Talk:Article feedback/Public Policy Pilot/Design


 * Where is the edit button? Can we have a facility to edit this in a template to add questions?
 * This box knows how long since you last rated the article and what rating you gave back then. Where is this information stored? (on the WP database? or in a user cooky?) Who can access it? Is my rating secret?
 * Is there a detailed results page that I can access with more info that I can use to analyse the results if I think someone is gaming the poll?
 * No, there isn't a template to handle the questions. It's part of an extension. The labels are editable through the messages file, however.
 * The information about it is stored in a database on the server side. In some cases, a cookie is set on the user's computer for performance purposes: anonymous users will have a cookie set if they have ever set a rating so that we know to go and look for any ratings they may have left.
 * While the ratings are not currently visible, they should not be considered secret. We do not yet have detailed results pages. --Jorm (WMF) 17:46, 15 September 2010 (UTC)


 * As a user I would not feel comfortable choosing a rating from 5 stars on an attribute such as well-sourced/complete/neutral/readable what are the criteria for one star vs. five stars? Perhaps if there are clear criteria or examples of what constitutes each rating this could be provided as a tooltip when people roll over the star bar. Or instead of a scalar rating, people could flag articles as good or bad in these qualities. In terms of continual improvement it would be great to allow people a one-line summary of how they justified their choice to help editors improve the article content.--Mathewsanders 02:18, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Extension information
It'd be nice to have some technical information (Manual:Extensions). I'm assuming this is the "ArticleAssessmentPilot" extension in SVN. Is this experimental/beta/stable software? --Church of emacs talk · contrib 20:12, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
 * You are correct; in SVN it is "ArticleAssessmentPilot". The name change is to reduce user confusion between this tool and the other systems in use by the PPI.
 * Here is the technical documentation. I would call this "experimental" because that's its intent; however, a lot of times those terms refer to software quality. There are known issues with the software (mostly regarding probably scaling problems that are likely unique to Wikipedia).  It is def. not stable: there are planned iterations.--Jorm (WMF) 22:32, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Focus of the extension
There is one issue that I'd like to be addressed, or rather a feature of the feature that may produce unpredictable results. As I understand it, an entry, say a Wikipedia article, will be subject to reader feedback. The trouble is, an article can change dramatically within just seconds, especially for the better, when new valuable information is added in large quantities. Then, the "old" rating of the entry no longerreflects its actual quality. Will there be a threshold (time/edit count) that will make older ratings obsolete? Also, consider judging individual edits/revisions rather than the whole article in the sum of its shapes. Wojciech Pędzich Talk 16:50, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, actually. Ratings will be "fresh" for a period - say, 5 revisions - and then go stale.  Eventually, we expect that they'll be dropped off the list.
 * There are some interesting user experience issues with this: if you rate an article on Friday, and come back to it on Monday, and your rating has disappeared, that will be a confusing experience. So one of the things we're hoping to discover during the pilot is the optimal "stale" formula, as well as whether or not ratings need to drop off, and if so, how best to handle that.--Jorm (WMF) 22:10, 20 September 2010 (UTC)