against the RfC as well. Somebody (and we don't know who since the logs don't record it, as you said) disabled almost all the feedback pages, see this link: [4]. I not sure how much MZMcBride's deprecation of the Aft5 category has to do with this, as some of the articles that I enabled on the sidebar, such as Laurie Island, have also lost article feedback. Altamel (talk) 03:22, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the RFC resoundingly rejected AFT altogether. This very brief view received substantially more endorsements than any other:

The tool is useless. Most of the comments are not even actionable. Additionally, wading through the inane comments to get to one to work on wastes time, and we don't have enough resources to handle it as it, much less by expanding it. We should eliminate the feature.

The second most-endorsed view was mine, I believe, which called for a compromise measure. But even though I put forward that view, I can easily recognize that it received less than half of the endorsements that GregJackP's view (copied verbatim above) received.

Every article already has a feedback page. For example, Talk:Chivas USA or Talk:Laurie Island. If this is insufficient, we should discuss why and work to correct that, in my opinion. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:21, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

I disagree that the tool is useless and dispute that the comments are in-actionable. I have found it worthwhile on articles about current events where breaking news can affect the article rather significantly. In the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting article readers were leaving comments about specific things that they were interested in or looking for. If a reliable source was available, we quickly made edits or additions to the article. --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 04:39, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

A number of people disagreed with my position that the tool was useless. However, the overwhelming consensus of the community was that my view was correct with 100 support !votes. The next option was MZMcBride's, with 37 !votes. There may be other solutions, but AFT is not it. I'm sorry, but the community does not support the tool. Regards, GregJackP Boomer! 04:59, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

The view that its no use and talkpages are already good feedback is flawed. Whilst the Mediawiki software allows it to be enabled, no matter how flawed that software appears to be it can still be used where editors are seeking specific feedback on an article. The main consensus was it shouldnt be added to every article but if a group of editors wish it to be used on one page where is the issue. The removal of the cat from the pages where editors has specifically saught feedback which wasn't a huge number should of been allowed to remain until said users no longer wanted such feedback. The feedback gained of the direct question and visability was far better than a talk page provides. The removal of that cat wasn't done on the grounds of consensus it was done on the specific grounds that it can now be done through the software which is a severely flawed argument.Blethering Scot 19:05, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

If we are now saying its a consensus issue and not the software why it was disabled i have severe issue with the way this cat was removed and the edit summary used to do it. Im hopeful this wasn't the case however reading this section I'm not so sure..Blethering Scot 19:09, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

I appreciate the feedba... responses from everyone, and in particular the link to that RfC, which passed me by. My reading of Geni's close is that the default status of AF5 on a given article is off, but that contributors to specific articles are free to turn it on in moderation. The closure makes scant mention of circumstances under which it may be removed, but from what has been said it is beyond question that mass anonymous removal is unacceptable, that mass anonymous addition of AF5 is equally unacceptable, and that AF5 should have the minimum possible impact on editors who are not interested. The new system gives us zero control or visibility over any of those situations, and on that basis alone the category must be restored until the status of AF5 is clarified, or the software improved.

It is almost never a good idea to use "must" in a Wikipedia discussion; maybe it isn't here. But we clearly have editors spending a lot of time on this in mainspace (both in terms of adding/removing the old categories on the basis that the new interface does the same job, and indeed adding/removing AF5 with the new interface). Time wasted on that is worse for the project than any situation we had with the categories: at least with those we knew exactly where we stood, both in terms of the scale of Article Feedback's use, and in terms of which users were adding/removing it. —WFC— _{FL wishlist} 00:23, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Fully agree with WFC that the cats should be re added immediately. I also feel there is a bug in the media wiki software preventing AFT5 from being permanently enabled and not a user simply coming on and removing it that's become obvious in the last few days since the cat was removed under the pretence the software could now do it and that appears to be incorrect at this moment in time. Blethering Scot 12:15, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

I left a note on Fabrice Florin's talk page. I'm okay with the enable/disable system as long as the logs track it, but either way, using AFT5 should not be settled through anonymous edit enabling wars. Altamel (talk) 19:19, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

On 19 August 2013 (UTC) on User_talk:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)#Article_Feedback Fabrice Florin wrote: "We're working on the problem, and I will post on AFT5 to let folks know.". --Atlasowa (talk) 20:16, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

The list linked above currently had no data so we currently have no idea what AFT is doing, but it seems that it is still enabled on some pages as some feedback is being submitted.[5] --Nemo 16:18, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

Im not even sure its users enabling and disabling on the scale I've seen think there is a bug as well. These cats really need readded as the justification that they were removed with on the edit summary is really proving inaccurate due to the unreliability of the software and anonymous removals by disabling.Blethering Scot 17:29, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

Cat Deleted

The cat has now been deleted. The main problems for me are a user removed these cats from articles which groups wanted feedback on but did not enable feedback again manually. When feedback has been enabled of which i did around 200 on articles i created, only a small number was still on the next day. There is no proper way of tracking who is enabling or disabling and on a large scale that we are losing cant see there not being a bug in here somewhere. We had over 1,000 pages enabled and since cat was removed we appear to have been only able to reenable [125]. Im very keen on getting feedback but with this software there is no reliable way to get it. This cat should never of been removed from these articles especially under the edit summary that was used the reliability and tracking problems mean this cat is actually essential for the time being.Blethering Scot 17:00, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

I relied on what Fabrice said about two months ago. He's the project manager for AFT, so it's not unreasonable. :-) I'm not sure that prototype link has very reliable results. A bit more energy will be needed to further develop AFT, I imagine. Adding proper logging and a means of indexing which pages have AFT enabled, among other fixes. Though I think (from a graphical timeline I saw somewhere...) that AFT is being phased out completely very soon. The experiment is almost over. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:25, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

