Article feedback/Version 5/Release Plan 2013



Here is our proposed 2013 release plan for the Article Feedback v5 project (AFT5) and related tools.

In 2013, the Wikimedia Foundation's Editor Engagement team deployed an updated version of AFT5 for testing on English, French and German Wikipedias and is now working on these next milestones:
 * support the AFT5 tool during these limited 3-6-month pilots in 2013
 * support a full deployment of AFT5 on these sites, if requested by their communities
 * discuss more AFT5 releases on other sites, based on the success of the first pilots
 * encourage upgrades to AFT5 for sites using older AFT4 and ReaderFeedback tools

Goals


Our overall goals for Article Feedback v5 in 2013 are to:
 * engage readers to contribute productively to Wikipedia
 * help editors improve articles based on reader feedback
 * test this tool in multiple languages and regions
 * help projects deploy this tool more widely

We are now testing a new version of Article Feedback v5 on three large projects: English, French and German Wikipedias. If these limited pilots are successful, we expect to support more projects that wish to use to AFT5 in the second half of 2013.

We propose to accomplish these goals in these incremental phases:

Phase 1: First pilots
 * Deploy the updated version of AFT5 on the English, French and German Wikipedias (DONE)
 * Remove AFT4 on English Wikipedia and ReaderFeedback on all MediaWiki sites (DONE)
 * Test this new software in limited pilots throughout 2013 (ongoing)
 * Monitor community discussions about wider releases of AFT5 on their sites
 * Support wider releases if requested by communities (or remove software after pilots end)
 * Start discussions with more non-English Wikipedias and other projects interested in AFT5

Phase 2: More projects
 * After a full release on a phase 1 project, select a second group of projects that have reached consensus about adding AFT5 on their sites
 * Priority will be given to projects that have old software that can be replaced by AFT5 (AFT4 or ReaderFeedback)
 * Support the release of AFT5 for that second group of non-English Wikipedias sites

Phase 1 is already under way and is expected to continue until Q4 2013, when the French Wikipedia plans to vote on a full release. Phase 2 is likely to start in Q3 2013 if the German Wikipedia votes for a full release in May 2013 — or in Q4 2013 if the French Wikipedia votes for a full release in September 2013.

Note that we will support these first pilots with bug fixes and simple feature tweaks, but are not planning to develop any more new features this year. Based on the outcome of the first two phases, we may consider providing a turnkey version of Article Feedback (with full documentation, so sites can deploy on their own, with minimal support from us). This could enable wider releases on a third group of non-English Wikipedia sites, using such a turnkey version. In the meantime, projects are welcome to enable AFT5 on their own, once the tool has been tested for a month in the first pilots, but we recommend that they contact us with an estimate of how many comments they expect to generate per month, as described in the first paragraph of the "Checklist" section further.

This project timeline provides more details when we expect to complete these goals in this fiscal year, as well as this release checklist.

Projects
For this 2013 plan, we will discuss AFT5 releases with different groups of projects:
 * Large Wikipedia projects (e.g. English, French and German Wikipedias)
 * Projects with old software (AFT4 or ReaderFeedback)
 * Other projects (e.g. Wikivoyage, Wikinews)

Phase 1:

Here is more information about the first projects which we plan to support for phase 1 of this release plan: English, French and German Wikipedias.

English Wikipedia The English Wikipedia community recently held a Request for Comments (RfC) about the future of AFT5 on their site. They support continued experimentation with this tool on an opt-in basis, but are not ready for a full roll-out of the current versions at this time. At the community's request, we installed the new version of the tool on April 23rd, 2013, and removed feedback forms on all articles, except about a thousand pages for which an editor had specifically requested feedback. Editors who wish to get feedback for their articles can do so by simply using this new enable feedback tool. We will support these editors and monitor the usage of this tool for the rest of 2013. Our goal is to share our findings with the community later in the year, then discuss our next steps for this tool.

French Wikipedia The French Wikipedia community recently held a discussion and vote about adding AFT5 on their site. They decided to test the tool on a limited basis during a 6‑month pilot ending in December 2013, then release it across their entire site, unless another vote is requested. As a result, we plan to release the software on 42,000 articles selected by the community in early June 2013. We will provide limited support during the pilot — and help with a wider deployment if the community decides to do this in the fall.

German Wikipedia The German Wikipedia community de:Wikipedia_Diskussion:Artikel-Feedback added AFT5 on their site in December 2012, and the new version of the tool was deployed on March 19, 2013. They decided to test the tool on a limited basis during a 4-month pilot ending in June 2013, then vote again about a full release on their entire site -- or a limited release on an opt-in basis. Currently, the tool is being tested on aboutde:Spezial:Artikelr%C3%BCckmeldungen_v5 14,000 articles selected by the community. We will provide limited support during the pilot — and will help with a wider deployment if the community votes to do this in June 2013.

Phase 2:

If these first pilots are successful, we will consider supporting a second group of projects, particularly if they are using old software that could be replaced with AFT5, as outlined further.

