Article feedback/Version 5/Help/Editors

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. 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.

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 see a feedback post that you think is inappropriate, please report it by clicking on the "Flag as abuse" link with the flag icon. The icon will turn blue to confirm your selection and the post will be flagged as abuse. Administrators can then review it and decide if it should be hidden or not. This also removes the post from the ‘Most relevant’ view, which makes it less prominent on the feedback page. If a post is flagged by five different users, it is automatically hidden from view.

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

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