This is it: File:Article-Feedback-Timeline-2013.png. Linked from mw:Article feedback/Version 5/Release Plan 2013. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:28, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Whether it is or it isn't being phased out the fact remains that at this time the only way to properly manage this is through the cat. And you spent all that effort removing without properly assessing the consequences. There isnt a valid argument to delete and remove the cat at this time, as we cannot have something we cannot track, or reliably get feedback from because it randomly wont stick or someone clicks it off which i dont think the case for most of these. Its tottaly useless at the moment we should have hundreds more articles switched on than we do because of this.Blethering Scot 18:33, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Ive read that link it doesn't actually confirm will be removed. It indicates it as a possibility however thats entering the unknown, its speculative and not really solving the problem thats been created here and now. Simply there is no way this cat should not be recreated and the removal undone. This has been poorly handled from the start.Blethering Scot 18:38, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Could we please have a response from the WMF (User:Fabrice Florin (WMF) or User:Okeyes (WMF) as to why when you enable the feedback on pages and I'm talking hundreds they aren't sticking for more than 24 hours. It seems highly unlikely that is down to an enable war and why this isn't properly trackable. Was it because it was suposed to work with the cat or what. Even if its going to be removed as a feature shortly it should still work in the short-term. There are different discussions about this on other pages too so it is a concern.Blethering Scot 21:57, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Article Feedback Update (August 2013)

Article Feedback Slides - Updated

Hi folks, thanks for reporting these issues -- and sorry for not responding sooner, due to other priorities that tied us up until now.

I am disappointed to hear that anonymous editors disabled feedback on over 2,000 articles without consulting their fellow editors about this: whomever did this, shame on you -- and please don't do this again! Our deepest apologies to those of you who were inconvenienced as a result, including WTC, Altamel, Atlasowa and Blethering Scot, to name but a few. Fortunately, we kept track of which articles had feedback enabled as of last month on this spreadsheet, and we will re-enable feedback on these articles shortly. We are also working on a patch that will prevent anonymous editors from enabling or disabling feedback on a page (to complement Gerrit patches 64621 and 64620). If all goes well, these patches should be deployed next week, so that only logged-in editors can enable or disable feedback -- and all these actions should appear in the logs, for transparency and accountability reasons.

The Article Feedback experiment is still going strong on the French Wikipedia, where feedback from over 40,000 articles is now being evaluated by their editor community. They are keeping up very well with their moderation workload, and are not experiencing the issues any reported by the English community, before we deployed our new tools. Our current plan is to continue to monitor this experimental feature on a few pilot sites through the end of the year, then determine our next steps with the community, based on these pilot results. In January 2014, we plan to report back to you with these findings and recommendations, and discuss their relevance for the English community.

Until then, we would appreciate it if folks would honor the decision reached during the March RfC on Article Feedback, when the closing administrator resolved to keep this tool on an 'opt-in' basis on the English Wikipedia, so that editors who want reader feedback for their articles could use it for that purpose. To support their needs, we created this special 'opt-in/opt-out' tool that makes it easier to enable or disable feedback (without requiring prior knowledge of the AFT5 category name). As a result, you can now simply click on 'Enable feedback' in the article toolbox to enable feedback on pages you are working on, as described here -- and the old AFT5 category is no longer needed. And once the patches are deployed, anonymous vandals will no longer be able to disrupt this experiment -- and enabled articles will be added to this list, which is refreshed daily.

We will post an update here once the new patches have been deployed. We regret this temporary inconvenience, and will do everything we can to make sure it doesn't happen again. For an update on the current status of this project, check these updated slides. Thanks again for your interest in Article Feedback! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 23:56, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the update; removing the switch for unregistered users is very good progress. The list is also useful. As far as I understand, the result of the RfC was that an editor can enable feedback if willing and able to sort it ("cope with on its own"): if you plan to enable feedback yourself, does it mean you also plan to sort it yourself? If not, you probably instead want to use your list to notify the editors with logged AFT moderation actions on those pages that they can safely re-enable the tool now (with the new system; if they are still interested). --Nemo 05:57, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

As of this edit, there appear to be no articles with feedback enabled on en: • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 10:28, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

How do you know? I see two feedback entries submitted 2 h ago and one 5 h ago. --Nemo 11:47, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

At that time, the link above to the list which is refreshed daily, showed no articles, it now shows 166 articles with feedback enabled. I do not pretend to understand or explain this, I just say what I see. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 14:51, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

I checked a few of the articles on the list of enabled feedback and they are all disabled so far.• • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 15:13, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Two out of about 20 that I checked are enabled. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 15:16, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi Peter (Southwood), thanks for reporting this issue, which we are aware of. The article list you are using is unreliable, due to a latency issue with the analytics server we are using. My recommendation is to wait a couple days, until our developer has a chance to fix it. Nemo, our plan is to simply undo the act of vandalism that disabled feedback on a couple thousand articles, and restore things back to where they were a month ago, to reduce the workload for editors and for ourselves. We will let you know when that task has been completed. Thank you all for your patience and understanding! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 22:41, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Fabrice, you can't know for what reason the articles in a month-old list are no longer enabled now, especially as that list includes also category-enabled articles. So you're not going only to revert a single mass action, but also an unknown number of legitimate editor decisions about those articles. Whether this is ok I don't know, but don't say you're just reverting a vandal. --Nemo 05:37, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Let us know when we can use the feedback system without having to waste our time constantly re-enabling it. I have better things to do. It is bad enough not knowing when feedback has been made, but manually searching all articles of interest to find that it has been disabled again is more than I am going to bother with. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 06:41, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the link to the information about using the article toolbox to turn on article feedback, which I have just tried turning on for an article that is one of the top-ten most edit-warred articles on Wikipedia. I'll see what the feedback can do to help improve the article. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 20:39, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi Fabrice.

It's curious that you completely failed to mention the German Wikipedia and its experience(s) with article feedback.

If we're going to describe anything as shameful, it's the continued attempt to push this failed experiment on users. It looks like about 100 users lined up to say "no thanks" to this tool earlier this year. I wonder what it will take in order to get you and your team to respect this decision. In any case, you can safely dismount from the moral high horse. :-)

There will be no mass re-enabling of AFTv5. As Nemo notes, we need to be able to track who specifically has volunteered to monitor and respond to feedback for every article. It'll be good once this is logged (I'm shocked it wasn't already) as we'll be able to programmatically measure who's been recently active against those who enabled AFTv5 for particular articles. This will allow us to account for user inactivity, triggering action to either find a replacement volunteer or disable feedback altogether until a volunteer can be found, in some cases. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:26, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Where is the evidence of a continued attempt to force AFT on users? At the moment we can't even use it if we want to. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 17:18, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

