Edit Review Improvements/New filters for edit review

The Special:Recent Changes page is a central starting point for many types of edit review. Enabling reviewers using this page to find good-faith but struggling newcomers will be a first step towards providing the more supportive new-user review process that the Edit Review Improvements project is aiming for. At the same time, the suite of new tools Collaboration Team is planning for the RC page—as a beta option initially—should make edit-reviewing more efficient generally by helping reviewers to better target their efforts.

Phase-One Improvements


Phase One RC page changes—slated for October-December 2016—include the following new capabilities and improvements:

Filter for GOOD and BAD QUALITY using ORES data and via an optimized UI
Goal: By enabling users to filter for good-quality edits, empower reviewers seeking merit; by enabling detection of bad-quality edits, make numerous types of edit-review more efficient.
 * Create a series of filters based on the ORES damaging test that enable users to more effectively pursue a variety of goals (vandalism fighting, welcoming committee, etc.).
 * Through design research and user testing, determine the  language, visual design and UI that help reviewers best understand and apply the ORES tests. T146333

Filter for GOOD-FAITH and BAD-FAITH using ORES data and via an optimized UI
Goal: By enabling users to filter for edits made in good-faith, empower reviewers seeking to assist good-faith users; by enabling detection of bad-faith edits, assist reviewers looking for damaging contributions.
 * Create a series of filters based on the ORES goodfaith test that enable users to more effectively pursue a variety of goals (vandalism fighting, welcoming committee, etc.).
 * Through design research and user testing, determine the  language, visual design and UI that help reviewers best understand and apply the ORES tests T146333

Define and enable “NEWCOMER” filtering and filtering for 2 other EXPERIENCE LEVELS
Goal: Enable reviewers to easily identify very new editors, who, research shows,  are particularly vulnerable to rejection. In addition, enable reviewers to isolate edits by more experienced users in order to target or ignore their contributions.
 * Because research shows newcomers are most vulnerable in their first few days of editing, we’re defining Newcomers as follows: fewer than 10 edits and 4 days of activity.
 * The two other “Experience Levels” reviewers will be able to isolate conform with the definitions for autoconfirmed and extended confirmed user rights.

Design a UI optimized for the new ORES tools while Improving RC page usability and capability generally
Goal: While introducing a new UI  model appropriate for the ORES filters, make the Recent Changes filters more usable generally and better able to isolate desired qualities.
 * ORES’s machine-learning predictions work in a manner that will be unfamiliar to most users. We will design and test an interface that makes the ORES tools as useful and simple to understand as possible.
 * Meanwhile, many of the filters currently on the RC page are arranged in a long line that doesn’t scale well and use a hide/show interface that can be confusing (because  the interface displays “hide” when in “show” mode, and vice versa). A new interface for these tools will enable users to more easily understand and work with available tools and settings.
 * Additionally, many of the current RC page filters offer only a simple option to show or hide a certain quality (X). By changing these filters so that they let users show or hide both X and its opposite (notX), we will provide more control. For example, currently one can show Wikidata edits or hide Wikidata edts. But one can not show only Wikidata edits, let alone isolate the intersection of wikidata edits and other properties.
 * A user-controllable highlighting tool will be another general advance that should help reviewers to better identify and target edits with desired properties.
 * Phase one changes won’t affect all tools on the RC page. The following tools will remain unchanged: Namespace filters, Tag filters, filters for time frame, and number of results.

Beyond Phase One
Once the Beta features described above are in place, we will gather user input and test satisfaction, then finalize plans for more improvements. The following options are under consideration:

Extend new functionality to more pages
Add the new filters and improved filtering interface to Watchlist, User contributions, Related changes and other, similar pages.

“Recently used filters”
By enabling the system to remember reviewers’ recent filter settings, help users to repeat their most common tasks quickly and easily, without having to input settings each time.

Upgrade interface and capabilities for the untouched RC page features
Bring the Namespace filters, Tag filters and the filters for time-frame and number of results up to the new UI standard. This will enable the selection of multiple namespaces, multiple tag filters, and more specific time-frames.