MoodBar

Moodbar is an experimental feature aimed at getting quick feedback on the editing experience of new editors. Its is part of the New Editor Engagement initiatives.

What is this?


This feature presents quick and easy way for users to submit feedback on their editing experience. Since we are seeking feedback from new editors, this it will only appear for newly registered users (as of the feature launch date) who have clicked on the edit button, regardless of whether they successfully completed the edit. These users will see an invitation to provide feedback at the top right of the page. Clicking on the invitation opens a dialog where users can provide feedback in the form of a happy/sad/confused designation and a 140-character comment.

Anonymized feedback will be available via a csv file (location TBD). If the feature turns out to provide meaningful feedback on the experience of new editors, the information will be published in a dashboard for easier review.

Dismissing the feature: The feature may be dismissed by clicking on "What's this" in the dialog and dismissing the feature.

Rationale
As part of the New Editor Engagement Projects, this feature is meant to provide our communities with quick feedback on the experience of our users. The initial implementation of this feature will be targeted at getting feedback from new editors of Wikipedia. The goal is to get feedback that helps us understand the experience of these new editors, which can then be used as input for feature development.

Currently the main way we get feedback on the experience of our editors is through surveys (Wikipedia Editors Survey, Former Contributors Survey). This method of feedback provides some very detailed information about our editors, but is very heavy-weight. A simple, quick feedback mechanisms can provide more timely data and help reveal trends in the early experience of our editors.

Status

 * July 21, 2011: Push to prototype.
 * July 25: MoodBar was deployed to the English Wikipedia. (The code was briefly reverted along with other updates as part of incident response, but is now running again.) MoodBar is shown as a small "Feedback about editing link" to newly registered users once they have clicked edit for the first time. The link is persistent, but it can be easily dismissed. We are currently analyzing the feedback and collecting ideas for improvement.

Additional documents

 * User requirements: Feature Requirements (Phase One)
 * User interface design docs: MoodBar 0.1/Design
 * Extension page including installation instructions
 * Status updates