I can give an example of one article, namely IQ classification, which was long an article marked as "high priority" for the most relevant WikiProject, yet start class in article development (and tagged with an "expert attention needed" tag besides). The article feedback comments were extremely useful in prioritizing issues to address as the article was expanded recently, resulting in an assessment up to B class now. I intend to make reader comments active on a lot of high-traffic articles on my watch list, as the reader comments are often much more useful than talk page discussion--especially for the articles on the most controversial topics--in focusing on what encyclopedia users are actually looking for as they visit articles. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 18:53, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

• Update 2: Hi folks, I am happy to let you know that we just deployed two patches for the opt-in/opt-out tool, that keep track of who enables or disables feedback on an article and when. This log can now be viewed by authorized users in the 'Protect' page for any article -- and we plan to make it available in the 'Protect' log as well in coming days. So we now invite you to enable feedback on any article you are working on, if you would like to get suggestions from readers. You can do so quite easily, by clicking on 'Enable feedback' in the Toolbox in the right-hand side of your article page, as described here. If you later find out that this reader feedback is not useful to you, you can easily disable it by clicking on the gear icon at the top of the feedback page. Before you disable feedback on an article, we recommend that you consult with other editors on its talk page, rather than take unilateral action: your fellow editors may find this feedback useful, even if you do not. That said, we encourage folks to use this tool responsibly and only enable feedback on articles which you are actively watching, so we don't end up with a lot of unmoderated comments.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Altamel, Atlasowa, Blethering Scot, Peter (Southwood) , WTC and WeijiBaikeBianji: we really appreciate your patience with this recent setback, and are sorry that you are having to re-enable feedback on your articles. At the recommendation of Nemo and MZMcBride, we will not automatically re-enable feedback on the two thousand articles where it was recently disabled, so that we can measure accurately how many articles are explicitly enabled by editors like you. That said, I would like to ask the editors who unilaterally disabled feedback on over 2,800 articles without consulting their peers not to do this again: going forward, your user name will be logged and we will track down serial offenders and surface their actions, so the community can respond accordingly. MZMcBride, I understand that you are vehemently opposed to this tool and will not attempt to debate its merits with you, since you seem to have made up your mind. But I will ask that you use a neutral tone when discussing it with others, and that you refrain from abusive comments which are offensive to others. While you are entitled to your own views, you do not speak for the broader editor community, and you certainly don't represent the millions of readers whom we aim to serve. So I respectfully ask that you don't spoil this experiment for the rest of us who are trying in good faith to offer a valuable service to our community. We are committed to finding a way to give a voice to our readers, so we can improve Wikipedia and grow the movement with their help. Whether or not AFT is the right tool for that, we are confident that we can gain new insights from this experiment. Thanks for your understanding, and let's see what we can learn together. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 01:05, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for not mass re-enabling AFTv5.

It looks like Special:Log/articlefeedbackv5 is working (though it's going to quickly accumulate a lot of no-op entries... surely that's a bug).

While you can attempt to take offense with my tone rather than responding to the substance of my reply, it isn't a single person criticizing AFTv5, it was an even 100. Hand-waving and throwing around appeals to emotion using phrases such as "grow the movement" doesn't really distract from the main issue: the fundamental idea here (adding a YouTube-like comments section to every article) is seemingly fatally flawed. I say so, several user communities have said so, the evidence and data say so.

If you want to talk about growing the movement and helping Wikimedia, here's a page full of micro design improvements you can work on, seeing that you apparently have developer time at your disposal. Continuing to waste finite developer resources on AFTv5 is simply painful to watch. I thought at the fourteen-month mark or whatever we were at in January 2013, this was made clear enough, but it's now August 2013 the headache hasn't ended. Ugh. :-/ --MZMcBride (talk) 01:20, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

The new log works perfectly, awesome! Thanks also for leaving the activation of the box opt-in.
On your digression, Fabrice, just a quick reminder: you don't represent the readers, either. I understand your frustration, but comments along the lines of "you are nobody and I'm sent here by the Greater Good" don't serve any purpose other than inflaming the environment and increase the general entropy of the universe. --Nemo 05:03, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Given it was user MZMcBride who removed the cat and didn't bother to re enable them which was his choice and no one else's i disagree with him arguing that they shouldn't of been mass enabled again. Its clear he doesn't want it but that doesn't mean the editors who do find it useful should be let down here and given its on a small percentage of articles it certainly only enhances the project and does not disadvantage it, but hey we don't like change here. Some of the comments here are laughable what headache does AFT cause the answer is nothing, and before its raised again a talk page doesn't provide the same level of feedback. Oh well i know what I'm doing tonight which will be re adding it to all my articles that MZMcBride removed it from, what a waste of time i could of used to actually improve the project. Blethering Scot 16:26, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

• I see 463 users have been notified of the new way to enable/disable the tool. Thanks, this is a good approach IMHO. --Nemo 08:54, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

  Thanks for the notification. Just a very minor remark about a sentence: "if you're interested in enabling it for your articles [...]", because we do not own articles. - Nabla (talk) 20:23, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Imposing article protection causes an unnecessary log event regarding AFT

See what happened at Western Carolina University when I semiprotected it per WP:AN3. The semiprotection is being logged as usual, but it seems I have to turn visibility of AFT on or off while doing so, even if the change has no connection to AFT. Maybe a check box could be added to the protection form that admins use. If you wanted to change the AFT status then the admin would be expected to check the box. This behavior started happening on August 29. I checked two other admins' logs and observed the same thing. EdJohnston (talk) 02:08, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Also AFT cant be enabled on a recently protected article.Blethering Scot 17:34, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Isn't it supposed to be the other way around, that it can't be disabled on an unprotected article? I think they may have implemented that the wrong way around. Jackmcbarn (talk) 19:15, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Ping User:Fabrice Florin (WMF).Blethering Scot 20:13, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Is there a way to do a mass update?

