Talk:Article feedback/2011/08
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IMDB rating: Only consider trustworthy users
[edit]There is one major problem imo: The averages are destroyed by 90% fan and hate votes: w:Special:ArticleFeedback
I would adapt the IMDB rating system.
- Let every logged in user vote (votes by anons are useless)
- But for the displayed average output only consider ratings by "trustworthy users"
- "Trustworthy user" = If user has left X votes, check if he registered over X months ago + made more than X edits regulary + voted regulary. If so, give him status "trusted". Run regular script to check users.
- Don't tell how the average is calculated or how one becomes a "considered user". Well, as much as an open source code can keep it secret. At least don't add it to the FAQ :)
- Don't take the normal average or votes by "trustworthy users", but "weighted ratings"
- Run a daily script to calculate the averages ("Thank you for voting! The rating will be updated within 24 hours" or whatever IMDB used to return after voting). The script / cron job may be a problem or optional setting for the extension. Subfader 22:29, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
- I don't agree that votes by unregistered editors (or logged-out editors) are useless. I think that we need feedback from the 99% of our users who aren't logged in. We need to be sophisticated about how we interpret that information (e.g., possibly using that to flag an article as a likely target of spam or vandalism), but I think that information is valuable. WhatamIdoing 15:57, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
- I assume that most of the anons are not very familiar with the WP guidelines, thus their votes for the 4 criteria are not worth much. Furthermore it prevents hate/fan votes more than counting anons.
- And if anon votes would really be worth so much, IMDB would let anons vote and consider every vote blindly. Subfader 21:23, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
- I completely agree with you Subfader. Without some drastic changes taking place, this feature is useless. MikeAllen 02:32, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
- Do you need to be very familiar with WP guidelines to decide whether an article is complete? Or that it's well-written?
- Do you think that before you became a regular editor, that your opinion on these two points would have been completely worthless? WhatamIdoing 05:23, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
- Maybe not for well-written, sure. But if completeness was so obvious, there wouldn't need to be guidelines for writing articles. And you gently ignores teh other 2 criteria most anons have no clue about.
- You're obviously a hardcore defender of the feature and ignoring my main point.
- My main point is adapting the IMDB rating system to improve the average stats and not if anon votes should count or not.
- In general there is no single abuse protection.
- If the voting system was so perfect (as you say anon votes are worth countign), then why is w:Special:ArticleFeedback so fucked up with obvious fan and hate votes? Subfader 09:25, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
- I think the dashboard should provide checkboxes and selection boxes (such as those from Special:RecentChanges) so that it allows one to get (and create links to) different reports from the ratings collected. For example, a user accessing the dashboard could have the option to generate lists after defining options such as these:
- Consider ratings from:
[ anonymous | registered | self-identified expert | all ]users- users registered
[ N ][ days | weeks | months ]ago
- users registered
- users who have
[ rated | edited ]more than[ N ]articles[ | since his/ her account was created | in the last [ week | month ] ] - ...
- Exclude articles having:
- Less than
[ N ]ratings in the last[ N ][ hours | days | months ](see suggestion on this thread) [ Less | More ]than[ N ]bytes- ...
- Less than
- So, once the users know which combinations of parameters generate the better metrics about the articles, these values could be used as the default on the dashboard. Helder 16:26, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
- I'd also like to have options like these—but not as the only option or as the default. WhatamIdoing 17:08, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
- Requested on bug #30334. Helder 17:01, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
- All these options make perfect sense, I have requested that more data be made available via the toolserver so we can start experimenting with this. DarTar 18:50, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
- If my goal was to find the one True™ answer about the article's status, then I could build a case for banning practically everyone except myself from rating articles. You say that you'd let anyone decide whether an article is well-written, but I might say that only people who share my views about comma splices and run-on sentences should be able to determine whether an article is well-written. If I want the True™ answer, then zero readers who are not native English speakers should be permitted to rate this item, and people who claimed to be native speakers would have to pass a written grammar test first.
- But that's not my goal. I actually want to know what other people believe about our articles. I want to know this not because they're smart, or right, or because I've forgotten that half of them have below-median IQ, but because I want to know what these millions of users—nearly all of whom are unregistered—believe about the article. Wikipedia's future depends on keeping readers, not on keeping a couple of high-powered editors. If the article is written at the simplistic level that I associate with 12 year olds and our readers like that, then I want and need to know that. I want them to get the information they need and want far more than I want to show off my vocabulary.
- I've already got a "trusted" user assessment system. I don't need AFT to find out what someone like you thinks about an article: you're going to tell me on the talk page, either by using the separate WikiProject assessment system or by leaving a written comment. AFT is my "untrusted" user assessment system. So long as I'm not such a fool as to confuse the two, then I'm getting the best of both worlds.
- This means that I'm going to interpret "well-written" as meaning something like "I understood most of the stuff on the page", not as "This page should be submitted for a literary award". I'm going to interpret "complete" as meaning something like "Whatever fact I wanted to know happened to be on the page". I'm going to interpret "Trustworthy" as meaning "The names of sources, which the user probably didn't even look at, don't sound completely stupid" rather than meaning "The sources are actually high-quality and the material is actually supported by them". I'm going to interpret "Objective" as meaning "The page doesn't sound like it was written by a complete crackpot and the information sounds factual to the reader" rather than meaning "The page truly reflects the balance of high-quality sources".
- And, by the way, I see no evidence of fan or hate votes at the dashboard. It's dominated by popular pages, but that's a function of its selection algorithm: unpopular pages are never displayed on the dashboard. That a page on a controversial figure like George W. Bush gets a 2.7 for "objective" (the dashboard apparently doesn't reflect the most current figures) tells me that we've probably hit the balance about right in the article—since one gets that kind of moderate score by pleasing neither the "pro" nor the "anti" readers. If that article was rated 4 or higher, I'd expect to find obvious bias in it—bias that just happened to line up with what most of our readers believed. Apparently unlike you, I don't expect "untrusted" users to have checked their personal biases at the door. I actually expect these ratings to reflect their biases and average ignorance, and consequently I account for that when I'm interpreting the results. WhatamIdoing 17:04, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
- I see where you're coming from but I refuse to accept this for ratings.
- I think the simple criteria for a "trustworthy user" would improve the ratings and effectivly kick out the fan and hate votes.
- And yes there are fan and hate votes. And you just don't want to believe it? This is reality. You sound like every person on the internet is a perfect WP user...
- Of course "trustworthy users" are fans of something and also hate things. But they're surely more objective on rating an WP article than those hate and fan anons.
- "That a page on a controversial figure like George W. Bush gets a 2.7 for "objective" ... tells me that we've probably hit the balance about right in the article"
- Sure :D Do you really believe this??? This is far from reality! It only tells me that more haters voted for Jimmy Wales than for Bush or that Bush has more fans voting than Jimmy Wales, who is of less interest than Bush. But it doesn't tell much about the quality of the article!
- Actually I think the more votes a very low rated article has, the higher the chance that the article quality is actually rather good. Think about it.
- How many anons and how many logged in users voted for the Jimmy Wales article? What's the rating when votes by anons are ignored? This basic example should be much closer to reality. Just the plain fact that Jimmy Wales pops up in one of those 2 lists tells me that the rating system is not working.
- Talking of balance: I bet the ratings on w:Special:ArticleFeedback have extreme peaks on both ends like this:

- Ask yourself if that's how it should be and what might be causing this.
- To be fair, even the IMDB rating system can't avoid these: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0411646/ratings
- But that doesn't mean the rating is well balanced as you defended the 2.7 for Bush...
- Plus, if the system was really balanced, the articles listed on w:Special:ArticleFeedback should reflect the diversity of WP articles in general with 95% of unpopular topics.
But in fact there are mostly popular topics popping up in these top and bottom ranking lists. Now my only question is: WHY? Please answer this. (I assume that all kinds of articles have been voted meanwhile and if not, it still won't be "balanced" after years...) Subfader 19:12, 3 August 2011 (UTC)- Jimmy Wales has all ONE ratings (from 1001 voters). Why is this rating system helpful again? There's no reason why his article should be one-point voted in all categories. Very helpful indeed. MikeAllen 07:39, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
- And I bet not one "trustworthy user" among them... but wait, it means the article is bad, someone hurry up and improve it! Subfader 14:28, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
- The odd rating for the Jimmy Wales page could be related to the possible bug reported below. WhatamIdoing 15:42, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
- I think 1001 is the total of ratings for all revisions, and 1.0 is the average of non-expired ratings. See Article feedback/FAQ#How are the averages calculated?. Helder 16:20, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
- The dashboard (deliberately) reports only popular articles. To get reported, the article must have been rated ten times today. A page that doesn't receive at least ten ratings within 24 hours will never appear on the dashboard. Only our most popular pages will ever get reported there.
- Because of the demographics (half of Wikipedia's users are under 22, and younger people have more time and interest in rating pages than middle-age people with jobs and families to take care of), we're always going to see a distinct age skew on the dashboard. This means that most articles on the dashboard are going to reflect the interests of younger people, like the latest movie or various entertainment celebrities. This will be the case because more teenagers and young adults will bother to rate the pages, not because these subjects are more important to the whole world.
- Which, if you think about it, is really no different from you: Do you want to tell us how old you were at the time of your first edit, which was about a music festival? I'm going to guess that "middle aged" is the wrong answer.
- We have to be smart about how we interpret this information, but we don't have to scrap it or restrict it to "perfect" users. WhatamIdoing 15:29, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
- Well can this feedback tool be switched off for certain projects (like the Film project) if there is consensus (and it is among the project)? We just don't see any benefit for this feedback tool for the Film Project. Sorry. MikeAllen 07:33, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
- The third question in the FAQ tells you how to do it.
- You would officially need "community consensus" for any given page or group of pages, rather than "small group consensus", but a moderately advertised RFC hosted at the WikiProject's talk page would presumably be sufficient for that purpose. Given that the project claims 90,000 pages, you'd also want to file a bot request.
- In the meantime, I suggest that each individual member who doesn't like it simply turn it off for his whole account. That some readers are rating articles doesn't oblige you to take the least bit of notice of their ratings.
- Before you go down that path, let me also add that one of the goals is to eventually figure out whether certain kinds of pages attract inappropriate ratings. If you take all the film-related pages out of the study (and I agree that they might attract more fan/hate votes than other subjects), then you would effectively prevent us from gathering data on that point. WhatamIdoing 00:53, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
- So you need "community consensus" for switching AFT off, but where was the consensus for turning it on? Bensin 20:13, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
- WikiProjects are just groups of editors. They have no special rights over the pages they happen to work on. A discussion among one small group of editors is not sufficient for imposing their decision on 90,000 articles. It doesn't matter what the question is: they cannot demand that all of the articles they want to work on follow the members' favorite format, that they use only the members' favorite sources, that the navboxes be the members' favorite format, or—relevantly—that the articles be placed in a particular category. WikiProjects do not own the articles within their scope. The views of four members of a WikiProject are no more important than the views of any other four editors. WhatamIdoing 19:23, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
- You talk like a politician. The question was: "So you need "community consensus" for switching AFT off, but where was the consensus for turning it on?" Subfader 19:53, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- WikiProjects are just groups of editors. They have no special rights over the pages they happen to work on. A discussion among one small group of editors is not sufficient for imposing their decision on 90,000 articles. It doesn't matter what the question is: they cannot demand that all of the articles they want to work on follow the members' favorite format, that they use only the members' favorite sources, that the navboxes be the members' favorite format, or—relevantly—that the articles be placed in a particular category. WikiProjects do not own the articles within their scope. The views of four members of a WikiProject are no more important than the views of any other four editors. WhatamIdoing 19:23, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
- So you need "community consensus" for switching AFT off, but where was the consensus for turning it on? Bensin 20:13, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
- Well can this feedback tool be switched off for certain projects (like the Film project) if there is consensus (and it is among the project)? We just don't see any benefit for this feedback tool for the Film Project. Sorry. MikeAllen 07:33, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
- Hi Subfader and everybody,
- thanks for the great feedback. There are many cases in which ratings will display this kind of polarization, not just in the case of trending topics. This is a common issue in online rating systems and what this implies, among other things, is that averages do a very poor job as indicators of the typical quality score for these articles. There are several possible ways of addressing this issue, but the polarization per se is not necessarily a "bug" in the system, it just reflects a strong diversity of opinions on the quality of the article among raters.
- There are different issues that you and others have raised in the AFT threads that should not be conflated:
- how to represent scores of articles that display highly polarized ratings compared to articles that don't
- how to tell apart genuine ratings on the quality of an article from hate/love ratings about the topic of the article
- how to cope with the skewedness produced by trending topics or controversial articles on ratings (assuming they attract visits from users that are substantially different from visitors of non-trending/non-controversial topics)
- how to increase the number of observations for non-trending articles
- how to cope with explicit gaming
- Each of these issues needs a dedicated solution and we shouldn't assume, for example, that 1) necessarily follows from 2) unless this results from the data.
- As for the idea of arbitrarily switching off the tool on some articles, WhatamIdoing hit the nail on the head: this won't allow us to gather data that we need to address the problems AFT is currently facing. As I said before, it's not by reducing the amount of data we collect that we can analyze and solve these problems, but by deciding what we do with this data once it's been collected (how we generate aggregate scores from raw rating data, how we use this data to rank/filter articles etc.). These are problems for which expertise from editors familiar with community dynamics would be extremely useful.
- We definitely do not want to exclude anonymous ratings as the tool is designed to get a broader source of data about quality and to work as a vector of new user engagement. There are ideas we can experiment with at the moment, such as looking at rater consistency across multiple ratings, but there's definitely value in anonymous ratings and we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bath water.
