Article feedback/Version 5/Help/Oversighters





This is a help page for the Article Feedback page, aimed at those with the rollbacker, reviewer or admin userrights. If you are seeing this and do not have those userrights, or have any questions about the tool, please email.

What is this feedback tool?


The Article Feedback Tool (AFT) offers a new way for readers 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 this system map. 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 percentage of the English Wikipedia, while we complete development and testing. Would you like to try out this tool? Here are some sample articles where you can post feedback during this development phase. Until the new version is released, an older version of the feedback tool (AFT4) is shown on most other Wikipedia articles, inviting people to rate the quality of articles -- without comments.

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 know 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. To learn more about do’s and don’ts of posting feedback on Wikipedia, check our 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, as described below.

Is this tool useful?
Contributors are encouraged to leave helpful suggestions for improvement, and a good portion of that feedback appears useful to Wikipedians who tested the tool. Posting feedback also leads more people to become editors, based on the Wikimedia Foundation's research. This makes it a promising on-ramp for new editor engagement.

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 any of the articles in our test sample, click on “Talk” at the top of the article page; then click on "View feedback" at the top of the talk page. For example, take a look at the feedback page for San Francisco. (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. If you find a useful post that can help improve this article, please mark it as helpful, as described below. And if you find inappropriate feedback, please flag it as abuse. Special tools in the right sidebar enable editors to "feature" a post or “mark it as resolved” (read more below). You can use these tools to surface constructive feedback to the top of the list, which helps editors find good suggestions for improvement. As a Monitor (someone possessing the reviewer, rollback or admin userrights) you can also triage unconstructive feedback, as explained below.

How can I filter the feedback?


You can pick which posts to view on the feedback page through different filters (e.g.: “Most Relevant” or “All Comments”). Simply select the filter of your choice in the top tool bar above the feedback list. “Most Relevant” includes only feedback that has been marked as helpful (or that has been featured by an editor) -- and excludes posts that have been flagged as abuse (or hidden by an editor). “All Comments” shows all feedback posts with a comment it is most useful for patrolling to eliminate inappropriate and highlight useful feedback. 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.: featured, flagged or resolved). For any of these filters, you can also sort the list by relevance, date or helpfulness.

How can I mark helpful feedback?


If you see a good feedback post, please mark it as helpful by clicking on the "thumbs-up" icon below the post. The icon will turn blue to confirm your selection. You can also mark feedback posts as unhelpful by clicking on the "thumbs-down" icon. This will change the ranking of that comment, making it appear more or less prominently depending on what option you select. This makes the suggested changes more obvious to other editors.

How can I feature the most helpful feedback?
If you find a particularly useful feedback post, you can promote it with a special editor tool: "Feature this post." This tool is located in the grey toolbar on the right, which is only available to autoconfirmed editors. Featuring a post moves it to the top of the "Most relevant" list, which makes it a lot more visible to other editors.

What else can I do with 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 "Mark as resolved" in the toolbar on the right. This lets you indicate to other editors that the comment has been addressed. (Tech tip: if the post was not featured yet, you can hit “feature this post” and then "mark as resolved").

What can I do with inappropriate feedback?


If you find a particularly inappropriate feedback post, you can permanently remove it from public view with a special monitoring tool: “Hide this post.” This tool is located in the grey editor toolbar on the right. It is only available to “monitors” (admins, rollbackers, reviewers). Hiding a post makes it invisible to anyone except monitors. Monitors will see a grey mask over hidden posts, but clicking on them will reveal the contents of these posts to authorized users. Note that this tool is effectively revision deletion, and should be used with care.

How can I restore feedback that was wrongly hidden?
If you find a feedback post you believe was wrongly hidden, you can restore it with the “unhide this post” link, in the grey toolbar on the right. Click this link, leave a note as to why the post should not have been hidden, then hit the “unhide this post” button below the text box. This will unhide the post and restore it to public view. To see who hid the post initially, you can use the “view activity” button; this will let you discuss the hiding criteria with them.

How can I oversight a post?
If you find feedback that appears to meet the oversight criteria, you can permanently remove it, using “oversight this post.” This tool is located in the grey editor toolbar on the right. It is only available to oversighters (and a few WMF staffers). To use it, simply click on “oversight this post”, fill in a rationale and hit the “oversight this post” button below the text box. Note that this is procedurally the same as the normal oversight tool; misuse can lead to a referral to the Audit Subcommittee.

How can I decline oversight?
If you receive an oversight request, either by finding it using the filters or through the OTRS queue, and it is not something that should be oversighted, you can hit the “decline oversight” button. This is in the toolbar to the right, and invites you to leave a comment as to why it does not require oversighting. Once you’ve done this, hit the “decline oversight” button below the comments box, and you’re done. You may want to drop a talkpage message or email to the user who requested oversight (who can be identified through the initial email, or “view activity”) and explain to them why oversight is not required.

How can I un-oversight feedback?


If you believe that a feedback post was oversighted in error, or if the problem has been solved, you may click the ‘Un-oversight’ link in the toolbar on the right. Note that this will make the post visible to monitors (rollbackers, reviewers, administrators), but not to the public. To make it public again, you also have to ‘unhide this post’, as described next. Incorrect oversights should be discussed on the oversighter mailing list.

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, you can email our Community Liaison at with details of the error and what browser and operating system you are running. He will submit the bug reports for you.

What do I do if I have other questions about this tool?
Our Community Liaison is happy to answer any questions on his talkpage; alternately, you can email him or discuss it on the AFT5 talkpage.

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