I'd like to enable the feedback tool for all the FAs I've worked on; do I have to visit each one and check it individually? Separate question: is there a way to see grouped feedback just for pages I watch, or for pages linked from a given page? I'm thinking of something like the "related changes" function, which I seem to recall allows a watchlist for anything linked from a page. Is there something equivalent for feedback? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:09, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

As far as I can make out, there is no way and there is unlikely to be a way in the foreseeable future, although that is the single biggest obstacle to efficient use, it seems that there is no intention to sort it out. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 12:21, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Disabling

I accidentally clicked "enable feedback" on Gagra. How do I undo it? -- Ypnypn (talk) 22:14, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Go to the feedback page Special:ArticleFeedbackv5/Gagra and click the little wheel icon. I did the same mistake with Monkey, not realizing it's enabled by 1 click. I now feel like an IP vandal who made tests outside the sandbox. Ginsuloft (talk) 22:16, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Software and responsible use go hand-in-hand

I think, with hindsight, the thing which very nearly killed this feature off was naive and idealistic use, combined with a lack of safeguards in place to control it. In other words, people mass-adding the feature to a set of articles that they had no hope in hell of looking after, and the software not doing anything to curb the inevitable backlog of unreviewed feedback (currently almost 575,000 pieces of feedback, although I don't expect that number to grow given the status quo).

Perhaps the software should prevent the addition of new pieces of feedback on articles where there is long term, unanswered feedback. To clarify, I am not suggested that feedback be disabled on such articles (because that would hide away the existing feedback, the precise opposite of what we want). But if a comment has not been responded to within say, 60 days, I think AFT should not allow new feedback to be submitted to that article until an interested editor has got the house back in order. —WFC— _{FL wishlist} 22:41, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Given that its specific editors that want it then thats not a bad idea. However could we not have something like the pending changes software where if a page on you watchlist has a pending change then you are notified, which would mean user is more than likely to know feedback is there and respond.Blethering Scot 22:50, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree that there should be technical limitations (not that the feature should be dumbed down). I hid a couple hundred "sgfdkjghfjklshg" or "YOUR MOM!" style feedback posts about a month ago (including one from a WMF staffer!), which nobody had done anything about, nobody had warned the users, nobody cared. For comparison, even if you are an admin on your PC, there are still things you can't do unless you give yourself special privileges. It has nothing to do with assuming the user is stupid, just that it prevents catastrophic mistakes. There are still things on Wikipedia you can do which are irreversible (not going to go to further details due to WP:BEANS), but they aren't easy to do, which is a huge difference. Ginsuloft (talk) 22:53, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Pictures revisited

At #Photos above it was noted that the currently suggested text in AFT5 encourages people to leave comments about needing more pictures. A cursory look at feedback shows a lot of such comments even on articles where it makes no sense whatsoever like New York City and Spain. Although it's just a small design change, a more open-ended prompt such as "This article could be improved by..." could really help gather more interesting feedback. Dcoetzee 02:09, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

I've requested the picture example be improved at MediaWiki talk:Articlefeedbackv5-bucket6-question-placeholder-yes and MediaWiki talk:Articlefeedbackv5-bucket6-question-placeholder-no. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:12, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Oh okay, I didn't know it had interface pages. In that case I'll just do it and see how it goes. Dcoetzee 02:13, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

 Done Dcoetzee 02:14, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

FYI I don't see these changes taking effect yet. I'm not sure if it just takes time or if we need to do something else. Dcoetzee 02:16, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

I do. It's probably a caching thing. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:17, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

While we're editing the interface, can (optional) be added to the end of those messages? I think a lot of people just want to "vote" that they found what they wanted, and they add comments like "Nothing, all good" instead of just hitting Submit without entering anything (which works)? @Dcoetzee: ping. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:23, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

I'd rather encourage people to always enter something - sometimes upon reflection they come up with some useful feedback, even if they didn't originally intend to provide comments. I am seeing the updated message now btw. Dcoetzee 02:36, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, the problem's not completely fixed (see this, this, and this), but hopefully, these will become a lot less common in the future. Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:37, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

I think part of it is just that people like pictures, and often want pictures we can't provide for legal reasons, but would if we could do so. This is understandable. Dcoetzee 04:42, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't understand, I thought we had this AFT5-improvement Post without comment (see below) months and months ago. So readers wouldn't suddenly feel pressured to write some suggestion and just copy "needs a picture". What happened, was this change reverted? --Atlasowa (talk) 14:15, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure why that link went away, but if you press "Post your feedback" without entering anything, it does the same thing now. Jackmcbarn (talk) 14:40, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

@User:Fabrice Florin (WMF), @User:Okeyes (WMF), @User:Whatamidoing (WMF): Can anyone from WMF explain what happened to the "Post without a comment" link? --Atlasowa (talk) 11:54, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Performing an article feedback tool action without even trying

It seems scarily easy to become an active user of a system I know nothing about. Apparently, I "changed visibility of the article feedback tool on Sri Lanka" today, by the action of semiprotecting the article.[6] I didn't touch the feedback tool box in any way. What's going on? Is anybody in charge of the tool reading this talkpage? Compare this thread above, dated 30 August. Hello? Bishonen | talk 13:36, 7 September 2013 (UTC).

Again anyone from the WMF able to answer this. @Fabrice Florin (WMF): @Okeyes (WMF): @Whatamidoing (WMF):.Blethering Scot 17:45, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like a bug. Activating AFT on an article is done through the protection interface, so it probably failed to default to the previous setting. Dcoetzee 17:51, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Its happening on all recently protected pages and has been highlighted by several admins on different pages.Blethering Scot 12:20, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

You should always assume that nobody is watching a particular wiki page, when finding a bug, and just report it. I'm not sure it's only related to protecting, for instance I never did this: [7] (I was only reviewing some feedback). --Nemo 15:31, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Should I? On 1 September, EdwardsBot posted a message on my talk and that of many, many others from User:Okeyes (WMF) about an update of the tool, saying "If you have any questions, just drop them at the talkpage". This talkpage, that is. He made it sound really easy. Anyway, sorry, Bugzilla reports are over my head. Would a Bishzilla report work? Bishonen | talk 16:15, 8 September 2013 (UTC).