- One last word: there's a lot of concern expressed on this page about negative ratings, but no one seems to consider the fact that Article Feedback could (and should) be used to praise editors who do a great job. Our community currently works in a gratification void, the only kind of explicit praise (a very small part of) our community gets is via barnstars, personal messages on user talk pages and other community-centric mechanisms such as WP1.0 ratings. But shouldn't we allow readers to express gratitude to editors for their hard work? Shouldn't we let editors know, for example, that an article to which they substantially contributed was visited by 100K users every day and was consistently rated high on quality scales? I believe there are smart ways of using AFT for this purpose. DarTar 18:48, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
- Jimmy Wales has all ONE ratings (from 1001 voters). Why is this rating system helpful again? There's no reason why his article should be one-point voted in all categories. Very helpful indeed. MikeAllen 07:39, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
- I agree with WhatAmIDoing. Frankly, feedback from "trusted Wikipedian editors" is useless since they represent an infinitesimally small percentage of the people who are actually going to use the article. From a market research perspective, it is like doing a taste test for a new line of microwaveable lunches and instead of asking the office-cubicle crowds that are going to be using your product, you only ask "trusted users" like professional chefs.
- The real value is from the actual users of the articles, the drive by anon IPs who came to the page via a google search or blog link. Sure, any open ratings system will have crap responses but you have to take the chafe with the wheat. But above all it is the readers, not the editors who shape public opinion about the accuracy and usefulness of Wikipedia. THESE are the people that you want to reach and you're not going to reach them by 1.) asking them to create an account before ratings or 2.) hiding the ratings system on the talk page where most readers don't even go to anyways
- Besides, if anyone wants to know what the "trusted users" of Wiki-Illuminati think about an article it can always be submitted to FAC. But that will still tell you jack squat about what the majority of Wikipedia readers think about it. 174.61.248.93 19:05, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
- You're right but this is no market research! We don't want to sell any articles.
- To stay up with that example we don't ask the average John Smith if he likes the new product, but we also ask questions that only invloved people can fairly judge. If John Smith never read the WP guideline for the completeness of articles, how can he judge that criteria?
- In your example: "Is this new coffee machine trustworthy?" Answer: "Totally. The coffee is hot. 5/5!" Subfader 13:24, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
- The principles outlined by the anon still apply. The opinions of the elite (like you) do not tell us anything about our audience's view of the product. They give us a specialist's view, which is useful for identifying (for example) whether it complies with certain, specific, technical standards, but they do not tell us what our audience thinks.
- John Smith doesn't need to read "the WP guideline for the completeness of articles" (which, BTW, is a poor example, because no such guideline exists) to provide useful and accurate information to us about his opinion of whether the article is complete according to a real-world, dictionary-definition kind of completeness.
- You seem to be stuck in the wikibubble. The tool is trying to use plain English to get normal-person, real-world responses. It is not trying to correlate perfectly to wikijargon and the quirky details of official policies and guidelines. WhatamIdoing 17:01, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
- Subfader, you may not be aware of it but market research deals with FAR, FAR more than just selling products. Pretty much anything that involves getting people's opinion on the matter has its root in market research principles.
- But to go with your coffee example, you could gleam a lot from such a glib answer to the question of whether the machine is trustworthy. If you see a pattern of 5/5 stars given simply on the basis of the coffee being hot than you obviously know that "hotness" is intimately equated in the consumer's mind with a trustworthy machine. So you better believe that coffee machine engineers would focus on that angle.
- Similarly, if we see a pattern of "trustworthiness" for articles with only news article internet sources (versus offline sources or academic journals) being consistently rated low, we may be able to gleam that readers put more faith in articles that appear to be sourced to books published by reputable publishing houses or recognizable academic journals, etc.
- The above is just a hypothetical and again, patterns are what we are looking for. But you can't see any patterns unless you start asking the questions. 174.61.248.93 20:52, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
- You would't know he likes coffee hot because you only ask him to rate X stars out of 5... Subfader 21:32, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
- LOL! Well I assumed we were including your comment but okay, I'll play that game ;)
- Even if we don't know that the "hot" coffeemaker was getting 5/5 stars because it is always makes hot coffee, the coffeemaker is still fulfilling the user's expectations even though the exact reason is not detailed. Ergo a good thing.
- But when you get several hundred results over many different coffeemakers eventually patterns emerge where you will see that the "hot" coffeemakers trending with higher trustworthy ratings than coffeemakers who don't consistently make their coffees as hot. This is the parallel I drew above with looking at the pattern of how Wikipedia articles are rated.
- As a member of the Wine Project on en.wiki, I'm pretty familiar with all the high traffic wine articles and how they are formatted and reference. While the majority are referenced to offline book written by credible wine experts we have a few that utilize various websites and wine magazines. If I see the former receive consistently 5/5 trustworthy ratings while the later are getting 2-3/5 then I can start seeing a pattern that tells me either A.) The sources that we are using are not reliable or B.) The sources that we are using are not perceived to be reliable and maybe I need to take a closer look.
- But again, you can't start seeing patterns until you start asking questions and getting results. 174.61.248.93 23:07, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
- You would't know he likes coffee hot because you only ask him to rate X stars out of 5... Subfader 21:32, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
- I agree that this is a big problem with the tool. An article I wrote had around 80 ratings, with all the parameters highly rated. One evening in London, an activist group held a meeting that was related to the topic of the article. One of them arrived on the talk page during the meeting to change one minor aspect of it, in accordance with the meeting's views. Several Wikipedians resisted the change. We watched as the ratings suddenly fell, as members of the activist group expressed their displeasure at not being allowed to make that one change. Now, a good and neutral article is rated as biased, with only moderately trustworthy sources, when in fact it's as neutral as we can make it, and uses the best sources available. This kind of activism seriously reduces the tool's value. SlimVirgin 21:16, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
- How frustrating for you to feel like they were taking their revenge that way. I think that we can reasonably expect that to be a rare occurrence, however, since most POV pushers are working "solo". Fortunately, their ratings are only temporary: Thirty edits from now, their biased ratings will be out of the calculation, and you'll be back to your usual group of readers. WhatamIdoing 15:43, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
- But it's not "rare". I see it happening all the time. Maybe not specifically for "revenge" per say, but my area of "expertise" (if you can call it that) is actors (more specifically, former and current child stars). My dedication to the subject of child stars arose from the level of vandalism I found on younger stars' pages, so I took it upon myself to become one of the few editors dedicated to monitoring the pages most of the trusted adult Wikipedia editors, understandably, don't know anything about and/or couldn't care less about. As others have said - I've seen an extremely high number of fan/hate "votes" that have absolutely no reflection whatsoever on the merits of an article. Granted, this occurs more often on "celebrity" biography pages than on articles about astrophysicists, but there are a lot of highly trafficked "celebrity" Wikipedia pages, so the idea that this is "rare" doesn't hold water with me.
- On the subject of IMDb's ratings system, I have to agree that if we are to keep the tool, then we could take a cue from IMDb. #1 - I've noticed IMDb does NOT allow "voting" on pages about people. #2 - On the pages where they DO allow "voting", the votes are invisible until there are at LEAST 10 votes. If people are absolutely dead-set on keeping this tool (which I've found completely useless on most of the "celebrity" pages I'm watching), then I would suggest following IMDb's lead on some of their guidelines. Crakkerjakk 00:04, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- But in the grand scheme of Wikipedia's 3 million + English articles, the small scope of celebrity articles that may get "silly ratings" is still relatively rare and infinitesimally small. 174.61.248.93 18:13, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Useless extension, useless discussion. The AFT mafia ignores all of the critics anyway. Epic fail. Subfader 19:17, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- I fail to see the constructiveness in characterizing any editor who happens to disagree you as part of a "Mafia". I have no connection to the AFT tool outside of being a regular Wikipedia editor who is excited about the potential usefulness of this tool. 174.61.248.93 22:01, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- Useless extension, useless discussion. The AFT mafia ignores all of the critics anyway. Epic fail. Subfader 19:17, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Fan votes/hate votes are not the problem SlimVirgin is describing. She's describing a one-time problem with an organized group of activists trashing the ratings on an article specifically because the specific POV-pushing change that they approved at an face-to-face meeting in London was rejected by Wikipedia editors as violating policies. This is not the individual fan expressing an opinion: this was an organized campaign to harm the article, and, when that failed, to "punish" Wikipedia for not accepting the POV pushing.
- I seriously doubt that this is a common problem for any kind of article, simply because so few organized, non-Wikipedia-related groups bother to vote on what changes to make in a Wikipedia article. If you've ever seen a similar situation, please let us know the name of the article. WhatamIdoing 20:00, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- I guess you missed the point of what I said. I think I made it clear that the "revenge" circumstance was possibly unique, but the outcome of 12-year-old girls voting down someone they don't like or voting up someone they DO like is essentially the same. They're voting on the SUBJECT of the article, and not on the merits of the article itself. And I'm not buying this idea that the "celebrity" bio articles on Wikipedia represent an "infinitesimally small" portion of the daily traffic on Wikipedia. I would think anyone who has taken a look at the Article Feedback Dashboard would see celeb bio pages make up at LEAST 50% of average daily traffic, with articles like Floyd Mayweather Jr (rated B-Class), Justin Bieber (rated B-Class) and Adolph Hitler (once rated GA-Class, now one would assume B-Class), all pages that are LOCKED from unverified users, by the way (presumably from too much vandalism), getting some of the LOWEST ratings for the day??? What a "coincidence"... Celebrity pages obviously make up a HUGE portion of the daily traffic on Wikipedia. Anyone who tries to pretend like they don't is in serious denial. Like it or not, we live in a celebrity culture. I guarantee you Charlie Sheen will get 10x more hits today than this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner.
- By the way - I just noticed the #1 HIGHEST rated page today is the Liberty Bible Academy that boasts a grand total enrollment of 155 students (grades PreK-8). Hmmmmm... A "Start-Class" article (at best) with two broken reflinks, rated as providing "Comprehensive Coverage" with "Great Reputable Sources".. Is there anyone who honestly believes that's not a ratings flash-mob descending on the page??? Gimme a break. The ratings are a big joke and basically exist as a new (and now sanctioned) way for anonymous users to vandalize pages. Crakkerjakk 22:50, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- You might like to look at the list of 1000 most visited articles. From my quick scan, the first "celebrity" bio is Justin Bieber at #29, meaning that 28 other pages are more popular at the moment. "Most rated" and "most viewed" are not the same.
- Furthermore, the dashboard doesn't show "most rated". It shows "most extreme ratings". It is deliberately designed to help us find strange ratings. Basing your view of the whole program on this is like believing that America's Funniest Home Videos shows normal, everyday American life.
- As for the existence of ratings that editors disagree with: Fan votes and hate votes are not vandalism. They are also harmless. You're not going to screw up a decent article to get a better rating, right? No experienced editor is going to do that. So why do you care what the rating is at any given moment? WhatamIdoing 16:29, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- Basing your view of the whole AFT feedback here and on WP is like believing that everyone who did not post negative feedback yet accepts and believes in the usefulness of AFT. Subfader 19:28, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- Yes, I have viewed the list of most trafficked pages. But since we're talking about the rating tool, I thought the most rated numbers were the most relevant to the conversation. What looking at the top 30 most viewed articles does NOT show is the AVERAGE rate of views on the other 3+ million pages that another user previously cited. From my experiences on Wikipedia I would bet that if you average ALL daily views, at least 50% would be celebrity pages - throwing out some arbitrary .000001% sample doesn't show anything. In fact, my concern is the articles that do NOT show up in the "most rated" results - where kids are vandalizing pages using the ratings tool (yes, I said VANDALIZING, deal with it) and the ratings stay up for MONTHS, because the pages are locked (due to excessive vandalism), so they're not being edited every day, or even every week.
- "So why do you care what the rating is at any given moment?"
- Thank you!! You just made my point. What is the point of having a ratings system if the working philosophy is "Why should we care what the ratings are?". That's EXACTLY what I and others have been saying!! A large portion of the ratings are meaningless so what's the point of having them? And before you try and cook up ANOTHER condescending answer - It's a rhetorical question, so you can save yourself the trouble. I thought the point of this page was for users to give FEEDBACK about how the tool was working (or, in this case, NOT working), not to have one or two users repeatedly try and "sell" the tool to us every time anyone disagrees with you.
- As I said in my original post - I'm coming to this page from a segment of Wikipedia where the rate of fan/hate votes are extremely high - specifically, current and former child stars - From previous experience, I'm well aware that most Wikipedia editors couldn't care less about the young Disney / Nickelodeon stars' pages (where the average age of readers ranges from 8 to 14, and, as a result, the highest percentages of mischievous edits and ratings per user occur), so I thought it might be useful to give some feedback from the perspective of those pages. Obviously there are people here who have trouble reading, but in my original post I clearly stated that if the tool were to be kept I would suggest following IMDb's format - NOT using ratings on bio pages (where vandalism voting is most likely to occur), and NOT showing ratings until there are at least 10 votes to allow at least SOME chance of there being something useful to discern from the results. Again, I thought this page was for users from different areas of Wikipedia to give feedback about their experiences with the tool - not to be subjected to obnoxious and condescending feedback on our feedback. This was clearly a mistake on my part. It won't happen again. Crakkerjakk 20:29, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- Editors can remove the tool from any set of pages (e.g. bio pages) by adding them (or a template which is transcluded on them) to the black list (as someone did for the wiktionary redirects).
- As for the specific suggestions such as "NOT showing ratings until there are at least 10 votes" and others in the ideas log, I think they should likely be requested on bugzilla before it get lost on the threads of this talk page, so it will be on the list of open AFT requests and may be acted on once we have developers for the next-generation of features for the Article Feedback tool. Helder 03:33, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- Thanks, that's a good idea. I didn't know about those pages. I thought this was where we were supposed to give our feedback, but it's good to know there's a more organized way to share our problems/ideas on the subject. I'm glad there's somebody interested in actually giving helpful advice instead of just trying to convince everyone who comes here that we don't know what we're talking about. Crakkerjakk 04:56, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- What is the point of having a ratings system if the working philosophy is "Why should we care what the ratings are?"