Projects with AFT4:
 * Chinese Wikipedia (AFT4)
 * English Wikipedia (AFT4)
 * Hindi Wikipedia (AFT4)
 * Hungarian Wikipedia (AFT4, consensus reached)
 * Portuguese Wikipedia (AFT4)
 * Serbian Wikipedia (AFT4)
 * Spanish Wikipedia (AFT4)
 * Spanish Wikinews (AFT4)
 * Meta-Wiki (AFT4)

Projects with ReaderFeedback:
 * Chinese Wikipedia (ReaderFeedback)
 * English Wikibooks (ReaderFeedback)
 * English Wikinews (ReaderFeedback)
 * Russian Wikinews (ReaderFeedback)
 * Turkish Wikinews (ReaderFeedback)

Other interested projects:
 * Kannada Wikipedia (consensus reached)
 * Swedish Wikipedia (help pages only)
 * Commons (RfC in progress)
 * Wikibooks (portuguese
 * Wikinews (ru, en)
 * Wikivoyage (en, it)
 * Etc.

Checklist
Here is a checklist of actions to consider for any release of Article Feedback v5 on a new Wikipedia site:

Contact us about this release
 * Contact our product manager Fabrice Florin (fflorin-at-wikimedia-org) to discuss your interest in releasing this tool on your project (e-mail is preferred as a communication channel).
 * We recommend that you identify an english-speaking community representative to act as a liaison with our team (and provide us with their e-mail address)

Discuss this release with your community
 * We recommend that you start an online conversation (or request for comments) to discuss this tool with your community
 * Make your community aware of the tool's benefits (e.g.: engage readers to participate, give editors useful suggestions for improving articles)…
 * Also make them aware of the its costs (e.g.: feedback needs to be moderated, only about 40% of the feedback appears useful)
 * Try to reach consensus to confirm that the community is prepared to use this tool and moderate comments

Consider a small pilot
 * We recommend starting with a small pilot on a limited number of articles, to confirm that the tool works for your community
 * The pilot duration should be at least a month or two, so that you have time to make decisions about settings and tweak the tool as needed
 * At this time, the Foundation will not be able to support new pilots until the summer of 2013 (except for English, French and German Wikipedia pilots)

Plan your release
 * How many articles would be enabled with AFT5 for the pilot? for a wide across your entire site?
 * How many feedback posts are expected on a monthly basis for the wide release? (this number is needed so the Wikimedia Foundation can provide database storage)
 * Contact the Wikimedia Foundation's editor engagement team with this information, as well as special needs for your project

Namespaces and categories
 * What namespaces should AFTv5 be enabled on? (e.g. only main article namespace, also help pages, etc.)
 * What percentage of the articles should AFTv5 be enabled at? (note: this is configurable per namespace)
 * What categories should be used to blacklist / whitelist AFTv5 on a certain page? (e.g.: "Category:Article_Feedback_5")

Enable/Disable tool

Would you like to deploy feedback across your entire project? Or would you like to start by releasing it on an opt-in basis, so editors who want feedback can add them to the articles they work on? If you would like to start on an opt/in basis this Enable/disable tool makes it easy for editors to request reader suggestions on articles -- or disable feedback if there are too many comments to process. To learn more about the enable/disable tool, check this feature overview -- or our detailed feature requirements.

Moderation tools and filters Hide comments At the request of English Wikipedia community members, monitors have the option to hide offensive or seriously inappropriate comments by displaying a gray mask over those comments (note that any editor can mark a comment as "inappropriate" to remove them from public view, but this special "hide" feature adds a gray mask so that regular editors are not exposed to offensive content). Would you like to use that hide feature or not? Feedback link on articles This link shows up on article pages if there is useful feedback for an article, to make it visible to editors. This link can be turned off for any project, if needed (but editors may not know there is feedback for their article without it).
 * Check access and permissions matrix defaults for each user right
 * Confirm that the right tools are available for your user rights
 * Change access configurations if needed

Auto-archive comments This feature removes comments that are not moderated after a while, to reduce the moderation workload. Some settings like timings can be changed in configuration.

Discuss on talk page This new feature lets you share useful feedback with other editors on the talk page. It is ready for testing on our prototype site. Please let us know if you have any comments.

Abuse filter The purpose of this feature is to reduce the noise on the feedback page, by automatically disallowing inappropriate posts that include swear words or other objectionable content. This requires that the latest version of the Abuse filter extension be included on each site, and also requires the addition of about a dozen new "feedback filters", which of course would need to be translated to disallow offensive words in the correct language (rather than English).

Calls to action After readers post their feedback, they see a call to action (CTA), which can be customized as needed. We recommend using the "Sign up" CTA 4 to invite unregistered readers to create an account or login (while showing all other users the "View feedback" CTA 5), as currently implemented on the English Wikipedia. Note that this can be changed to show a "Take a survey" CTA 3, asking all participants to fill in a quick survey for your final evaluation.

Help pages Note that when we introduce the new moderation tools and filters, we will need to update this reader and editor help pages, as well as these feedback moderation guidelines. Let's discuss the best way to do this collaboratively in coming weeks. We will start this process by creating an updated version of these help pages in English first, then having them translated and updated on the German and French Wikipedias in coming weeks.

Metrics dashboard update We provide special metrics dashboards to track feedback activity on the English, German and French Wikipedias. These feedback volume dashboards and moderation dashboards now track activity from our new tools ("useful", "resolved", "no action needed" and "inappropriate"). Please contact us if you would like such a dashboard for your project as well.

There may be other important localization action items which should be added to this list. Please add to this list anything we missed.

More info
To learn more about Article Feedback v5, visit one of these pages:
 * AFT5 project hub
 * Feature requirements page
 * Testing page (for trying out new features on prototype site)
 * Technical design page

Once you've tested AFT5, please share your feedback on this discussion page or report bugs on Bugzilla.