I wonder how one can re-enable the feedback tool once it has been disabled, since the "enable feedback" option is no longer there. Can admins still see it, i.e. does "disable for all users" really mean "disable for non-administrators"? Ginsuloft (talk) 00:02, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

When it's disabled for all users, it has to be re-enabled through the page protection interface. Jackmcbarn (talk) 00:07, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Any time any article is semi-protected, even temporarily, the feedback tool is disabled indefinitely, which means that if anyone wants a non-admin be able to enable/disable feedback, they must go through all of the pages that have been semi-protected during the last two weeks. Was this intentional; was this meant to be so that you need to be an admin to be able to enable/disable feedback and someone thought page protection would be a good way to disable it for a lot of pages? I thought this "feedback disabled on 2000 pages" was a bad thing from the looks of the news post that was posted on a couple hundred users' talk pages, including mine. Ginsuloft (talk) 00:13, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that that's a bug. Jackmcbarn (talk) 00:20, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Minor bug with pending changes and AFT5

See history of Linux (which is under pending chnages). I made a change to enable AFT5 (making a zero-byte edit), the change was accepted, and later someone reverted a vandalism edit, and it reverted both edits and left me a notification. The page still has feedback enabled so it's not a huge deal but it is confusing. Dcoetzee 04:45, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Major bug with archiving

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T56197

"Article Feedback V5 (talk) archived feedback post #759669 on Cloud computing" - it's been stuck in a loop and repeatedly archiving the same post and flooding Special:RecentChanges for at least an hour now. It's archiving multiple times a second. Someone look at this now. Ginsuloft (talk) 23:45, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

I tried to make this stop by reducing the backlog on the page, but it appears to have made it much worse. Jackmcbarn (talk) 00:07, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Nah, it couldn't get any worse. Now it's just alternating between posts, but it's still as fast. Who can even kill the bot that has gone berserk? It can't be blocked, because it's not an account. I guess you need direct access to the WikiMedia servers to stop this? Ginsuloft (talk) 00:15, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Archiving has been disabled. T56197 logged. Reedy (talk) 00:16, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Reedy fixed it (or at least put a band-aid on it). https://git.wikimedia.org/commitdiff/operations%2Fmediawiki-config.git/0c53ec531fd744dfef640923c40cd38fe5e41344 Jackmcbarn (talk) 00:17, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Still no news and the band-aid is getting rot... See last question on the bugzilla ticket. --Nemo 08:26, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

That will soon proceed as announced, with AFT disabling. --Nemo 08:15, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Too much spam

I have been going through pages of feedback, there are 2 good feedbacks out of 12. At least 4 of them say "more photos" or something along that line, 2 say "more specific details", and random other things non useful. I think the length of the feedback should require 6 words or more and a period. This would allow people saying more photos explain what photos they are wanting, and people saying unuseful things to explain in more detail. There should also be a smart check to see if it is not a post like "asdlfe2 asdf" or other unusful strings.—CKY2250 ^ταικ 01:21, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I checked and there is no such feature, I suggest requesting it so that en.wiki can then configure it. Until such a feature is available, the only thing you can do is disabling AFT on those pages. --Nemo 08:50, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

We could probably use an edit filter, but what exactly do we want the filter to do? Stop anything under 6 words long? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:22, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Enabled feedback

I accidentally enabled feedback on WP:Oversight, and can't undo it :/ benzband (talk) 16:42, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Already reverted by Rschen7754--Ymblanter (talk) 17:34, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, and sorry for the bother it caused! benzband (talk) 21:55, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Portals

I raised this a year ago but nothing happened: portals are intended for showcasing the best of Wikipedia to readers so their feedback would be particularly useful, and that is where we really lack feedback. Is there any technical obstacle to enable it as an opt-in feature? --ELEKHH^T 11:48, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Not answering your question sort off. There is a lot of spam whenever i am going through the feedback, I believe they are working on a way to reject that spam like a cloud search for known spam structures and other things that could flag the feedback to be incorrect. I have been noticing about 3 in 15 feedback posts are legit and good. The others are repeats, complements, spam, and irrelevant like the million "needs more photos". IPs still use the talk page you have to know. The feedback tool is for the people who know far less than the wikipedians. —CKY2250 ^ταικ 13:45, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Sure, I'm well aware that the feedback tool can be a giant spam collector. My intent here is only to test it on a couple of Portals, given that we know nothing about who, why and with what expectations reads portals. In this case we could draw some lessons even from the expected spam. If it turns out to be as bad as for articles, it can be turned off again, but I think testing new things is often worth a try :). --ELEKHH^T 14:39, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Chipping in to say this feature would be of interest to me, as a portal maintainer/developer. The portals I run do not receive talk-page feedback. I would prefer if the feedback could be placed on the talk page, rather than detracting from the portal's appearance. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:38, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

The point of the feedback tool is for IP's -- non-wikipedians -- to easily comment on what they would like. A feedback enabled on a talk page would be pointless. First a wikipedian would use the talk page, and second someone that knows nothing about wikipedia and how it works would not be on a portal or even within the talk page of the portal.—CKY2250 ^ταικ 01:51, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Old unreviewed feedback

I made a list of the abandoned feedback-enabled pages, which have ignored (unreviewed) feedback waiting since a month or more: User:Nemo bis/Unreviewed feedback. It's about 40 % of all pages with some feedback pending. Someone needs to review (and start monitoring) feedback on those pages, or disable AFT on them. --Nemo 21:53, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Is maintaining a list such as this something a bot could do.Blethering Scot 20:54, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes and I've asked it at [8]. Of course my list was partly automated. :) --Nemo 07:46, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Why? Who cares if pages have unreviewed feedback? There's no deadline. Jackmcbarn (talk) 16:38, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, there's a number of reasons why it's unfair and dangerous to ask people to submit feedback if said feedback is not going to be reviewed; but let's just try to follow consensus and guidelines. How else do you propose to respect the result of the RfC, that «they are a minority and as a result any further work on the tool needs to limited to a level which that minority cope with on its own»? Or the feedback response guidelines, according to which editors enabling feedback should review it ("are encouraged [to]")?

Action on articles with unreviewed feedback is also useful to surface the editors who have no idea how to use AFT and can then find some help material [9] [10], while promoting usage of AFT on talk pages would be too aggressive (or at least something I don't feel comfortable doing on my own). --Nemo 09:34, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I took a look at the list. None that I could find are on my watchlist. Most are on subjects I don't know enough about to review useful feedback, and I have better things to do with my time than reviewing useless feedback on subjects I have no interest in or don't know enough about.