- The goals of the tool are explained in the FAQ. Have you read it? WhatamIdoing 16:17, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- Yes, I've read it. The goal was to get readers interested in editing. I've also read your own admission that (paraphrasing) only the biggest morons visiting Wikipedia would give any weight to the ratings. You've repeatedly undermined your own defense of the tool. If the purpose of the tool is to lure only the biggest idiots to edit Wikipedia - then I agree with you 100% - I'm sure it'll be a smashing success.
- By the way - I'm STILL waiting for one of the "experts" on here who claims to LOVE this tool's ability to cultivate well-written articles, to link to something you've actually written...........*crickets*...........yeah, I didn't think so. Crakkerjakk 19:50, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- w:en:Champagne (wine region)
- w:en:Cabernet_Sauvignon
- w:en:Chardonnay
- w:en:Sangiovese
- w:en:South_African_wine
- w:en:Barolo
- w:en:History_of_French_wine
- w:en:History_of_Champagne
- w:en:Oak (wine)
- w:en:Ripeness_in_viticulture
- w:en:Ancient_Rome_and_wine
- ....are a few of the articles that I've written.
- And, yes, when the AFT Dashboard becomes something that can be sorted by categories and/or Wikiproject tags, I highly look forward to being able to use this tool to identify wine articles that consistently receive low scores so that I can work on improving them. 174.61.248.93 20:57, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- Vicious circles alert!!!
- Improving articles is not the purpose of this tool. We were advised to read the FAQ several times, so should you do.
- Even if that was the purpose, you would only find abusive fake / fan / hate votes like now. Go improve Bush and Justin Biber and all the oher stuff popping up there. Go improve! According to AFT these are super bad articles.
- Even if improving WP was the purpose, AFT would need to work properly. But it doesn't. If it would, you would face another problem: Only a few percent of WP articles are quality. There are not enough editors to improve all those and AFT can not create new editors with abusive ratings. Subfader 21:23, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- Even if that was the purpose, you would only find abusive fake / fan / hate votes like now. Go improve Bush and Justin Biber and all the oher stuff popping up there. Go improve! According to AFT these are super bad articles.
- More like a straw man alert.
- Improving articles is, indeed, not the primary and stated purpose of the tool. Using a index card to squash the mosquito that landed on my desk and wipe it into the trash is not the primary and state purpose of index cards but...like most tools, it have its multi-tasking moments.
- However, like any tool, it does require some common sense to use (Like for instance, while index cards are great bug killers, they probably wouldn't be very helpful for stuffing your bra). So I may see an article like w:en:Wine_tasting get relatively low scores, especially when it comes to completeness and objectivity. Now,using common sense, I can probably assume that these are not "fan/hater" ratings for a topic like Wine tasting (though I may wonder about that for an article like White Zinfandel perhaps).
- I'll look at the laundry list of "further readings" and the uneven distribution of refs and figure that may have a role in the reader not having much confidence in the objectivity of the text and I could see that the several tiny sections on glassware, wine color, etc probably could use more info to help with completeness.
- Eventually an editor like myself will come across this article and see these things that need to be improve. Indeed, it has been tagged with needing ref improvement since June 2010. However, I've got a lot of articles on my list that need to be worked on and this may not be a priority.
- BUT...if my wikiproject was doing a dedicated article improvement drive and we had a tool like the AFT dashboard that we could see a cumulative rating of wine articles for the month, we could see that perhaps that Wine Tasting was one of our lowest rated articles for the last month and then use this information to readjust our priority list. 174.61.248.93 21:59, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- Improving articles is not the purpose of this tool. We were advised to read the FAQ several times, so should you do.
- Sorry, this thread is like a maze to navigate with all the hidden replies, etc, so I didn't even see this until just now.
- Nice try pretending to take credit for those articles, but I checked and they've CLEARLY been edited by HUNDREDS of people. Fixing a typo, or removing a dead reflink isn't exactly what I call "writing". I would expect someone who actually "wrote" an article on Wikipedia to be able to link to their Wikipedia USERNAME and the revision history page that clearly showed where they took a page from nothing to something. Nice try, but EPIC FAIL.
- As far as asking to see someone's work who characterizes others feedback here as "infinitesimal". I have to disagree that it's a "pissing contest". The article a person has written demonstrates for EVERYONE here you're level of dedication and "expertise" when we evaluate your snotty little "opinions" about our opinions. Unfortunately you've failed to show anyone here a page you've written, but the articles that you TRIED to take credit for DO tell a lot about you. I suggest you put down the bottle of wine and take a look around at articles that aren't the #1 favorites of alcoholics across the English speaking world. Talk about "infinitesimal" - I guarantee you Justin Bieber gets more hits per day than ALL the Wine Wikiproject pages put together. Crakkerjakk 00:09, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- Lol...yeah, you've definitely have given up on trying to support your contentions and make some valid points. Now it's just petty mudslinging to see if anything sticks.
- You've also demonstrated some deficiency in knowing how to read an article history page because if you read one you would see that 90%+ of those articles were written by one user---Agne27 which is who I am "claiming to be". But, whatever, if you don't want to deal with disagreeing opinions and have civil discourse on how to improve the tool then I wish you the very best in your wiki endeavors and hope that Justin Bieber never opens a winery so that I'll have to deal with that article. 166.205.140.234 01:02, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- I think the truth just came out. Albeit most likely out of some alcoholic haze, but the truth nonetheless.. You PERSONALLY don't care about the celebrity articles, so you wish everyone else would simply dismiss them as "infinitesimal", no matter how blatantly ridiculous your worn-out 1% assertion is..
- You've also once again demonstrated some serious deficiency in your reading abilities. NOWHERE did you post your username, and NOWHERE did you post to the revision pages where you took these pathetic little "stubs" to sterling *GA* articles. Aside from lacking some crucial mental faculties (perhaps a long-term side effect of your apparent love affair with alcohol), you expect everyone here to sift through hundreds of edits on the edit history pages where you're trying to take credit for other users' work. Crakkerjakk 01:17, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- Wow....you really are grasping at straws. Though I guess when your attempts at making any sound argument against AFT collapsed so ingloriously, what else do you got but incivility, naming calling and climbing the Reichstag?
- But hey...if that is how you roll, Crakkerjakk, so be it. 174.61.248.93 05:16, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- You sound like a teenager, that's why nobody wants to argue with you ;) Subfader 18:58, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- Eh.... given Crakkerjakk's weird association between wine editing=alcoholism and his reduction to just name calling and taunting, it would be uncivil and patronizing to make cracks about his age. We can just let his comments on the page speak for themselves.
- Oh, wait, did you want to direct that ad hominem at me? Oh well. 174.61.248.93 19:21, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- What you fail to understand is that when the numerous people who have come here have "given up" trying to explain things to you, it's not because they lacked the ability to make sound arguments - It's because you've repeatedly demonstrated a complete lack of ability to grasp even the simplest of concepts: Remedial math, Remedial English, etc, etc.. You didn't "back them into a corner" or "win" any arguments - they simply grew tired of you and left.
- I have to give you credit though. You've managed to achieve what I would have thought to have been the impossible. You've made WhatamIdoing look like a rocket scientist next to you. WhatamIdoing is just your average, garden-variety, self-appointed know-it-all (Wikipedia is filled with them). You, on the other hand, are a bona fide troll, as you've made painfully obvious to everyone who's visited the page over the last month. It all just makes a lot more sense now that this apparent "fixation" you seem to have with your alcohol has been exposed. Crakkerjakk 05:20, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- Crakker,
- If you're over 21 and are ever in Seattle, do consider stopping by Woodinville Wine Country and maybe even drop me a note on my talk page. w:en:User_talk:Agne27
- I'll you introduce to the basics of wine tasting-sniff, swirl and spit--yes, spit :) You'll probably be surprise at what wine appreciation is really about. 174.61.248.93 05:39, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- Lol.. I live so close to the Napa Valley a desperate wino like you would probably cream your pants, but I'm proud to say I've never touched a single drop of it. I know misery loves company, but I'm sorry to have to say that sloppy alcoholics make me sick. Crakkerjakk 05:54, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- Actually Napa is fairly overrated. Everyone wants to make a $100+ "Cult wine". It's all about money and prestige and not the beauty of how man and nature can take a simple little grape and turn it into something poetic.
- Sonoma, on the other hand, is awesome! Russian River Pinots, Alexander Valley sparkling wine, Rockpile and Dry Creek Zins, Knights Valley Cabs...ah, heaven! Creepy Resident Wino 05:59, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- Lol.. I live so close to the Napa Valley a desperate wino like you would probably cream your pants, but I'm proud to say I've never touched a single drop of it. I know misery loves company, but I'm sorry to have to say that sloppy alcoholics make me sick. Crakkerjakk 05:54, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- You sound like a teenager, that's why nobody wants to argue with you ;) Subfader 18:58, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- Vicious circles alert!!!
- But in the grand scheme of Wikipedia's 3 million + English articles, the small scope of celebrity articles that may get "silly ratings" is still relatively rare and infinitesimally small. 174.61.248.93 18:13, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- How frustrating for you to feel like they were taking their revenge that way. I think that we can reasonably expect that to be a rare occurrence, however, since most POV pushers are working "solo". Fortunately, their ratings are only temporary: Thirty edits from now, their biased ratings will be out of the calculation, and you'll be back to your usual group of readers. WhatamIdoing 15:43, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
iPad Problem?
[edit]The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I was trying the rating system on an article I was reading on my iPad and the "submit" was grayed out. On the other hand, I could mark a grade in any individual category, but the moving to a new category wiped out the previous category score, suggesting it had been submitted and accepted.
Perhaps I needed to be logged in, but that didn't jump out at me? 71.191.152.23 11:25, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
- I don't think that you need to be logged in. Are you running any sort of script-blocking software?
- Has anyone else tried it on an iPad? WhatamIdoing 16:01, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
Layout Issue
[edit]The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
In several browsers, hovering Complete - 3 stars, the description "Contains key information, but with gaps" appears over "I am highly knowledgeable about this topic (optional)" making the last word in both hard to read. This could be easily remedied by moving the knowledgeable checkbox statement down one line. 13.13.16.2 21:10, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
- This was reported on bugzilla:29865/bugzilla:30029. Helder 01:12, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
Baltic International Academy
[edit]The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I was looking at some articles that have been rated by looking at Article feedback dashboard and I stumbled into en:Baltic International Academy . This 2 paragraph article had 300 something reviews with a perfect 5 score in each category!! It not only is very incomplete, it has statements such as "Russian Language School of Baltic International Academy is extremely dishonest." without backing from any source, not to mention reliable. My impression is that there must have been some manipulation of the scores and wanted to point that out here so that any flaws can be corrected. GoEThe 16:14, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
- This page shows that yesterday the page w:Baltic International Academy had a sudden increase in the number of viewers, so maybe there was a group of readers playing with the system recently.
- (Or this is another instance of bugzilla:30227...) Helder 20:04, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
- It was vandalized in May; I've reverted the vandalism. WhatamIdoing 19:25, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
AFT special: ratings
[edit]The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I don't know whether this exists, or even how to find it, or even in which domain space (Special, WP, Mediawiki, etc.) it should be located: A Special page that shows a partial list of rolled-out article names (wikilinks) in order by lowest and highest ratings. David spector 01:15, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
- There is a dashboard at w:Special:ArticleFeedback. Helder 02:04, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
Add percentage rollout and numbers of votes
[edit]I'd like to see the Article Feedback Dashboard include the percentage of articles that contain Article Feedback controls. The accuracy of the implicit meaning "the lowest and highest rated articles in WP" depends in part on this percentage. Similarly, I'd like to see the number of votes for each listed article. It is bad enough that users don't understand what is to be rated; omitting these numbers makes it even harder for those viewing the Dashboard to evaluate the reported evaluation statistics. David spector 00:35, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
- Well, currently, the percentage of articles containing the tool is 100%, with the exception of redirects and disambiguation pages. Jorm (WMF) 00:36, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
- And anything that might have been added to en:Category:Article Feedback Blacklist manually. WhatamIdoing 16:24, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
- It was suggested on bug #30334 that we need more options available on dashboard.
- See also this thread. Helder 17:02, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
- I very much agree that we need to display the number of ratings for articles displayed in the dashboard, Here's a dashboard mockup I previously coded based on a static AFT dataset, rating counts are displayed when hovering on the article title. DarTar 17:06, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
Ratings disappearing
[edit]I've several times seen the ratings from a page suddenly disappear and all the parameters go blank, as though it had never been rated. Does anyone know what causes this? SlimVirgin 21:08, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
dashboard sorted by categories or Wikiprojects?
[edit]I may have missed reading through some of the pages on this and on en.wiki but are there plans to allow the dashboard to be sorted by categories or Wikiprojects? This would be an awesome tool for Wikiprojects to be able to look at this months high/low ratings of articles within the project's scope. 174.61.248.93 01:43, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
- I've added a link to this thread at bug #30334, which is requesting "more options on dashboard". Helder 12:12, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
- Sounds like an awesome idea, I am currently experimenting with rating data per topic (e.g. closest top-level category) but there's no reason why we shouldn't allow filtering by category. This is more likely to be addressed in the experimental dashboards that we'll be uploading to the toolserver than on the enwiki page. DarTar 16:53, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
more effective to engage casual readers on talk page?
[edit]I like the idea of reader feedback, but am concerned that ratings may unduly damage the credibility of individual articles. For instance, I just noticed an article I've worked on was rated 3 out of 5 in every category. The sameness of these ratings is suspect, and it was a particularly unjust rating for "Trustworthy," since virtually every sentence is documented with a high-quality academic source (from publishers such as Cambridge and Oxford UP). It may have been a fair rating in only the "Complete" category, but the casual reader who notices the ratings will now doubt the reliability and usefulness of the article.
