Article feedback/Version 5/Help/Editors

What is this feedback tool?


The Article Feedback Tool (AFT) offers a new way to contribute productively on Wikipedia. This tool invites our readers to leave feedback about articles to help editors improve them. AFT is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation‘s Editor Engagement team.

The Article Feedback Tool includes a feedback form shown at the bottom of each article, as well as a feedback page listing all comments for an article, as shown in. Read more about these features below.

Where can I find this tool?


The feedback form is a blue box at the bottom of Wikipedia articles, with a simple question: "Did you find what you were looking for?” and a comments box (see example above). For now, it is only available on a small test sample on the English Wikipedia. Would you like to try out this tool? Here are some sample articles where you can post feedback during this testing phase.

How do you leave feedback?
To leave feedback, use the feedback form at the bottom of Wikipedia articles in our test sample. This “feedback form” asks if you found what you were looking for. Click on ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to let the editors if you found the article useful or not. Then add a comment about the article. For example, you can include suggestions for improvement, ask a question, give praise to the authors or report a problem. Just type your comment in the text box, then click “Post your feedback” to share it with the editors on the feedback page.

What kind of feedback is encouraged?
Contributors are invited to post helpful feedback: suggestions that can help editors improve the page. We encourage people to be civil, focus on facts and keep it short -- and avoid comments that are irrelevant, opinionated, offensive, defamatory or promotional. Community editors or automated software may flag or remove feedback that they find inappropriate. For more do’s and don’ts of posting feedback on Wikipedia, check these feedback guidelines.

Who can use this feedback tool?
Anyone can post feedback on articles with the new AFT5 tool (except for blocked users), and anyone can view the feedback page. Readers can also mark posts as helpful/unhelpful or flag them as abuse.

How can I tell if there is feedback for an article?
To check if there is feedback for an article, click on 'Talk', then on the 'reader feedback' link at the top of the article talk page. This will take you to the feedback page (described below), where you can read comments from readers. If any of that feedback has been marked as helpful, editors will also see a small “View reader feedback” link below the article page title, pointing to the featured posts on that feedback page. This feature aims to surface the best comments for editors, so they can use them to improve articles.

How can I add this tool on articles I watch?
To enable the Article Feedback Tool on articles you watch, simply add this special category ('Category:Article_Feedback_5') on your articles -- and the feedback form will automatically appear at the bottom of these pages. Editors who add this tool are encouraged to moderate feedback periodically for those articles (using the 'reader feedback' link at the top of their article talk pages). We encourage you to try this tool and let us know what you think on this talk page.

Is this tool useful?
Readers are encouraged to leave helpful suggestions for improvement, and about forty percent of that feedback appears useful to Wikipedians who tested the tool. Posting feedback also leads more people to create new accounts and become editors, based on the Wikimedia Foundation's research. This makes it a promising on-ramp for reader engagement, as well as a useful tool for helping editors improve Wikipedia.

Why was I not consulted about this tool?
The Wikimedia Foundation has made a particular effort to reach out to editors about this project. The new Article Feedback tool has been discussed extensively in the Village Pump, the Community Portal, the Signpost and through over a dozen IRC office hours sessions, as well as in a dedicated discussion venue. Editors who had previously been supportive or critical of the old versions were directly contacted and asked to take part in development. Many features of the new tool were proposed by editors, not developers.

What is the feedback page?


The feedback page is where reader feedback for a particular article is listed, as shown in the screenshot above. Its purpose is to help editors improve the article based on reader feedback. To see the feedback page for this test sample, click on “Talk” at the top of the article page; then click on “View reader feedback” at the top of the talk page. For example, take a look at the feedback page for the Golden-crowned Sparrow. (Tech note: feedback pages in our test sample can be accessed by typing 'Special:ArticleFeedbackv5/articletitle' into the search bar).

What can I do on the feedback page?
The feedback page lets editors see what readers think about a given Wikipedia article. Special tools in the right sidebar enable editors to moderate feedback posts in a variety of ways: for example, you can mark unreviewed posts as useful, resolved, non-actionable or inappropriate (as shown in the thumbnail to the right); alternatively, you can discuss reviewed posts on the article talk page, or contact the author of a comment. You can use these tools to surface constructive feedback to the top of the list, which helps editors find good suggestions for improvement.