I agree with unfair, but dangerous? In what way dangerous?• • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 13:46, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Nemo bis has caused a lot of trouble by mass disabling article feedback on hundreds of articles. So I am proposing that all these feedback removals be reversed on those articles. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:36, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I have to agree. That stupid feedback system was so complicated, with all the buttons and percentages and thumbs-up and status and reviewed/unreviewed helpful/unhelpful resolved/unresolved featured/not-featured sort-this-way hide-that-way list-everyone's-actions stuff no one knows what's going on. I had no idea I was supposed to mark everything "reviewed" or that reviewing mattered to anything. As said it's an idiotic system, and only three or four times can I ever remember any useful comment coming out of it that actually translated into article improvement, but nonetheless I still want to give readers the chance. I reenabled feedback on certain articles and check them regularly for feedback (the stupid feedback system not signaling me via watchlist, so I have to actually visit the page -- what trainwreck -- but still I'm willing to do it).

I have made a list of links to feedback pages that I want to monitor on my user page. To check them I just open a whole group in new tabs and close the tab if there is no new feedback (about 95% of the time) click no action for most of the rest and occasionally get something worthwhile, which I usually deal with immediately. It is a work around for something that should reasonably be automated, but it works. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 13:46, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

What's so magic about clicking reviewed? Let's say it's true that "a number of reasons why it's unfair and dangerous to ask people to submit feedback if said feedback is not going to be reviewed;". So let's say I click review on a piece of feedback that says, "In the first paragraph the subject's name is misspelled" but don't fix the misspelling -- isn't that just as bad?

Before you disable why not leave a talkpage message asking whether anyone is still checking the feedback, or at least explain that people need to click reviewed on each piece of feedback? If you don't feel comfortable doing that then I don't see why you're comfortable disabling what someone else enabled. EEng (talk) 12:12, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

The bottomline is that Nemo by disabling the Feedback tool on a mass level has caused trouble that was totally unneccessary. His only rationale for his actions it seems is that he personally thought the feedbacks was rarely reviewed etc.. no matter what the user should have not done a mass unactivation of the Feedback tool. A mention of wanting to disable the feedback tool at the articles talk pages had been appropriate but when you are mass disabling something I guess the mind sometimes gets lost.--BabbaQ (talk) 20:16, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

What can we do to get feedback on our watchlist?

As numerous editors have stated before, AFT is utterly useless if we can't see feedback added to watched pages on our watchlists. This is a serious matter and should be the highest priority. Please detail the technical reasons why this has been neglected. For those of us willing and able to assist in development; where should we start? Krushia (talk) 17:14, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Totally agree if it showed up on the watchlist the feedback is far more likely to be reviewed. Don't know if @Okeyes (WMF): might be able to answer that.Blethering Scot 17:21, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't know the answer, I'm afraid; check in with Fabrice? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:00, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

You're lucky, just today I'm filing a bug. :) The solution is IMHO Bug 44377 – Use Special:Log properly, but believe it or not the issue was not filed yet: it's now described at bugzilla:58956. AFAICS, AFTv5 is currently in "maintenance mode" aka abandoned by the WMF (until it explodes in a crowded square, nothing is urgent enough to be fixed), but we should know for sure within a week. Probably this needs a volunteer to fix it. --Nemo 08:39, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Frankly, i have given up on AFT because WMF shows no interest to make this tool usable (reduce noise level of feedback + make the feedback more accessible by category/project). But let me show you 2 tools that give a glimpse of how AFT could have been, if developers had cared:

• 1) French user:Orlodrim built a fantastic feedback monitoring page at http://wiki256.net/articlefeedback/ . You get a newsfeed of feedback for a project (articles of project "Médecine" or "Afro-Américains" etc.) or for a list of articles on your user page (http://wiki256.net/articlefeedback/pagesliees/). It looks and works like a watchlist, really cool! The data is scraped from Wikipedia (since nobody cares about Bug 51296 - Add a machine-readable output format to articlefeedbackv5-view-feedback API), it is on a private website, the scraping frequently breaks down and, yes, unfortunately: this is for french only.
• 2) A German developer from WMDE built the Article List Generator. The good thing: it kind of works in english; the bad thing: it's pretty much useless for monitoring feedback. No recent feedback, no direct links to the feedback and some arbitrary "60% positive" rule. If you know Python you might be able to improve this tool. Good luck with that.

Actually I'm glad that the german Wikipedia killed off this mess months ago. --Atlasowa (talk) 23:50, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

RfC: Should article feedback be restricted to articles?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Currently, Wikipedia is configured to allow article feedback in pages in the main, Wikipedia, and Help namespaces. Should this be changed to allow feedback only in the main namespace? (From a technical standpoint, this is a trivial configuration change).

Support

1. As proposer. Most feedback to pages outside of mainspace is misplaced, and most of what isn't is useless. Jackmcbarn (talk) 20:29, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
2. Support - Too many people are trying to contact Wikipedia directly through the AFT box on the Contact Us page. It confuses readers and wastes the time of moderators. Altamel (talk) 20:42, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
3. Support Altamel's reason alone is enough. Dougweller (talk) 17:03, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
4. Support - Altamel's said it all. →Davey2010→→Talk to me!→ 17:37, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
5. Support per above. ///EuroCarGT 00:21, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
6. Support Per Altamel. MercenaryHoplite (talk) 00:57, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Oppose as long is an opt-in option, I don't see why be further restricted. Also I think it could be useful on Portals. --ELEKHH^T 01:40, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
2. 'Oppose Should be decided by discussion on the talk page of the article / page in question. This is not something we should be deciding here. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 11:22, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

• I think Help pages (and similar guidelines, even if not explicitly in Help space) should also have feedback, in order to see if people are having problems with them. If this is not to be done through the explicitly named Article feedback tool, how should it be done? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:23, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

  Their talk pages? We've had feedback enabled on several Help pages for a while, and it's virtually all junk. Jackmcbarn (talk) 21:24, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

  AFT unfortunately seems to attract useless entries. My hypothesis is that the instructions are inadequate, but I have no way of testing this. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 22:31, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

• AFTv5 is going to be turned off soon, so this is a moot point. See bugzilla:61163. — This, that and the other (talk) 02:04, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
  • From your lips to God's ears. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:00, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
  • Does this mean that this dreadful "feature" is going to vanish? If not, what can be done to get rid of it? I seem to have managed to avoid this tool up to now, but suddenly it's appeared in several articles I've been reading. I hope it's gone soon. RomanSpa (talk) 20:12, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
    • Yes, AFT will disabled on all wikis in a matter of days. You can also disable it from individual articles and pages, see Wikipedia:Article_Feedback/Help#How_can_I_enable.2Fdisable_this_tool.3F. --Nemo 09:11, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

This is unfortunate. We were just beginning to use it to collect data from readers about our translation project. [11] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:00, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Article Feedback: Next Steps

Hello everyone: As many of you know, we have been testing an improved version of Article Feedback v5 in two pilots on the English and French Wikipedias throughout 2013. The main purpose of this experiment was to increase participation on Wikipedia by inviting readers to leave comments on article pages.