I would prefer that the Ratings appear on the talk page; the box at the bottom of the article that is intended to engage readers would be only a link that says "Rate this page" and takes you to the talk page, where the actual ratings would be displayed. This might be a more effective way to engage a reader who doesn't have an account. If they're taken to the talk page, they could not only contribute to and view the reader Ratings box, but would see discussion and project ratings, and would perhaps be encouraged to verbalize their criticisms in addition, which would be infinitely more useful. As it is, the reader ratings have greater visibility than the more informed project ratings. (And graphically, the Ratings box is often as large as the biggest image on the page, which gives it undue weight.)
I also wonder whether the ratings rubrics are the correct ones for the kind of feedback we're looking for. Instead of imagining that the casual reader is going to pause for sober critical analysis, why not give them Yes/No rubrics that correspond to first impressions? Such as:
- Did you find the information you were looking for? Y/N
- Does the article need major improvements? Y/N
- Was the article clear and interesting to read? Y/N
- Would you recommend this article? Y/N
- Please leave additional comments here (with a link that opens a new section on the talk page)
This would be more like a customer-service approach, and wouldn't confuse quality ratings with reader feedback. Thanks. Cynwolfe 13:08, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
- If you are at some other website, and see a page has been rated strangely high or low, does that change your opinion of it? If not, then why do you think our readers would be unduly swayed by something that wouldn't sway you? WhatamIdoing 15:53, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
- Actually, what you're saying reinforces my point, and you seem to overlook that I began by saying I think having user ratings is a good idea. But if the ratings don't really matter as quality ratings, then why shouldn't the rubrics reflect more accurately what we could expect to learn from even the most casual users? To reiterate my concerns about each:
- Complete. I would be very interested in knowing whether users got the information they needed or expected, and asking them that question is a more targeted way to collect the data; instead, they are asked to evaluate an ideal of completeness. The user, and only the user, knows whether she got what she came looking for; she can provide precise and accurate data in response to that question. She doesn't necessarily have the body of knowledge to evaluate whether the article is "complete," because she may have come there to learn about the subject from scratch. The question "Does the article need major improvements" also gets at both completion and an overall impression of quality.
- Well-written. This invites an aesthetic response that's irrelevant to an encyclopedia. "Well-written" generally means "stylistically elegant, pleasurable to read." I want to know whether the user found the article clear and easy to read, and perhaps even interesting.
- Objective. Objectivity is not even a WP goal! In fact, NPOV policy states that we are explicitly not to confuse neutrality with objectivity. So why are we even asking this?
- Trustworthy. Either the information is verified by RS, or it isn't. I'm not sure what we're asking with this one. A question such as "Was the article accurate and balanced?" might get at these last two qualities.
- "Would you recommend this article?" serves a general expressive function analogous to "like". If the goal is to engage readers more, and perhaps even encourage active participation, then a link at the bottom of the Ratings tool for providing verbal responses (which would take them to the talk page) does that better than the current dead-end process. And if the questions were fair measures of the goals of the encyclopedia and how it's used, I wouldn't mind the box being on the article page.
- With customer-service questions, the collective data could yield stats along the lines of:
- 57% of [number of respondents] readers got the information they needed from this article.
- 35% thought the article was clear and interesting to read.
- 42% thought the article was accurate and balanced.
- 62% would recommend the article.
- 18% thought it needed major improvements.
- I recognize that would mean a complete redesign of the tool. But if the data could be analyzed by percentage, it would be much more useful to both editors and users. Cynwolfe 17:55, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
- As someone who worked in market research before, I can attest that the more work you ask of the respondents (such as filling in a comment line or having to click to the discussion page) the less likely they are to use it. It would greatly diminish the usefulness of the tool if it was hidden away on the talk page.
- That said, along those same principles a Y/N response requires less effort than a 5 star ratings and would likely encourage more usage. That is a suggestion that the developers may want to consider.
- But as to the concern that a rating would adversely affect readers opinions, you have to keep in mind that the rating is at the bottom of the page and it requires the readers to specifically click on a link to see the ratings. Not only are readers not likely to see the ratings till after they've already read the article (and formed an opinion on it) but also keeping in the mind the "laziness principles", the majority aren't even likely to click on the results links anyways. The ones that are most likely to click on the results are the editors (like you) who want to see what is going on, not necessarily the readers. 174.61.248.93 18:55, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
- See YouTube ratings: Thumb up or down, done. Subfader 13:18, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
- Good points. Helder 23:16, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
- Cynwolfe, I like some of your questions, but I'm still trying to figure out the mechanism behind reader ratings supposedly "unduly damag[ing] the credibility of individual articles". How exactly is this supposed to happen? Maybe the reader reads the article, forms an opinion, clicks through to the ratings (which most won't do), and then chucks his own opinion out the window in favor of the ratings?
- I'm not stupid enough to do that. You aren't stupid enough to do that. Do you think the typical reader is stupid enough to do that? WhatamIdoing 16:33, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
- "If you are at some other website, and see a page has been rated strangely high or low, does that change your opinion of it? If not, then why do you think our readers would be unduly swayed by something that wouldn't sway you?"
- And just another "I-don't-use-my-brain,-I'm-so-biased,-I-just-defend-this-extensions-against-every-critical-argument-FFS!" comment.
- What do you think when you go to IMDB checking a new movie and you see it's rated 5/10? Subfader 13:07, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
- "When" I go to IMDB to check a new movie? Well, I don't really know, because I don't do that. I can count the number of times that I've ever been in a movie theater on my fingers. The last time was more than ten years ago.
- In similar systems, however, I think nothing at all about such ratings, unless I'm specifically looking for other people's opinions—and even then, I usually wonder whether my view would be the same. In my experience, the correlation between other people's ratings and mine is moderately weak. For example, book reviews for paranormal romances tend to average four stars or higher over at Amazon, and I'd give the whole genre a "minus twelve" rating if I could.
- In particular, if I have already read a book, and I'd rate it X, then I do not chuck my opinion out the window if I happen to discover that other people have rated it as Y. Since this tool is placed at the end of the article, readers encounter it after they've read the article. The natural path in the tool is to first rate the article and then (occasionally) to look at other people's ratings. I don't believe that readers are going to rate it as five and then say, "Well, everyone else rated it as a two. I'll go change my ratings to match those idiots."
- This is the fundamental difference between our ratings and IMDB's: The purpose of the ratings at a place like IMDB or Amazon is to help people decide whether or not to see the movie. We're showing them the entire "movie" first, and then letting them rate it. The ratings will not change whether or not the person decides to read the article. WhatamIdoing 16:54, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
- The IMDB/Movie analogy doesn't quite equate with ratings on a Wikipedia article and seems to be a weird comparison point.
- As WhatAmIDoing noted, you look at IMDB before you see a movie while you are likely not going to look at the ratings till after you've read the article and formed your own opinion about it. 174.61.248.93 20:44, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
- If you are at some other website, and see a page has been rated strangely high or low, does that change your opinion of it? end of quote.
- Keep doing your mafia thingy here with the extension being rolled over WP, I don't care much aynmore. I'm outta here. Subfader 21:29, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
- Subfader, I would appreciate it greatly if you would moderate your tone.
- Personal attacks have no place here. Jorm (WMF) 21:34, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
- Actually, what you're saying reinforces my point, and you seem to overlook that I began by saying I think having user ratings is a good idea. But if the ratings don't really matter as quality ratings, then why shouldn't the rubrics reflect more accurately what we could expect to learn from even the most casual users? To reiterate my concerns about each:
Irrelevant
[edit]A single edit could change the accuracy of an article completely but the ratings remain unaltered, so what's the motive? If you want to encourage knowledgeable people to contribute then just say so.
Encouraging people to pass casual, unqualified judgement in this way will at best demonstrate the value of an article according to popular opinion, and for a reference work that could be counterproductive. JoeMCMXLVII 12:56, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
- Ratings expire after (any) 30 edits, so they do not remain "unaltered" forever.
- A few editors have said they are offended that mere readers are being permitted to express an opinion on their work, but I can't actually see any of our regular editors screwing up an article just to get a higher rating from "casual, unqualified" readers. Can you? WhatamIdoing 16:28, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
- I'm not offended by you or anyone else. I'm just someone who thinks the facility is irrelevant and for the reasons I stated.
- I'll add that 30 edits can be a long time to display obsolete information. JoeMCMXLVII 20:49, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
- I agree that any set number of edits is a limited approach. Three edits might result in major changes; thirty edits might be nothing more than 15 pairs of vandalism and reversion. Furthermore, half the ratings might have been made while one of those 15 vandalized versions were up.
- I don't agree that the tool is irrelevant to the broad goals of the WMF. I think it may prove to be far more effective at turning readers into editors than anything else we've tried. Passively reading "This page needs to be fixed" has not proven to be very effective. If you start with someone who is already thinking about the article and interacting with the page (by rating it), and then we've already got their attention when we say, "You know, you create an account—you could edit this article—you could try this out", and we've got their focus on the article's strengths and weaknesses.
- Might it be irrelevant for experienced editors identifying articles that need work? Quite possibly, but nobody's ever promised that the ratings would be useful for that purpose. In fact, the devs have specifically said that's not a validated use of the tool. WhatamIdoing 19:19, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
- WhatamIdoing, when were expiring rating introduced? Has the tool worked like that from the start? I only become aware of it recently so I was partly misunderstanding how it works. Jason Quinn 14:24, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
- It's been described in the documentation since at least this spring, but I don't know exactly when the feature was first introduced. WhatamIdoing 15:21, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
- See also this part of another thread. Helder 18:07, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
- Don't make it too complicated. The only thing that matters is that anons who never edited an article can vote Justin Biber up and George W. Bush down. Subfader 21:39, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
- Nicely put, Subfader. JoeMCMXLVII 22:42, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
- So out of the 3 million+ articles on en.wiki, Justin Bieber, George W. Bush and maybe 100 other high traffic articles could be considered "1 offs" because their survey results will be skewed by fanboys/haters. That is still an infinitesimally small fraction and even if these are high traffic articles, that doesn't diminish the potential usefulness that this tool can offer to the project across the board.
- The editors who watch Bieber and GWB will not be making significant changes to those articles based on the AFT tool. However, the editors to articles like the 1984 Summer Olympics, Prince Edward Island, Piston valve, Aging of wine, Royal Scottish Academy, Bamboo, Australopithecus etc might be inclined to look more closely at those articles if they start receiving a pattern of low ratings in comparison to similar articles.
- I think this is a key point that critics are missing when they try to bring up "crap" ratings on articles like Bieber and GWB. Articles like that make up a very, very small percentage of Wikipedia and they should not be held as a benchmark for how new tools or ideas are implemented on the project. 174.61.248.93 23:21, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
- "I think this is a key point that critics are missing when they try to bring up "crap" ratings on articles like Bieber and GWB."
- I think the key point they're missing is that determining the true quality of the article is not a validated use of the tool. Experienced editors should be evaluating articles according to the English Wikipedia's extensive policies and guidelines, not according to the responses from recent readers. So far as I can tell, that's what our editors are actually doing. I haven't seen anyone yet say "I've got to totally re-write this Good Article, because some readers gave it a low rating!" WhatamIdoing 16:41, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
- Great how you accept the fail of the tool and how much you don't care that good articles stay 1/5 rated by abusers forever for every visitor since (as you pointed out) nobody would edit the article to change the rating (except WMF staff of course). Subfader 20:24, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- I do not consider a disconnect between the reader's rating and the experienced editor's rating to be a failure of the tool.
- I consider your insistence that reader and editor ratings much match to be a sign of your failure to read and understand the documentation for the tool, which explicitly says that low ratings from readers do not mean that there is any problem in the article. WhatamIdoing 15:58, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- Great how you accept the fail of the tool and how much you don't care that good articles stay 1/5 rated by abusers forever for every visitor since (as you pointed out) nobody would edit the article to change the rating (except WMF staff of course). Subfader 20:24, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- I see a lot of negative feedback about the whole concept and I see a lot of nit-picking in response. You won't make a bad idea work by trying to discredit its critics. JoeMCMXLVII 03:18, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
- Well I am new to this discussion but here are the criticisms that I've seen.
- 1.) The community wasn't adequately consulted therefore it is bad
- 2.) The Bieber/GWB objection which, as noted above, is related to an infinitesimal percentage of articles
- 3.) Even though the aim of the tool is to get reader feedback, only Wikipedian editors should be allowed to use it
- 4.) The tool doesn't provide enough data to be useful to editors
- The fourth criticism is the only one that really has meat to it but it is a multi-faceted issue. On one hand, there is a lack of understanding in how data research/surveys are conducted and the limitation of the "laziness principle". However, the tool can, indeed, be improved but that is the point behind studying the results of a launch--you can't see where to improve until you see how it is being used.
- While all the criticisms are worth discussion (which is obviously being done here), I haven't yet seen a single criticism that is worth completely vetoing or shelving this project.
- Is there something I missed? 174.61.248.93 03:34, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
- I'll expand on your point number 4). A tool that does not provide sufficient data for editors is utterly useless.
- And I didn't suggest that any one criticism should warrant vetoing the project. That's your defence to the various sweeping criticisms and it's irrelevant. What I am suggesting is that there is so much conceptual criticism and so little response of a worthwhile nature that the project seems like it's dead already but simply won't lie down. JoeMCMXLVII 20:12, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
- Yes I was summing up the various sweeping criticism in that posts.
- But let's look at point 4. You state "A tool that does not provide sufficient data for editors is utterly useless."
- Now as I said before that issue is multi-faceted mostly because the idea of "sufficient" and "useful" are subject. The tool already provides some data and, again as noted before, any knowledge of survey taking and market research can see immense value in the kind of data already being provided since it is formatted to show patterns of response.