How can I filter the feedback?


You can pick which posts to view on the feedback page through different filters (e.g.: “Featured” or “Unreviewed”). Simply select the filter of your choice in the top tool bar above the feedback list. The “Featured” filter is shown by default and lists posts marked as 'helpful' or 'useful' by moderators. The “Unreviewed” filter lists all posts that have not yet been moderated. A special drop-down menu called “More filters” provides even more ways to filter the list by type: selecting a filter will refresh the list, showing only posts matching that filter (e.g.: helpful, flagged or resolved). For any of these filters, you can also sort the list by relevance, date or helpfulness.

How can I feature the most useful feedback?
If you find a particularly useful feedback post, you can feature it with a special editor tool: "Mark as useful." This tool is located in the grey toolbar on the right, which is only available to autoconfirmed editors. This will promote that comment to other editors on the 'Featured' filter, which all users see by default when they first visit the feedback page. If you change your mind, click 'Undo' and the comment will be moved back to the 'Unreviewed' filter.

How can I resolve useful feedback?
If you have some expertise on this topic, go ahead and incorporate the feedback! :) Once you have made your edit for a featured feedback post, click on "Resolved" in the toolbar on the right. This lets you indicate to other editors that the comment has been addressed. If you change your mind, click 'Undo' and the comment will be moved back to the 'Useful' or 'Unreviewed' filter where it was originally.

ONLY EDITED UP TO THIS SECTION FOR NOW - WILL CONTINUE THIS EVENING

What can I do with feedback that's not actionable?
If you see a feedback post that you think is inappropriate, please report it by clicking on the "Flag as abuse" link with the flag icon. The icon will turn blue to confirm your selection and the post will be flagged as abuse. Administrators can then review it and decide if it should be hidden or not. This also removes the post from the ‘Most relevant’ view, which makes it less prominent on the feedback page. If a post is flagged by five different users, it is automatically hidden from view.

What can I do with inappropriate feedback?


If you see a feedback post that you think is inappropriate, please report it by clicking on the "Flag as abuse" link with the flag icon. The icon will turn blue to confirm your selection and the post will be flagged as abuse. Administrators can then review it and decide if it should be hidden or not. This also removes the post from the ‘Most relevant’ view, which makes it less prominent on the feedback page. If a post is flagged by five different users, it is automatically hidden from view.

How can I get more information about a post?
To find out more about a feedback post, click on ‘Details’ next to that post’s time stamp. This lets you see a "permalink" page for that post, with some useful information about its author, its creation date and relevance score. You can also click on ‘View activity’ in the grey toolbar to see past actions taken by other reviewers and read their notes about this post. These details are only shown to editors, not to readers.

How can I see feedback from across Wikipedia?
Besides feedback pages for each individual article, there is also a central feedback page that displays all of the feedback for all of the articles in our test sample -- and soon all of Wikipedia. This central page can be used for general-purpose patrolling, to deal with both inappropriate posts that need hiding, and useful ones that should be brought to the attention of article writers.

Who can moderate feedback pages?
Editors have access to special monitoring tools to moderate comments on feedback pages. Editors like you can feature posts to make them more prominent, as well as mark them as resolved. A smaller group of "monitors" (admins, rollbackers and reviewers) can hide inappropriate posts, and an even smaller group of oversighters can permanently remove feedback from public view.

The tool isn’t working properly
This is a fairly new tool, and some bugs are to be expected. If you find a bug, please file a report on Bugzilla, with details of the error and what browser and operating system you are using, and a link to the page where you experienced this problem.

What do I do if I have other questions about this tool?
If you have any questions about this tool, we invite you to post them on the Article feedback talkpage. If you cannot get an important question answered on the talk page, you may contact our product manager at.

Recommended guidelines for editors
For guidelines on the proper way to respond to different types of feedback, see Article Feedback/Guidelines.

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