Thread:Talk:Article feedback/Article feedback sucks and was implemented without consent of en:wiki/reply (6)

Every discussion that I remember seeing was either very brief (one person asks a question and another answers) or ended with at least a weak (and sometimes strong) support for the tool (although not always with every single person being happy about it).

Almost all of the complaints are on this page or at the main en.wiki AFT page. Most of the editors commenting at either of those pages have questions about how to use it, bug reports, suggestions for improvements. These pages have each attracted complaints from about half a dozen individuals like yourself, who personally dislike one or more aspects of it and whose complaints are largely variations on "Turn it off because I don't like it": Turn it off because I don't like the way it looks, Turn it off because I don't like the amount of space it takes on my screen, Turn it off because I don't like the way our readers choose to answer the questions, Turn it off because I don't like allowing mere readers to provide any feedback at all, and Turn it off because I don't like being reminded that the WMF can changing things at "my" website without getting my personal permission. (The other main category of complaint appears to be "I worry that our experienced editor corps will make idiotic choices on the basis of reader feedback", but nobody seems to be making bad choices, so I think it's a misplaced [although rational] worry.)

What is striking to me is how the volume of discussion is split: few editors actually oppose the tool, but those few are willing to post thousands of words to share their opinion and are apparently determined to impose their personal preferences on million of readers. "I don't like it" in their minds seems to mean "so nobody else should be permitted to use it", rather than "so I'm going to disable it for my account and ignore it". People who have questions or bug reports or want it enabled on another project (a repeated request) say their piece and get back to editing as soon as possible: one comment or two, and they're gone. People who think their personal preferences should be imposed on everyone else repeat their complaints for weeks.

So if you look at this page, most of the page, measured by volume of words, is covered by discussions with people who don't like the tool and want it disabled for everyone, but almost all of that volume involves just half a dozen people, who are saying the same things over and over again. If you sort by individual person, rather than number of words or edits, the dominant views are neutral or supportive. Thousands of words from a small handful of people opposed to the tool is not the same thing as widespread opposition to the tool. Wasbeer, for example, has edited this page many dozens of times, but Wasbeer's opinion is still the opinion of just one user.