- Also, the idea at the moment is to provide data about what the readers think and then figure out how to make it useful to editors at larger. So while you may feel that it is not sufficient and useless now, the appropriate response is to make recommendations for improvement (which many have) and to give it time to see how the tool develops and improve. It is the then part in the equation that I have to say is surprising that a vocal few don't seem to want to wait for.
- I mean the first computers were pretty "useless" oversize calculators. You can only imagine what would have happened if we shelved THAT idea so early on in the beginning under the idea that "A tool that does not provide sufficient data for users is utterly useless." 174.61.248.93 21:01, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
- Fair enough. About the collected data: I think the 4 criteria are ok and other data (like who voted / when / how "trustworthy" the user is) can be generated later. Dunno how much data is stored with each vote tho.
- Still nobody replied how high the percantage of anon and 0 edit users is to experienced editors. Subfader 20:26, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
- I haven't seen a response to that question either but an ideal would probably be a much higher percentage of anon or low edit users since the tool is aimed to get more a reader's perspective then an editors perspective. 174.61.248.93 20:50, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
- The dataset (as explained in the documentation; did you read it?) differentiates between registered and unregistered users (a set that includes experienced editors who don't happen to be logged in at the time they rate the article), but it does not record the number of edits made by the editor (which may be zero for a registered account, and thousands for an IP editor). WhatamIdoing 16:17, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
- Notice also that the number of edits made by an IP is not stored by MW on its database. So, that data is not available for AFT either, I think. Helder 12:35, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- Well I am new to this discussion but here are the criticisms that I've seen.
- I don't have the time to read this ENTIRE thread, but I have to say that I agree with some of the points that have been brought up here. As far as I can see the ratings are pretty much useless. I've seen some well written articles with good sources getting low ratings simply because 10-year-old girls don't like the character an actor plays on TV, or conversely, I've seen some stubby articles getting five stars from multiple raters simply because people loved an actor's work 50 years ago. Granted, this seems to apply more to the "celebrity" bio articles more than the "science" articles about nuclear power, etc, but I've noticed this seems to be a theme running throughout MANY celebrity bio pages and not limited to just Justin Bieber and George Bush. I'm not an "exepert", but it's painfully obvious people are simply using the ratings to vote on how they feel about the SUBJECT of an article and there's really no reflection whatsoever on the merits of the article itself. Not to mention the "highly knowledgeable" option is just a joke. I could dub myself "highly knowledgeable" about quantum physics, but it doesn't make it true. From what I have read of this thread, it looks like the ratings aren't being taken too seriously by anyone who matters, so I guess that's good news, but then what's the point of having the ratings at all? Just to trick a few new people into editing? It seems to me that anyone who would be tricked into believing the ratings are any indication of what an article needs would be the LAST people you'd want editing the article. Crakkerjakk 22:48, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- On WP some WMF guy explained how AFT works and how to stop vandalism by fan / hate votes. It all makes sense now. --Subfader 19:11, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- Lol.. I have to admit I've been tempted to do that myself, but I decided not to based on principal. Not because it's "wrong", but because I made a decision when the tool first showed up (and obvious vandalism ratings started soon after) that I wouldn't vote on ANY article I'd had a significant hand in writing (aside from minor cleanup - correcting typos, redirecting backlinks, etc). I wanted to give the tool some time to see how I liked it, how it worked, etc (I honestly didn't have any opinion about it one way or the other when it was first implemented). If I was "rigging" the votes then I wouldn't be able to do that, so I decided I'd wait to see how things played out before I came here because I wanted to be able to be 100% impartial. What irks me about this page is how obnoxious a couple of the people here are - implying our hard work, observations and experiences are "infinitesimal" to the value of Wikipedia, etc. I think they know what they can do with their new "tool", so I won't even bother lowering myself to their level. Crakkerjakk 21:17, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- Well, it is interesting to follow this project over months and seeing how the WMF people play boss is indeed very scary. I did follow the test phase of FlaggedRevs on German WP with much interest and actually they learned from it and took consequences. But AFT? Nothing. Instead, as you mentioned, they try to sell us this useless feature as the next big thing which WP cannot live without. And non-related people like critics and scientists who follow the development of WP have just another reason to turn the back on WP when they see that good articles are rated 1/5 by people (visitors don't know that haters and fan abuse the AFT and how easy it is to do so). I could continue forever why AFT is bad... I have not seen one advantage of AFT here yet. Someone link me to it please. I know the FAQ yeah but it reads like a fake review for an overprized tool nobody actually wants or needs. Subfader 22:04, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- Exactly. It reminds me of what bugs me when editors will tag an article with a "biased" template without explaining why on the talk page (even well-meaning, well-respected editors will do this routinely). It casts a shadow over the ENTIRE article, and sends a flag to readers that there's something specious about the article as a whole (whether the average reader has personally found any problems with it, most readers will think - "well, it looks good, but there must be SOMETHING wrong with it"). And I don't want to hear this b#llcr@p about me whining just because I personally "disagree" with the voting results. I posted SEVERAL examples (taken from the dashboard page yesterday) of good articles that were rated "B-Class" or higher (presumably by people who actually KNOW something about Wikipedia's GA standards), but had mysteriously received the "lowest" ratings by casual "users", but this was summarily dismissed. I mean the Barack Obama article is CONSISTENTLY among the lowest rated articles on the dashboard almost EVERY SINGLE day i've looked, and that's a FEATURED article for Chrissakes.. It's like there are people here who are DETERMINED to bury their heads in the sand - no matter how many people report problems or how many examples we give they just keep telling us "it's infinitesimal". What they can't seem to wrap their little heads around is the fact that the Justin Bieber and Barack Obama articles are representative of THOUSANDS of articles that DON'T show up in the dashboard. I'm not pretending to be a mathematician, but it stands to reason - if half the articles voted lowest in the dashboard on any given day are celebrity pages with good to very good "quality scale" ratings then any reasonably sane person could (and would be naive not to) infer that 50% of all Wikipedia articles being rated are celeb pages getting the same meaningless votes that have no bearing on the merits of the article whatsoever. The dashboard is a random sampling of 50 articles that clearly shows the TYPES of articles that are most frequently vandalized. I just don't understand what the point is in creating a "Feedback" page, when it's obvious nobody here wants any honest feedback. If this was really about feedback, then our contributions wouldn't be dismissed as "infinitesimal" and we wouldn't be accused of simply coming here because of "sour grapes" about an article we've written receiving low ratings. That's simply not the case. In fact - I'd like to invite anyone who seems to love this tool so much to link to two articles they've written here (and not just articles they've added one or two sentences to, I mean an article they wrote from SCRATCH, or took-up as a "stub") so I can see their work and evaluate their Wikipedia "expertise" for myself. It can be any subject - anything - it doesn't matter - I'd LOVE to see what you've written, and I'll be more than happy to post two of my recent articles I've written as well. Anyone.....? Anyone.......? Crakkerjakk 23:03, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- You still don't seem to get it: AFT is not trying to determine the True™ quality of the articles. AFT is collecting casual readers' personal opinions, and trying to turn some of them into brand-new editors.
- Most casual readers are totally uninformed about what makes a decent encyclopedia article. Something with a lot of blue numbers that lead to personal blogs is often going to be called "well-referenced" by some of these readers. A stub that happens to contain the one tidbit of information they want is going to be called "complete" by some of these readers. But that's okay, because our smarter editors know that if they want information on the actual quality of the article, use the 1.0 team's assessment system. AFT is not trying to duplicate that.
- Also, your assertion that people's opinions will be swayed by the ratings is either nonsensical or shows an appalling level of disrespect for the readers. If you read an entire article, and you think it's pretty good, and then you see that it's been rated low, are you so stupid and intellectually insecure as to chuck your whole opinion out the window and adopt the view on the page? And if you're not, then why do you keep saying that everyone else is? WhatamIdoing 16:09, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- AFT is collecting casual readers' personal opinions, and trying to turn some of them into brand-new editors. Most casual readers are totally uninformed about what makes a decent encyclopedia article. If you read an entire article, and you think it's pretty good, and then you see that it's been rated low, are you so stupid and intellectually insecure as to chuck your whole opinion out the window and adopt the view on the page? And if you're not, then why do you keep saying that everyone else is?
- I couldn't have said it better myself. Once again you've made my point for me. What exactly is the point of a ratings system that lures only the most "stupid and intellectually insecure" readers into editing? Anyone who is smart enough (and knowledgeable enough about Wikipedia's policies) to know what an article does and does not need isn't going to pay any attention to this useless tool. So what's the point of it??
- By the way, I see there are no takers among the people on here who keep defending this tool to post a link to a single article you've actually written. I think that speaks volumes about the "expertise" behind the logic defending this tool. Know-it-all "editors" who've never actually written a single article. Crakkerjakk 17:47, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- I couldn't have said it better myself. Once again you've made my point for me. What exactly is the point of a ratings system that lures only the most "stupid and intellectually insecure" readers into editing?
- No where do I see WhatAmIdoing describe readers as stupid and intellectually insecure. Rather, she was asking if YOU believe that they are and would formulate their own personal opinion on an article and then chuck that opinion out the window because they saw a low rating.
- Should we use this reply above as affirmation that you do, indeed, hold the opinions and capabilities of Wikipedia's readers in such low esteem?
- Just as an FYI, Common Sense:101, any producer who makes a product (even a free online encyclopedia) and doesn't value or seek the opinions of its consumers will not have the most promising of futures with people continuing to use said product. 174.61.248.93 21:31, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- I won't get down to your level and reply to that nonsense. Subfader 21:39, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- So is that the equivalent of "I can't defend my point so I'm going to take my ball and go home"?
- Which level of discourse are you having issues with?
- Me asking Crakkerjakk if that characterization of readers accurately described his/her view of them?
- Or me point out the common sense truth in business/life that any producers who ignores/doesn't see the views of the consumers using their product/services is not going to be in good shape for long? 174.61.248.93 22:09, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- WhatamIdoing has CLEARLY stated the purpose of the tool is to get new editors interested in editing, and yet he/she turned right around and basically admitted that only an idiot would pay any attention to the ratings. Result = Only an idiot will be lured into editing by this tool. I'm just following his/her own logic.
- Once again, you're having trouble reading, so I'll try and spell it out for you one more time. I thought asking for ratings/feedback from readers was a GREAT idea when the tool first showed up. However, what I'm not interested in is whether people like Justin Bieber's new girlfriend or not. That's what these numbers give us on a VAST number of articles (sorry, you still haven't PROVEN this little 1% statistic you seem to have pulled out of your @$$. Crakkerjakk 23:23, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- No, Crakkerjakk, you are lying about what I said.
- Many people might choose to rate articles.
- Only an idiot or insecure person would (1) think "Great article" after reading it, (2) look at the accumulated ratings and see that they're low, and then (3) decide "I guess I was wrong; it must be a bad article, because everybody else hates it".
- This is the process you say happens all the time. That is the only possible mechanism by which the accumulated ratings can harm readers' perceptions of the articles you write.
- It is my belief that the readers do not have this problem: It is my belief that readers do not radically change their perception of an article based on other people's ratings. It is therefore my belief that the tool is not recruiting readers with this problem. WhatamIdoing 17:03, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- LOL...WhatamIdoing, admirable effort but Crakkerjakk's argument has been exposed so much with him pushed in a corner that his only retort is going to be "But NO! You can't REEEEEAAAAAAADDDDD!" ;)
- Or he may try to mix thing up and drag my mythical alcoholism over to you and call you a drunkard :P Stay tune. 174.61.248.93 18:34, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- Yeah, right.. I, and the landslide of other editors reporting the same problems here, have ALL been "backed into a corner" by the two of you. Keep on trying to convince yourself. Unfortunately for you - Two people repeating the same old desperate excuses dozens of times doesn't outweigh the posts from dozens of people complaining about the numerous problems with the tool.
- FYI - If you actually HAD read my posts, you would have KNOWN what I'd said the FIRST time and I wouldn't NEED to keep pointing out your obvious deficiencies. But seriously though, nobody wants a creepy resident wino lurking on this board just waiting to troll every single person who posts. The first step is admitting you have a problem. I suggest you get some serious help. Crakkerjakk 04:11, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- I know I said I wanted to avoid creating another Wikimedia account but I was just too charmed by that moniker Crakkerjakk!
- Yeah, yeah, I know this was your go-to ad hominem and you seemed to be having fun with the flaming, name calling and incivility but the name was just too cute!
- Now this is the AFT talk page and I'm still very willing to have a civil discussion about how the tool and dashboard can be improved.
- But I do have to give you due props for the witty nickname. It got me to bite the bullet and finally create an account here :) Creepy Resident Wino 06:05, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- I'm sorry if your own twisted logic has backfired, but if anyone is "lying", it's you. You've mentioned at LEAST a hundred times here that this tool is WONDERFUL because new users will view the ratings and will be magically "inspired" to edit the articles that the tool indicates are in such desperate need of their help. You've also stated that only an idiot would pay any attention to the tool's results. The only logical conclusion is that only an idiot would be inspired to edit because of this tool. Now you're changing your logic to say - "the VAST MAJORITY of new editors will be smart enough to disregard the tool". Ok, fine - let's say that's true - Then this now new and improved "logic" of yours only proves how useless the tool is.
- Getting back to the subject of what I was saying originally about users being "misled" by editors arbitrarily tagging a page with "bias" templates (with absolutely NO explanation) and/or by viewing this ratings tool. I admit I didn't expand on my point enough, so I'll try and explain myself better..