Article Feedback seemed effective for engaging readers: 70% of survey respondents liked the tool; 2.7% of invited readers registered after leaving feedback -- and 3.0% of invited readers completed an edit. Over a million comments were posted during this experiment: on average, 12% of posts were marked as useful, 46% required no action, and 17% were found inappropriate by Wikipedia editors.

However, a majority of editors did not find reader comments useful enough to warrant the extra work of moderating this feedback. The French pilot just ended last month, providing further confirmation of this issue. In the final RfC we ran on the French site, about 45% of respondents wanted AFT5 removed everywhere, while 38% wanted to keep it on an opt-in basis, and 10% on help pages only; nearly everyone agreed it should not be on by default on all 40,000 pilot pages, let alone on the entire French Wikipedia. Their concerns are consistent with what we heard from editors on the English and German pilots.

Here on the English Wikipedia, Article Feedback is now available on an opt-in basis, and has been enabled on about 3,677 articles by editors who want reader feedback on articles they watch. On average, editors enable this tool on about 100 new articles per week -- but some editors who oppose the tool have disabled it on thousands of articles in recent months, which creates an awkward tension in our community. (Previously, the tool was enabled on over 400,000 articles, and 672k comments were collected during this pilot; but about 63% of editors in a February 2013 RfC voted against wide deployment, leading to the removal of the tool on these articles.)

Based on these pilot results, we recommend that Article Feedback be removed from our two pilot sites at the end of the month, as outlined in this report — since the tool is not welcome by a majority of editors, despite its benefits to readers.

We propose to give editors two weeks to transfer any feedback they find useful to their article talk pages, using the ‘Discuss on talk page’ tool. We also recommend that we archive the data from our pilot sites, and that we keep one instance running on Labs, for reference purposes.

Lastly, we recommend further discussions between the community and the foundation on how to give readers a voice on our sites. Suggested topics include how to make it easier for readers to comment on articles they read — as well as how to enable readers to participate in decisions that impact them, so that we can better serve the needs of all our users in the free culture movement.

We would be grateful for your comments about this recommendation — and on how to better integrate readers in our communities. Could you share your thoughts on this Article Feedback talk page in coming days? You are also invited to share any lessons learned from this experiment in our report's discussion page.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the community and team members who contributed to this experiment. We’re particularly grateful to Matthias Mullie, Pau Giner, Oliver Keyes, Maggie Dennis, Philippe Beaudette, Howie Fung and Erik Moeller at the Wikimedia Foundation -- as well as to community members Denis Barthel, Benoît Evellin, Tom Morris, Sebastian Peisker, TMg and Utar, to name but a few.

We appreciate your willingness to experiment with new ways to involve our readers in our communities — and we hope that the lessons we learned together can inform future initiatives. Regards as ever. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 22:56, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Missed the RfC. Unfortunate. I think this tool has its uses. It should be left on so that those who wish specific feedback for specific purposes can get it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:02, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

I think the biggest problem with the tool was that there was too much development done without wider community input. It had the potential to be a very useful tool, but there were some serious design flaws that probably could have been addressed early on — if those who were likely to use/moderate it could have given some feedback at a time when the developers could have used it. Unfortunately, by the time the wider editing community got a hold of it and began reporting serious problems with its design, we were already being told that the tool was as developed as it was ever going to be, and that future "developer time" was unlikely. That's never a good thing, particularly with a new tool. If the community it's meant to serve isn't included (more widely than it was) in the design, it's not likely to be as well crafted as it could be, simply because the development team can't be expected to think of everything all on their own! As a former programmer, I can certainly attest to that. End users always have ideas you've never thought of. MeegsC (talk) 16:49, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

After several years and five versions, I don't think that it's appropriate to call AFT "a new tool".

I personally was involved in discussions about three of the five versions. I wasn't specially invited to participate; discussions were open to anyone since (if memory serves) sometime in 2010. "The community", including me, was included in the design process just as much as individuals WP:VOLUNTEERed to be. The devs can't force volunteers to provide feedback, but they got enough from interested people that the early versions were completely scrapped (do you remember the five-stars version?) and new approaches tested.

I think that the design problem is nearly insurmountable: a design that works well for low-traffic articles about rare genetic diseases read by desperate parents is not going to work well for high-traffic pop culture pages read by 14 year olds. It's not a matter of asking "more" editors; what constitutes useful feedback depends on the nature of your subject and your audience. Identical feedback ("I don't understand") can be useful for some articles (e.g., articles that you expect every reader to be able to understand) and not for others (e.g., articles that you expect only serious mathematicians to understand). WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:05, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

@MeegsC: It would nearly seem from your post AFT was developed in a small cabin in the woods by a group of five individualists. While the actual developer team may have been small, the community of testers, helpers, idea givers, commenters and other wikimedians around the project was much bigger, from a bunch of states around the world, international and even interlingual. --15:18, 1 March 2014 (UTC), Utar (talk)

The main problem with the tool is that it had no real way for an editor to be aware their was active feedback without visiting the article, it should of used a similar watch-list notification that you get if their is a pending edit via pending changes. I also feel the tool was underdeveloped and the WMF should of allowed more development time once in proper beta on the site to allow greater user feedback development. The WMF should be trying to get feedback re quality of articles and encouraging users to discuss issues and ideas. Personally i think something should be done to promote and make talk pages more noticeable and accessible for inexperienced editors, as a lot of new or IP editors won't know to use them or how to use them. The WMF shouldn't be afraid to try ideas but they need to be far more community centred and not go off on a track that the community isn't fully behind. Personally i see AFT5 & Flow as representations of a not fully thought out community centred scheme.Blethering Scot 18:27, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

I don't know what the current state is, but this was previously possible. I followed feedback on all articles on my watchlist for months during 2012. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:05, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T60956