- Let's take the Barack Obama article as an example (I know everyone is sick hearing about the Obama page, but it's just for the purpose of an example). It's a featured article. Now I would say I know about as much as the AVERAGE American about the man. No more, no less, just AVERAGE. I have a pretty good idea about the man over the last 3 years, but for the first 40-something years of his life, I'm most definitely NOT anything CLOSE to an "expert". He seems like a nice enough guy, I don't have anything against him personally, but I just haven't spent all my time researching the man's life (nor do I care to). So I come to the article, I read the entire thing, and then I'm asked to "rate" the article on FOUR criteria. Again, I'd say I have just about the "average" American's knowledge about the man. I would say I'm COMPLETELY unqualified to vote on three of the four criteria. First question, "Trustworthiness": (which is basically asking if the sources are "reliable". I can honestly say I haven't the faintest idea. I mean checking/verifying the 300+ notes cited on the page would be the equivalent of reading an entire BOOK about him, and that's not even counting the books the article cites as references. I'm not (nor is the "average" reader) going to sit there and check EVERY SINGLE source to judge the article's "trustworthiness". If I wanted to spend WEEKS reading stacks of books about the man I wouldn't be visiting Wikipedia to look him up. Next question, "Objectivity": yet ANOTHER question I, as an "average" reader, would be COMPLETELY unqualified to judge unless I checked every single one of the 300+ sources/references cited on the page. I mean aside from some GLARING bias, how would I know if it's "objective" unless I read EVERY SINGLE SOURCE the article cites to compare the article to??? Next question, "Completeness": Once again, how the hell do I know if it's "complete"??? Aside from some HUGE omission, I would have to spend WEEKS checking EVERY SINGLE source/reference to know if something I thought was important was left out. The ONE criteria I'd say I'm reasonably qualified to judge is how "Well-written" the Barack Obama article is.. Now, as a Wikipedia editor, I know it's reasonable to believe what I read on the Barack Obama article is true/fair/complete because: #1 - It's a FEATURED Article which means I can reasonably expect that all the claims and sources to back them up have been thoroughly vetted. #2 - The page is LOCKED from "casual" (even possibly well-meaning) editors who know NOTHING about Wikipedia's criteria. and #3 - There are a THOUSAND trusted Editors watching the page every minute like hawks. All indicators which the "average" reader most likely knows nothing about.
- This all leads into what I was talking about before - If someone were to tag a "bias" template on the Barack Obama page (and there wasn't a "featured" star on the page, which I, being an experienced enough editor, KNOW Wikipedia does NOT hand out lightly), then YES, I would probably think to myself even BEFORE reading the article - "Wow, this "bias" template has been her for six months, so I better take EVERYTHING I read here with a grain of salt". I'm not even close to being an "expert" on Barack Obama, so I wouldn't have any way to judge first-hand unless I decided to become an "expert" and devote the next six months of my life to researching his life story. It definitely makes the "average" person question the "trustworthiness", "objectivity", and "completeness" of what they read. The exact same thing applies to this tool - Yes, experienced Wikipedia editors (who aren't in denial) know about the disproportionately high number of fan/hate votes the tool is recording across THOUSANDS of pages, but it may very well not even cross the "average" reader's mind that 90% of the low votes are from 14-year-old nazi skinheads who hate Obama and haven't even READ the article. Unless someone is an "expert" on the subject of an article they're reading (although, I don't know why anyone would be reading a Wikipedia article they already knew EVERYTHING about), they're just an average person, they're NOT going sit there and check out 50, or 100, or 300 sources on a page (many of which are two or three or four pages long EACH). Many readers are just going to look at the fan/hate ratings and assume that SOMETHING must be wrong. This doesn't necessarily mean a person is an idiot. It just means that the average reader isn't going to do the HOURS, or DAYS, or WEEKS of research to verify all the sources. Unless a person is an "expert" about the ratings tool AND the subject of the article, this fan/hate tool has the very REAL potential to make it seem like there's something specious about the entire article, no matter HOW good it actually is on the quality scale. Of course I have no proof how that will affect anyone who has been tricked into editing as a result of viewing this tool, but my point was about how the average READER thinks of Wikipedia after they READ a page. Viewing the tool, they may disregard very GOOD information as "myth", or take an article filled with lies and inaccuracies as being COMPLETELY trustworthy, unbiased and complete. Aside from being useless in the attempt to lure even remotely "qualified" editors (as your own logic has concluded), my LARGER point was that it has the potential to be HIGHLY misleading to the READERS with regards to how they should evaluate the accuracy of an article. If the purpose of the tool is to get people to take Wikipedia more seriously, I'd say it's MUCH more likely to have the exact OPPOSITE effect. Crakkerjakk 01:40, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- I encourage you to look at every single comment I've made, and let me know if you find any comment that says I think very many readers will "view the ratings". I believe you will find several indicating my belief that the vast majority of readers will not view the ratings.
- This is one of the laws of the web: every click loses a substantial percentage of the audience. Most readers will never click through to view the ratings. The people who look at the ratings are editors like you. The vast majority of readers will not be "misled" by the ratings, because readers will not ever bother to even look at the ratings. WhatamIdoing 18:14, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- I won't get down to your level and reply to that nonsense. Subfader 21:39, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- AFT is collecting casual readers' personal opinions...
- No, it's collecting abusive fake / fan / hate votes by logged out spammers and people who misunderrstand the tool. Nothing else. Trends of these over time may be interesting but do not add any value to WP content.
- ...and trying to turn some of them into brand-new editors.
- Trying to turn abusers into editors is a nice goal but pure waste of time.
- If you read an entire article, and you think it's pretty good, and then you see that it's been rated low, are you so stupid and intellectually insecure as to chuck your whole opinion out the window and adopt the view on the page?
- No, I would think the rating is bad or was abused by questionable people. I maybe would wonder why the responsible people do not improve the rating tool to avoid such. Surely I would wonder what the goals of the tool actually are if fake / fan / hate votes by anonymous users is obviously accepted. I then may read the FAQ and find out that AFT has no purpose except development timelines of abusive votes becoming "interesting". Maybe I would end up on this epic feedback page and find out that all of my observed disadvantages and the uselessness of this tool have been reported here in full detail with lots of suggestions how to improve it but everythings has been greatfully ignored by the officials. I would surely be surprised how officials interact with feedback reporters and try to silence them in order to push AFT.
But you're right, I would not edit any article. - ...are you so stupid and intellectually insecure...
- I've read such personal attacks so often by you now, I wonder if YOU are. Are you working for WMF? I hope not.
- Most casual readers are totally uninformed about what makes a decent encyclopedia article
- So let them rate the quality of encyclopedia articles! Subfader 17:59, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- Most casual readers are totally uninformed about what makes a decent encyclopedia article
- So let them rate the quality of encyclopedia articles!
- Better yet - Let's use this as a way to get them to EDIT it!!
- I think it's been made abundantly clear the level of intellect we're dealing with here. They've basically admitted they've never written a single Wikiepdia article and their desperately flawed logic defending the tool shows they don't know the first thing about how to improve the encyclopedia. It's been amusing, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to stop wasting my time expecting to have an intelligent discussion here, but I WILL be taking the matter to the appropriate people to report the obvious problems EVERYONE else who has come here has reported with this beloved tool. Crakkerjakk 20:20, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- I think it's been made abundantly clear the level of intellect we're dealing with here. They've basically admitted they've never written a single Wikiepdia article and their desperately flawed logic defending the tool shows they don't know the first thing about how to improve the encyclopedia.
- I know it is frustrating when other editors don't accept your viewpoint prima facie and actually ask you to extend your logic beyond the small scope that you want to deal with. It is tough when people look behind the curtain and question while we should limit our focus and attention to only <1% of the screen and ignore the colossal mountain of OTHER articles, OTHER experiences and OTHER viewpoints when most of your argument is based on them only seeing what you want them to see.
- But it is healthy to have civil discourse, though truthfully, it becomes increasingly less civil when folks start dismissing the "intellectual level" of people who simply disagree with them and start assuming omniscience over their editing history and experience. 174.61.248.93 22:22, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- It is healthy to have civil discourse, though truthfully, it becomes increasingly less civil when folks start dismissing the "intellectual level" of people who simply disagree with them and start assuming omniscience over their editing history and experience.
- Right back atcha. I couldn't have said it better myself. Try taking some of your own advice, and we wouldn't have the problems we see on this page.
- I don't have a problem with editors who feel the tool is working in the areas of Wikipedia they're most experienced in. I RESPECT their work, and would NEVER tell someone their experience was "infinitesimal". I've already stated that I'm sure the tool DOES work on many types of articles that are far less likely to be vandalized. However, by the clear statistics - those types of articles only make up about HALF of the encyclopeida's daily traffic as a whole (not very good averages).
- I know you're still clinging to this 1% myth you've been desperately trying to perpetuate, but (short of cataloging all 3 million + articles) the BEST evidence we have is the dashboard and, I'm sorry, your absurd assumption that the articles showing up in the dashboard are the ONLY ones experiencing this HUGE problem isn't holding water with anyone else here (except WhatamIdoing).
- The only thing that "frustrates" me is seeing how many people were summarily dismissed when they posted the problems they were experiencing here. The difference is the average person will just leave when met with an obnoxious user, whereas I'm not inclined to be so readily dismissed as "infinitesimal". A little advice - when someone posts here, they don't need you, or anyone else, to "rate" the feedback they leave on the ratings tool. It's not necessary for you to leave a snotty comment on EVERY SINGLE criticism of the tool. You've made it clear you love this tool, the vast majority of people here disagree with you - DEAL WITH IT. Crakkerjakk 23:10, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- Seriously, guys: you all need to log off for a while, take a breath or fifty, and find a cat to pet or something.
- This thread has clearly entered the "emotional flamewar" stage, and should just cool down. Jorm (WMF) 23:25, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
"The only thing that "frustrates" me is seeing how many people were summarily dismissed when they posted the problems they were experiencing here."
- Just make sure that while the problem are being discussed here (where people can provide arguments/evidence/personal opinions/etc to show why they agree/disagree with each other), each specific request is also posted on bugzilla, where the (technical details of a possibly) implementation can be discussed. On bugzilla the requests will have its priority set to help coordinate developer efforts and eventually be resolved as FIXED or WONTFIX (or something else) depending on their decisions after analysing both the technical requirements and the desirability of the feature being requested.
- AFAIK, anything which is reported on bugzilla will eventually be considered by some developer and anything else (e.g. problems posted only on talk pages of some wiki) have little chance of being noticed during the development of MediaWiki and its extensions... Helder 14:22, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- "would NEVER tell someone their experience was "infinitesimal"."
- Hey! What a coincidence! I would 'never tell someone their experience was infinitesimal either! :)
- But since we're on the same page, let me give you some advice as someone who has walked this road before.
- Even though you would never tell someone that their experience was infinitesimal, you do have to be careful when you are having a internet disagreement, especially if you are successfully countering their points. Because even though everything is written plainly in text and is saved in the history, when the other person starts losing their footing and feel like they're not making progress with their arguments, they're going to take whatever you said and then SAY that you called their experience infinitesimal and keep repeating that mantra, over and over again and pray that no one will actually read the exchange and see that other person is just blowing smoke. Now, granted, given the "laziness principle" of humanity, that is not a crazy bet to make.
- Yes, I know you can point out to them (repeatedly) how you never called them, their experience, their observations or anything else beyond a category of articles as "infinitesimal" but, again as someone who has went through this pony show, it probably won't help because at this point, strawmen and misrepresentations of the other side is all they got going for them.
- So to wrap up. Good for you! It is important to maintain civility in discourse and not belittle the contribution of other editors by calling their experience "infinitesimal" or other ad hominem attack but I just want you to be prepared for when people still try fabricate their own ad hominem by blatantly and repeatedly misrepresenting what you said. It's tough. It's frustrating. But stay the good course and not sink to their level of grasping straws.
- Though, admittedly, it doesn't hurt to let out a little steam via sarcasm but stay above the belt with more irony and understatement than jibes. 174.61.248.93 18:48, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- AFT is collecting casual readers' personal opinions...
- No, it's collecting abusive fake / fan / hate votes by logged out spammers and people who misunderrstand the tool.
- For <1% of Wikipedia's 3 million+ English articles.
- Interestingly, according to w:en:Maternal_death, <1% of women in the developed world die during pregnancy. Small but still an unfortunate number, yet, I'm not sure you would find many advocates saying that we need to get rid of that whole "Getting pregnant/having babies" things based on the unfortunate outcome affecting <1% of the cases.
- ============
- Most casual readers are totally uninformed about what makes a decent encyclopedia article
- So let them rate the quality of encyclopedia articles!
- So I suppose that we should only let automotive engineers who know the ins and out of car production rate vehicles, only professional chefs with 5 star restaurant experience that have mastered a particular cuisine do Yelp ratings, only Academy Award winners should do IMDB ratings and only prostitutes and call girls rate hotels? 174.61.248.93 21:40, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
"...votes by anonymous users is obviously accepted"
- That is not exactly the case. Votes by anonymous users are registered with an explicit indication that they come from anonymous users in the field
aa_user_id(see more about the data being collected). So, if someone wants to take into account only ratings given by registered users, they can just filter those votes which are not marked like that. If someone else wants to compare the ratings from anons to the ratings from registered users, they can used the very same field from the tables to distinguish both kinds of ratings. - In other words, anyone looking into the data being collected by AFT can decide by itself if votes by anonymous users should be accepted or not for the analysis they are doing.
- If the tool currently doesn't (and it currently doesn't) provide an interface for its users to select/compare/filter ratings depending on its prefered criteria (e.g. to get rid of anonymous users' ratings by [x] marking a small checkbox somewhere), such a feature should be requested on MediaWiki's bug tracker. This was requested for the dashboard (bug #30334), but something similar could also be requested for the rating form which is displayied on articles (anyone who wants to improve AFT can report this on bugzilla if it hasn't being already reported). Besides, interested users can also vote on open requests which they think really needs to be fixed. Helder 14:18, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- Subfader is not looking at the data; I'm not convinced that he even knew that the data existed.
- Subfader's notion of what happens with AFT is apparently based on the <50 articles listed on the dashboard and a handful of articles he's read. He can't be upset about "his" articles being dissed, though, because in the last five years, Subfader has managed just 28 mainspace edits on the English Wikipedia and created zero articles there. WhatamIdoing 17:12, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- Yes, I didn't know abou teh existance of that data, so what? Kill me? I bet you didn't know about http://toolserver.org/~catrope/articlefeedback/ either! If you did you would have posted the link 50 times by now as you did with the FAQ in your arrogant know-it-all-wannabe posting style... Also it's not my fault that I didn't know about that ressource. The plain fact that the page was only linked now, months after this epic feedback page started, is just a proof of the poor communication or ignorance by the officials.
- Instead of making crazy assumptions about me, my wiki knowledge and my activity on other MW project accounts, answer some of the questions on the FAQ talk? Subfader 18:28, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- Just to note, the page about the data which is being collected was already linked from the FAQ section
- ;-) Helder 12:51, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
- Helder, altho I appreciate your replies, but the main discussion page on WP is sending people here for feedback, comments and requests, no?
Subfader 18:55, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- I hope this change helps. Helder 12:21, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
- Most casual readers are totally uninformed about what makes a decent encyclopedia article
- Exactly. It reminds me of what bugs me when editors will tag an article with a "biased" template without explaining why on the talk page (even well-meaning, well-respected editors will do this routinely). It casts a shadow over the ENTIRE article, and sends a flag to readers that there's something specious about the article as a whole (whether the average reader has personally found any problems with it, most readers will think - "well, it looks good, but there must be SOMETHING wrong with it"). And I don't want to hear this b#llcr@p about me whining just because I personally "disagree" with the voting results. I posted SEVERAL examples (taken from the dashboard page yesterday) of good articles that were rated "B-Class" or higher (presumably by people who actually KNOW something about Wikipedia's GA standards), but had mysteriously received the "lowest" ratings by casual "users", but this was summarily dismissed. I mean the Barack Obama article is CONSISTENTLY among the lowest rated articles on the dashboard almost EVERY SINGLE day i've looked, and that's a FEATURED article for Chrissakes.. It's like there are people here who are DETERMINED to bury their heads in the sand - no matter how many people report problems or how many examples we give they just keep telling us "it's infinitesimal". What they can't seem to wrap their little heads around is the fact that the Justin Bieber and Barack Obama articles are representative of THOUSANDS of articles that DON'T show up in the dashboard. I'm not pretending to be a mathematician, but it stands to reason - if half the articles voted lowest in the dashboard on any given day are celebrity pages with good to very good "quality scale" ratings then any reasonably sane person could (and would be naive not to) infer that 50% of all Wikipedia articles being rated are celeb pages getting the same meaningless votes that have no bearing on the merits of the article whatsoever. The dashboard is a random sampling of 50 articles that clearly shows the TYPES of articles that are most frequently vandalized. I just don't understand what the point is in creating a "Feedback" page, when it's obvious nobody here wants any honest feedback. If this was really about feedback, then our contributions wouldn't be dismissed as "infinitesimal" and we wouldn't be accused of simply coming here because of "sour grapes" about an article we've written receiving low ratings. That's simply not the case. In fact - I'd like to invite anyone who seems to love this tool so much to link to two articles they've written here (and not just articles they've added one or two sentences to, I mean an article they wrote from SCRATCH, or took-up as a "stub") so I can see their work and evaluate their Wikipedia "expertise" for myself. It can be any subject - anything - it doesn't matter - I'd LOVE to see what you've written, and I'll be more than happy to post two of my recent articles I've written as well. Anyone.....? Anyone.......? Crakkerjakk 23:03, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- No one said that your work was infinitesimal but, rather, that the amount of articles that would be adversely impacted by "silly ratings" is infinitesimal compared to the sum of the 3 million+ articles on en.Wikipedia. 174.61.248.93 05:29, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- A HUGE part of my work on Wikipedia is monitoring pages that are highly trafficked by children and teens. So YES, when you tell people reporting problems here that their observations are "infinitesimal" you're being dismissive of THEIR WORK. I admit child star pages get a disproportionately high number of vandals (which is why I started watching them), but anyone who views the dashboard can see it's not just child stars - it's clearly a sweeping cross section of bio and "celebrity culture" articles in general (yes, for the purposes of this discussion Barack Obama is one of many who falls into the category of "celebrity"). It's obvious to anyone who understands how to read numbers that each bio article that shows up on the dashboard represents THOUSANDS of others getting the same TYPE of fan/hate votes - they simply aren't getting rated as OFTEN so they will never show up there. That's where I came in - After giving the tool a couple of months to see how it worked, I came here to report that it's NOT "infinitesimal" (after seeing you had repeatedly attempted to dismiss/discredit other editors coming here, using this exact same line, like some broken record). It's happening on dozens of pages I'm watching - and it's common sense to infer that each page I'm watching represents hundreds of pages that I'm NOT watching. If you think celebrity bio pages, film pages and awards pages don't make up at least HALF of the daily traffic on Wikipedia then you're seriously delusional. The tool doesn't work and nobody here is going to suddenly change their minds and start drinking the kool-aid just because you tell them to ignore what they're seeing FIRST HAND. Crakkerjakk 18:35, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- And I didn't even say that your observations were "infinitesimal"....
- Martyrdom doesn't work when you're doing your own flogging. No one is saying the things that you are claiming.
- Again, to repeat, the amount of articles' (noun: inanimate object that is not a person, trait of of a person or action being done by said person) that would be affected by "silly ratings" of people using the tool inappropriately is infinitesimal.
- So far you are neglecting to answer that point or explain why we should let an issue that affects less than a fraction of a percent of the 3 million+ articles on en.wikipedia be a major reason in shelving this tool.
- It's like saying because some people use their cell phones to talk/text while driving (very likely a higher percentage than those who abuse the AFT tool) are using their phones improperly ergo we should ban the production or use of ALL cell phones period. It doesn't make sense to let a problem that affects a very, very, very, very, very small amount of articles have undue weight on the decision to shelve the entire tool. 174.61.248.93 21:12, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- You're imperious attitude doesn't really work when you've repeatedly demonstrated that you can't read. I mean honestly, this is the ENGLISH MediaWiki right?
- Again, to repeat, the amount of articles (noun: inanimate object that is not a person, trait of of a person or action being done by said person) that ARE affected by "silly ratings" of people using the tool inappropriately are NOT infinitesimal, and repeatedly pretending that they are does NOT make it true.
- So far you are neglecting to understand what I have repeatedly stated previously. I did not recommend that Wikipedia should "shelve the tool" on ALL pages, but LOOK AT THE DASHBOARD - yes, that's an infinitesimally small number of articles, but it gives you a clear "sampling" of what is happening on ALL articles across Wikipedia. Fan/hate votes on celeb related articles makes up a HUGE number of inexplicable ratings on the dashboard, and celeb related articles make up a HUGE number of overall daily TRAFFIC on the encyclopedia. Expecting someone to cite all 3 million + pages individually in order to prove this to you before you accept the obvious statistics is ridiculous. Of the feedback I've seen here, the only thing that's "infinitesimal" is the number of people who seem to think this tool IS working. You haven't PROVEN to me that silly ratings on celeb culture articles are "infinitesimal", and that the tool is working on 99.9999999% of the encyclopedia yet either. So go ahead, cite the 2.999 MILLION articles where it's working.
- I'm doing simple math here - If only half the ratings are people HONESTLY voting on the merits of the articles (which is being generous) then I'd rather not have ANY ratings, but that was NOT my suggestion. I recommended the tool not be used on the categories of pages that it's been PROVEN thousands of people are fan/hate voting on. Unfortunately for you, this includes People, Films, TV shows, etc, etc - which you know full well is a HUGE part of the encyclopedia. If you really thought it was infinitesimal then why would you have a problem with the ratings being removed on those pages? Instead you know FULL WELL that would yank the tool from HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of pages viewed by MILLIONS of readers every day, so you can drop your debunked "infinitesimal" myth. Nobody is buying it.
- The problem with your cute little cell phone analogy is that cell phones are USEFUL. This tool is NOT. It doesn't make sense to let a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very small number of "developmentally challenged" people defending the tool (and who have never written a Wikipedia article in their entire LIFE) have undue weight on the decision to keep it. Crakkerjakk 22:14, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- You're imperious attitude doesn't really work when you've repeatedly demonstrated that you can't read.
- You know, I get the idea behind "Truthiness", but outside of beckoning Beetlejuice, repeating something incessantly doesn't make it true. So while you may wish to push other's people views or them noting your errors aside under the auspice that "they can't read", it really isn't going to add strength to your argument or support your point.
- Though I see there is at least some progress in you no longer claiming that people are calling your work/observations/etc infinitesimal. Victimhood is so unsexy and counterproductive.
- But you still wish to handcuff all discussion on the use of this tool to celeb/pop culture article which do, INDEED, account for an infinitesimal percentage of articles on en.wikipedia. While I duly acknowledge that issues with those articles are reasons to discuss how the tool and dashboard can be improved, I can't buy into the idea that any discussion or gauging of the usefulness of the tool should be relegated to the impact on this <1% of articles. As demonstrated amply elsewhere, it is nonsensical to take drastic measures that impact a large scope based on the results of <1% of anything.
- ========
- The problem with your cute little cell phone analogy is that cell phones are USEFUL. This tool is NOT. It doesn't make sense to let a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very small number of "developmentally challenged" people defending the tool (and who have never written a Wikipedia article in their entire LIFE) have undue weight on the decision to keep it.
- 1.) Personal opinion on the usefulness of cell phones/AFT. Some may share your personal opinion on one, both or neither. Whose personal opinion is valid? Still doesn't discount the point of the analogy that having a small percentage of "abusers" misusing a tool is not reason enough to completely banish/shelve said tool. It is reason to have a rational, civil discussion on how to improve the tool.
- But rational discussion is what leads to things like cell phone driving laws and hands-free headsets. Irrational, uncivil discussion leads to people name calling their opposition and advocating the complete shelving of a tool instead of working to improve something.
- 2.) Your whole pontification about people who disagree with you having never written a Wikipedia article has been demonstrated as false (and is a very weird dick measuring contest BTW). Which begs the question, do you still need a saddle if you're trying to beat a dead horse? 174.61.248.93 22:38, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- Let's be clear, I'm not portraying myself as a "victim". I'm merely pointing out that you've been an obnoxious snot to numerous other users. I know, the truth hurts. Go cry into your jug of wine about it, nobody here cares.
- I see you're still pushing this 1% myth. Once again, nice try, but this isn't about my PERSONAL opinions. I've cited pages showing up on the DASHBOARD numerous times.. Oh right, I forgot, those are just the dashboard's "personal opinions".
- And yeah, I just checked those pages you CLAIMED to have written.. The only thing those links showed is your apparent OBSESSION with alcohol. NO username provided, NO revision page that shows what YOU'VE written. Just you taking credit for HUNDREDS of other editors' work.
- As you've repeatedly demonstrated by INSISTING that I've advocated the "complete shelving of the tool" - you CLEARLY have problems reading. I would suggest putting down your jug of wine, try sobering up for a few days, the discussion will most likely make a lot more sense to you then. Crakkerjakk 00:31, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- Crakkerjakk, you've got a math problem. You're assuming that 50% of the Dashboard = 50% of Wikipedia's traffic. That only works if all of the four million articles are equally likely to be rated strangely. This simply isn't true.
- Quit relying on the Dashboard as your sole source of data. Go get the real data from the server and have a look, okay? WhatamIdoing 17:16, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- I'm not the one with the math problem. Repeatedly citing the traffic statistics only PROVES my point. Yeah, I know, you want people to only view the top 30 articles (HALF of which are "special" pages: the main page, the random article page, the search page, the 404 error page, etc, etc, etc), but what looking at that convenient little number you're clinging to does NOT show is that at LEAST half of ALL the top 1,000 pages are celebrity/pop culture pages: actors, singers, politicians, billionaires, films, tv shows, albums, video games, etc, etc (all pages it's been PROVEN are the MOST likely to be voted on for how much people like, or dislike, the SUBJECT). That's just a FACT. Expecting me to list all the HUNDREDS of celeb/pop culture pages from the top 1000 traffic statistics here before you open your eyes and admit the truth is simply absurd. The reason I keep using the dashboard as a simple example is because it's easy for ANYONE who comes here to glance at and get the basic the idea. If you remember, I originally came and reported on the problems on the pages I'm watching. After you tried to discredit me by saying "those are just YOUR 'favorite' articles", I used the dashboard as ANOTHER example. Once again, you tried to pretend like those votes were just an "anomally". So then you threw out the article traffic page (which CLEARLY shows at least HALF of the pages are celeb articles).. It's like Subfader has said, this whole discussion is a vicious circle. Any which way you slice it, the statistics come up the same, but you just keep desperately trying to dance around the numbers. Sadly for you, NOBODY is falling for it.
- Where we may be having some miscommunication is with exactly WHAT numbers we're talking about. To clarify - I'm not saying celeb/pop culture articles make up half of all articles on Wikipedia. I admit, in my boredom with repeatedly correcting people's misrepresentations of what I've said here I may have misspoken (mistyped) that here somewhere, so let me clarify. I'm saying half of all daily TRAFFIC is readers viewing celeb articles. In case you're still confused - Let's say only 10% of the encyclopedia is celeb/pop culture articles (I don't know the exact number - it may be 20%, it may be 30% - but being generous, let's just say 10%). What ALL the statistics tools show is that every time ONE person views a non-celebrity article, TEN people ARE viewing a celebrity article. I'm talking about the number of daily READERS, not the overall number of ARTICLES. Crakkerjakk 23:39, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- "What ALL the statistics tools show is that every time ONE person views a non-celebrity article, TEN people ARE viewing a celebrity article."
- I've seen no stats tools that show this. I've been asking around, and nobody seems to be aware of any stats tool that actually provides traffic stats by general subject. If you've got one, then I've got several people who want to know where you've been hiding it.
- Let's say that 10% of Wikipedia articles are about celebrities, and that half of the high-traffic articles are about celebrities (and, therefore, that half of the high-traffic articles are not about celebrities). That suggests that half of the traffic from the high-traffic pages is about celebrities (and half is not).