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T41326

WhatamIdoing, I was talking about the methods of determining which of an editor's followed articles had feedback. There was no easy way to check whether feedback existed short of going to each individual article. And there was no way for a WP project to track feedback for all articles in its remit. Both of those were serious shortcomings in my book. Don't get me wrong, I was a regular feedback user, and was sad to see it scrapped. But I don't think they really thought enough about how it would be used by anyone other than readers who weren't already participating in WP. And for the development team to ask for comments and suggestions and then say that there were good ideas suggested but that no further development time was being allocated meant that they lost a lot of ground with the editing community. I know that I stopped being quite so involved after it became apparent that they didn't seem to have any intent to actually act on the suggestions being made. MeegsC (talk) 05:17, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

MeegsC, here was the method I used for months: you went to Special:ArticleFeedbackv5Watchlist?ref=watchlist, and you immediately saw "which of an editor's followed articles had feedback", by directly seeing all of the feedback for any article in your watchlist displayed on your screen. It no longer works, but this was possible. This was the very simple "way for an editor to be aware [there] was active feedback without visiting the article". I never went to individual articles to look for feedback. I just bookmarked this and checked it every day after looking over my watchlist. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:47, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Creating a list of feedback by Wikiproject I agree is key. This however would be relatively easy to do. And could be done by volunteers as well. If we kill this there will be no chance to improve upon it. We need to remember that all of Wikipedia is a work in progress. Software does not come out perfect and fully put together and neither do our articles. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 11:19, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Dear Doc James, MeegsC, WhatamIdoing, Blethering, thanks for your good retrospective about this project. I appreciate all your observations, many of which match comments on our report discussion page, as well as in our own team retrospective. You are absolutely correct that the Article Feedback v5 tool would have benefited from the features you describe above, which all make good sense to me: I wish we had the resources to build them for you. In my view, the biggest issue with this project is that we took on a very hard problem with insufficient resources to effectively solve it. Our small team engaged community members extensively throughout this experiment, and we were grateful for all the good recommendations we received; but we simply did not have the capacity to build all these features with a single contract engineer. This taught us an important lesson, and we are now staffing our teams more effectively for projects of this size, such as Flow. And a lot of the code and research tools we developed for Article Feedback are now being used by other projects, so this experiment is helping improve Wikipedia in more ways than one. On the whole, I think we all gained from this project as a movement, despite its setbacks. In times like these, I am reminded of Thomas Edison's words about his own experiments: 'I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.' We too have learned a lot from this exploration. Onward! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 03:58, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, good times with Ironholds between developers and community. To those 10,000 ways: I still do remember that part of development when we were wondering about various placements of AFT in articles and discussed versions from A at least to G.

Even with that removal of AFT from articles which is coming soon, this project was not vain. If nothing else, it has managed to build connections with various wikimedian groups from all around the world. Thank you, AFT, for that. --15:18, 1 March 2014 (UTC), Utar (talk)

• Update 1: As discussed above, we now plan to remove the Article Feedback Tool entirely from both the English and French Wikipedia sites on Monday, March 3 at 19:00 UTC (see this Gerrit ticket and this Bugzilla report).

So any editors who wish to transfer useful feedback to their article talk pages should do it this weekend, using the built-in ‘Discuss on talk page’ tool. We will also archive the feedback data in a public hub, so it may be accessed even after the tool has been disabled.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the community members who so kindly participated in this experiment, especially Abyssal, Altamel, Anthonyhcole, User:Atlasowa, Aurochs, User:Blethering Scot, User:Callanecc, Cynwolfe, User:Dougweller, Dcoetzee, Diego, FeydHuxtable, Guerillero, Graeme Bartlett, GorillaWarfare, Doc James, Looie496, MeegsC, Mike Cline, Noleander, User:Pbsouthwood, User:Rd232 , User:Risker, RJHall, se4598, Shiftchange, Sun Creator, User:Thehelpfulone, User:Theopolisme, TMg, User:Trizek, Utar, WhatamIdoing, User:Wittylama, to name but a few.

We are very grateful for your willingness to experiment with us -- and for all your good insights. We all learned a lot together and I look forward to more collaborations with you in the future. Be well ... Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 03:58, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm surprised to see my name listed here! :D Sorry things didn't work out with the feedback tool. I find it's failure a bit alarming actually. I worry about its implications for the community's openness to innovation and the dire need for public outreach. Abyssal (talk) 05:27, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

You are welcome. --15:18, 1 March 2014 (UTC), Utar (talk)

A little disappointed to see it go but accept the decision. A big thanks to Fabrice and the development team, for what I know was a large lot of work. Regards, Sun Creator^(talk) 21:34, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Wow. I just happened here as I was trying to find a way to turn it on for an article I was working on. What a disappointment! Nodekeeper (talk) 08:12, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

• Update 2: We just removed the Article Feedback Tool from both the English and French Wikipedia sites today at 19:30 UTC (see this Gerrit ticket and this Bugzilla report). This means that no feedback can be posted or viewed anymore using this tool on either site. In coming days, we will archive the feedback data in a public hub, so it can be accessed without the tool. I will post on this thread as soon as that data archive is available. Thanks again to everyone who contributed to this experiment -- we're grateful for your support of this project. To be continued. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 20:16, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

  … and many thousands items of feedback, already sorted by Wikipedians and somewhere even annotated, found their resting place in the deeps of WMF databases. We can’t even browse them using the Special:ArticleFeedbackv5 web interface, that was once already developed and deployed. A barbarism; I detest this foolish community. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 18:40, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Accidentally enabled feedback tool

I'm sorry but I'm afraid I accidentally enabled the feed back tool on this AfD - I've tried to undo it a few times without any success. I'll try to remember not to juggle my iPad while multi tasking in future as I can only think I nudged a button by mistake. SagaciousPhil - Chat 09:16, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

I disabled it for you. With no talk page there was no link, but you can access feedback on any page by prefixing the name with "Special:ArticleFeedbackv5/". Edgepedia (talk) 10:04, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

No longer an option; see above. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 18:40, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia Article Feedback corpus

The full dataset can be downloaded, from

• http://datahub.io/dataset/wikipedia-article-feedback-corpus
  • (or this duplicate) http://figshare.com/articles/Wikipedia_Article_Feedback_corpus/1277784

It was previously mentioned in https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/13/open-data-sets/ but not mentioned here as it should've been.

Hope that helps. (just cleaning up loose ends). Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:45, 20 August 2015 (UTC)