- But we have said that celebrities are only 10% of Wikipedia articles. So celebrities get half the traffic—from a small subset of articles. But celebrities are only a small fraction of the overall articles: 10% of articles account for 50% of high-traffic articles, so they account for less than 10% of the moderate and low-traffic articles. This means that the other 90% accounts for more than 90% of the traffic on non-high-traffic pages.
- The net result is that the 10% of articles about celebrities account for more than 10% of page views—but probably less than (probably much less than) 20% of the total traffic, because their "extra" views on the top end are dwarfed by the 90% of normal articles. (If we assume a simple distribution, the celeb articles (assumed to be 10% of total articles) have basically no chance of account for more than 15% of page views/traffic, but I have no idea how well the simple distribution conforms to reality.)
- What you're missing is this: The English Wikipedia gets 5.7 billion page views a month. All of the top 1000 articles (excluding special pages) accounts for less than 10% of the traffic. That means that the highest-traffic celebrity pages account for less than 5% of total page views—and their effect on the other 90% of traffic is disproportionately low (because they are overrepresented in the top-traffic articles, they are automatically underrepresented in the rest of the traffic categories). WhatamIdoing 20:41, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- WatamIdoing, you've got a "math problem" (your words). You're assuming that if "half of the high-traffic articles are about celebrities" = "half of the traffic from the high-traffic pages is about celebrities ". That only works if the "traffic" for "high-traffic articles" is a "simple distribution" (your words). This simply isn't true and you admit you have "no idea" about its validity.
- Quit relying on your imagination as your sole source for assumption. Go get the real data from the server and have a look, okay? You can then calculate the page views for celebrity pages (celebrities being a set which you claim you can quantify) versus page views per non-celebrity pages.
- Bottom line: your previous post just makes assumptions to make the faulty syllogism that
- if "10% of Wikipedia articles are about celebrities" + other faulty assumptions
- then "articles about celebrities account for more than 10% of page views"
- Which is of course trivial. Worse is you use that conclusion to jump to a different vague conclusion "probably less than (probably much less than) 20% of the total traffic" using an improperly incorporated "dwarfed" claim. The tip off is your repeated use of weasel words in "basically no chance" which you "have no idea how well...conforms to reality. Keep in mind that if you've "seen no stats tools" regarding the 90% claim, then those "stats tools" don't exist for your <20% fabrication. Using the irrrationality of the feedback rating tool, why not make a survey GUI to ask people's feedback on what is the celebrity-to-non-celebrity page view ratio -- after all, Wikipedia claims that feedback is an effective way of quantifying information, right? 208.54.5.202 20:54, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
- Actually, I did pull the page view data for the high-traffic articles, and that does appear to be a fairly simple distribution, so that assumption appears to be valid.
- The assertion that 10% of articles are about celebrities was yours; I merely used your example. About 25% of articles in the English Wikipedia are about people, and the majority of these are not what we would call "celebrities", but 10% is not a completely unreasonable guess for a back-of-the-envelope calculation. WhatamIdoing 21:28, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
- WhatamIdoing, you've got an integrity problem. Your replied to the poster who used IP address 208.54.5.202 with the false accusation that "The assertion that 10% of articles are about celebrities was yours", but that poster never made that faulty assertion. Worse than that lie, WhatamIdoing used that assumption to arrive at a trivial claim, then jumped to the unjustified weasel word conclusion that the assumption "is not a completely unreasonable guess" (i.e., it *is* an unreasonable guess) by claiming "the majority" of about 25% of Wikipedia articles are about celebrities. Depending on your weasel words "about" and "majority", the percentage of celebrity articles ranges from 0 to less than some "about" amount over 12.5%. Hence, the 10% assumption you used is unfounded, and lying about who originated that 10% assumption to cover your use is bad faith.
- Even easier to debunk is your "simple distribution" claim, which you now qualify as "fairly simple distribution" (i.e., *not* a "simple distribution", whatever that weasel term means). Clearly the page views for all high traffic pages aren't equal, but perhaps you'll fabricate the claim they're "fairly" equal). Despite your claim of "no idea" about such statistics, you now claim "I did pull the page view data" and jumped to the conclusion the distribution of page views for "high-traffic articles...appear[s] to be a fairly simple distribution". But what "distribution" metric did you apply to weasel the "fairly simple" judgment? Did you look at the highest traffic article with the least page views and subtract that from the value for the most-viewed article, then just claim 'oh, that difference is less than the WhatamIdoing-standard "fairly simple" value used by the statistics industry? Again, you have a "math problem" (your words), as you haven't provided the mathematical definition of "simple distribution" (maybe you should author a wikiarticle) and then mathematically justify how the "page view data" meets your math definition.
- You also have a math problem regarding your much less than 20% claim for the total page views for celebrity pages, as it is still unjustified. But of course you didn't address that fallacy in your reply. Best wishes formulating another rationalizing reply (I'm confident it won't include the stats for page views per celebrity article, despite your indication that you can identify them)! 208.54.5.202 21:23, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
- Your account is no longer blocked, and I encourage you to start using it again. Alternatively, we could ask Checkuser to look into it your concern. Would you like me to do that?
- Page view data is trivially available for the top 1000 pages. I ran the numbers by manually sorting the data for one day into two categories: "biographies" and "all other articles". (I excluded about two dozen non-article pages in the process, and assumed that all of the most-viewed biographies could be reasonably counted as "celebrities"). You could do the same, if you happen to have some the basic skills and reasonable access to software.
- You do seem to be having trouble understanding what I'm posting. For example, I said that the majority of the English Wikipedia's biographies are NOT about celebrities. WhatamIdoing 16:58, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
- As I was the user who was able to post (wasn't blocked) the preceding 30 September & 3 October replies and I don't have an account, the WhatamIdoing false claim "Your account is no longer blocked" is another blatant lie. And my bait to that user "Best wishes formulating another rationalizing reply" was successful, in that WhatamIdoing now has posted a laughable veiled threat to have my posts investigated by Checkuser with the misworded veil that the check would be for the reason "look into it your concern." BTW, to which of your math or integrity problems are you referring regarding my "concern"? Yes, I would like a Wikipedia authority to look into your math and integrity problems.
- Also, the WhatamIdoing fabrication created when he claimed that his post "majority of the English Wikipedia's biographies are NOT about celebrities" is an "example" that someone else "seem"s to misunderstand is another falsehood--you'd need content that someone (who you fabricated is misunderstanding) wrote in order to exemplify the misunderstanding. It appears WhatamIdoing has trouble understanding what he writes, but posts it anyway. The old 'post first, analyze later' philosophy!
- Nevertheless, you haven't provided the metrics for your two terms "simple distribution" and "fairly simple distribution", so the terms are not mathematically understandable. And since those metrics are needed to assess your faulty statistical analysis, your failing to provide them is another "integrity problem". Bottom line, your false "you could do the same" claim isn't possible for the same assessment without your "simple distribution" metrics (and the specific day, which you inaccurately assumed is representative of the general case).
- WhatamIdoing, "you've got a math problem" (your words). "You're assuming that" (your words)--in "the top 1000 pages"-- that "all of the most-viewed biographies"="celebrities" in the top 1000. This simply isn't true. Worse, it fails to consider all the celebrities not in the top 1000 for that small sample of an unspecified "one day".
- Quit relying on misdirection and evasion, and state the "real data from the server...okay?" (your words): the page view total for the total pages you claim you identified for "celebrities" in the top 1000 -- which will help establish whether your conjecture--"(probably much less than) 20% of the total traffic" is for celebrities--is bunkum. But of course you will instead fabricate more false straw men (or perhaps threats) to try to misdirect readers.
- Wow - I didn't think debunking the worst Article Feedback Tool defender (worst at defending) would be this much fun! 208.54.5.202 20:11, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
- A HUGE part of my work on Wikipedia is monitoring pages that are highly trafficked by children and teens. So YES, when you tell people reporting problems here that their observations are "infinitesimal" you're being dismissive of THEIR WORK. I admit child star pages get a disproportionately high number of vandals (which is why I started watching them), but anyone who views the dashboard can see it's not just child stars - it's clearly a sweeping cross section of bio and "celebrity culture" articles in general (yes, for the purposes of this discussion Barack Obama is one of many who falls into the category of "celebrity"). It's obvious to anyone who understands how to read numbers that each bio article that shows up on the dashboard represents THOUSANDS of others getting the same TYPE of fan/hate votes - they simply aren't getting rated as OFTEN so they will never show up there. That's where I came in - After giving the tool a couple of months to see how it worked, I came here to report that it's NOT "infinitesimal" (after seeing you had repeatedly attempted to dismiss/discredit other editors coming here, using this exact same line, like some broken record). It's happening on dozens of pages I'm watching - and it's common sense to infer that each page I'm watching represents hundreds of pages that I'm NOT watching. If you think celebrity bio pages, film pages and awards pages don't make up at least HALF of the daily traffic on Wikipedia then you're seriously delusional. The tool doesn't work and nobody here is going to suddenly change their minds and start drinking the kool-aid just because you tell them to ignore what they're seeing FIRST HAND. Crakkerjakk 18:35, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- Well, it is interesting to follow this project over months and seeing how the WMF people play boss is indeed very scary. I did follow the test phase of FlaggedRevs on German WP with much interest and actually they learned from it and took consequences. But AFT? Nothing. Instead, as you mentioned, they try to sell us this useless feature as the next big thing which WP cannot live without. And non-related people like critics and scientists who follow the development of WP have just another reason to turn the back on WP when they see that good articles are rated 1/5 by people (visitors don't know that haters and fan abuse the AFT and how easy it is to do so). I could continue forever why AFT is bad... I have not seen one advantage of AFT here yet. Someone link me to it please. I know the FAQ yeah but it reads like a fake review for an overprized tool nobody actually wants or needs. Subfader 22:04, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- Lol.. I have to admit I've been tempted to do that myself, but I decided not to based on principal. Not because it's "wrong", but because I made a decision when the tool first showed up (and obvious vandalism ratings started soon after) that I wouldn't vote on ANY article I'd had a significant hand in writing (aside from minor cleanup - correcting typos, redirecting backlinks, etc). I wanted to give the tool some time to see how I liked it, how it worked, etc (I honestly didn't have any opinion about it one way or the other when it was first implemented). If I was "rigging" the votes then I wouldn't be able to do that, so I decided I'd wait to see how things played out before I came here because I wanted to be able to be 100% impartial. What irks me about this page is how obnoxious a couple of the people here are - implying our hard work, observations and experiences are "infinitesimal" to the value of Wikipedia, etc. I think they know what they can do with their new "tool", so I won't even bother lowering myself to their level. Crakkerjakk 21:17, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- On WP some WMF guy explained how AFT works and how to stop vandalism by fan / hate votes. It all makes sense now. --Subfader 19:11, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
This talk page is useless
[edit]The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I think this talk page more useless than the extension. The end. Subfader 21:47, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
- Because people disagree with you? 174.61.248.93 22:56, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
- He was being rude and I called him on it. Jorm (WMF) 00:02, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
- LOL are you in kindergarten? That's not the reason why this talk page is useless.
- It's the way AFT is pushed in mafia style as if WP would not work without it. That makes all discussion useless cos you do what you want anyway. And by the way WhatAmIDoing is posting here and here one could think it's her full time job to defend AFT against all critics. Subfader 18:36, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
- I think the "uselessness" comes from editors approach to this page. Rather than ask questions about the tool or make suggestions on how it can be improved there seems to be a "vote/veto" mentality that if enough people are vocal in complaints that the tool will just go away.
- As a discussion on the best ways to utilize the tool and how to implement it, this page can be quite useful. Think about an article's talk page. What is most helpful? People ragging on an article and saying it should be deleted or people asking question and making suggestions on what could be done to improve it.
- Talkpages are "tools" themselves and their usefulness is dependent on how you use it. 174.61.248.93 21:05, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
- I made enough suggestions. But I should stop talking to an anon ;) Subfader 21:44, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
- I'm only an anon on Media-wiki because I don't feel like creating yet another wiki account. If you want to know who I really am, feel free to peruse my en.wiki page w:en:User:Agne27 174.61.248.93 22:13, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
- I made enough suggestions. But I should stop talking to an anon ;) Subfader 21:44, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
- "I think this talk page more useless than the extension. The end."
- "But I should stop talking to an anon ;)"
- "WhatAmIDoing, your posts are pure timewasters."
- Are you serious? Do you really think this is an acceptable manner to conduct yourself in? If you want anyone to take you seriously you need to drop the childish attitude. Johnduhart 00:05, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
- Oh, it's just your basic fake goodbye. Wikis see this all the time: Somebody doesn't get what he wants, so he makes a big deal about how he's leaving. The usual hopes are that people will be so disturbed by the threat to depart that they will give them what they want, beg them to say, or at least stroke their egos by saying nice things about the person's contributions.
- People who actually think a discussion is a waste of time not only quit posting, but also quit even reading the page. The fact that he keeps coming back shows that he's getting something that he considers valuable (more valuable than other things he could be doing) from this discussion (information? entertainment? I don't know—I just know that it's enough to keep him reading this page rather than the millions of other pages he could read on the internet). WhatamIdoing 16:14, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
- Yeah whatever. Enjoy your AFT. May it be useful some day! :rolleyes: Subfader 17:51, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
- Just thought I should point out to you, WhatamIdoing, that I continue reading this page for entertainment. I love reading your posts that try so much to defend this feedback tool, which is ultimately useless. Keep up the good work... ProfessorKilroy 11:40, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
- That page on fake goodbyes is a goldmine of wiki psychology, thanks for the pointer! DarTar 21:12, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
- Yeah whatever. Enjoy your AFT. May it be useful some day! :rolleyes: Subfader 17:51, 27 August 2011 (UTC)