The article rating system is flawed. Readers vote based on if the like the subject of the article (like films, actors, songs, etc) rather than content. See my thoughts here. I thought this would be a great idea to help editors out on articles they regularly work on, but the votes are misleading when they think the system is like a IMDb rating system for them to vote if they liked the film. I hope this flops and is discontinued -- it just doesn't work.
Topic on Talk:Article feedback
How do you know that?
Have you seen comments from people that (for example) say "I rated this tiny stub as being totally complete, because I love the movie"? Or are you just guessing in an effort to explain why your rating differs from the average rating?
I agree that it will be useless. I've seen amongst the list of highly rated pages, Minecraft and Pottermore, etc. And on the lowest, Hitler and Beiber. I haven't seen any of these articles myself, but just by seeing Hitler in the lowest section, it definitely means that people are using the rating system as a way of rating the actual thing that the article is about.
See the FAQ: "Are you suggesting that a high or low rating means that an article needs to be improved?"
The simple answer is "No". These ratings may tell us something, but they do not necessarily tell us that something is wrong with the article.
Soo what does this tool tell us?
Mike, we don't know all of the effects that the tool produces. We're still studying it, remember? If you want to know what it might produce, then try reading the FAQ, which addresses that.
I apologise, Ms WhatamIdoing.
Actually you may need to change that FAQ. The question stated is "Are you suggesting that a high or low rating means that an article needs to be improved?". The given answer is no, when certainly in my case it should be yes. I am suggesting that. I think it is trying to say that the "No" answers the question, "Does a high or low rating mean that an article needs to be improved?". Since the "Are you suggesting" bit is important, you may need to change the answer.
However, the answer given anyway, is as I described your answer earlier (no offense intended towards politicians). It generally avoids the question in an attempt to keep its dignity intact. Since you do not know all of the effects, what was the intended purpose of the tool? Don't wriggle your way out of that one either, and don't answer with reader engagement, because there would have been other reasons. If you do not know the effects of the tool, then it is perhaps unwise to put it in place. However, I understand that you are still studying it, so just consider all of this in your study.
If engagement "seems" to be increased, is it for the right reason? I am not sure that rating the subject is at all relevant. Just reconsider the Hitler argument, and ask yourself if it is really worth it. I don't think that the teacher analogy is entirely appropriate. Wikipedia is not a teacher. And besides, amongst experimental teaching methods, no teacher asks a student if they like differential calculus, for example, as a part of the curriculum (However, it is generally assumed that they do not). More readers is a nice prospect, but it is still not the job of an encyclopedia to ask whether people like the subject or not. As to less vandalism, that is also desirable, but a rating on a page isn't going to change a vandal's mind.
Anyway, maybe you are right. The effort may not be worthless, as it will prove that the tool is useless. I encourage you to hurry up with your study, so you can remove the tool. You are clearly just caught up with the notion of it that you are just making excuses for its inclusion.
You sound like a politician yourself—one from the "Party of No". The studies cannot be speeded up for your convenience.
However, you can make the tool completely invisible to yourself whenever you want. The instructions for disabling the tool for yourself are in the FAQ. As one of the major goals is to increase the engagement of non-editor readers, I would not be surprised if many experienced editors disable it. It's not designed for them any more than a child's storybook is designed for university literature studies. Fortunately, nobody's making them even remember that it exists. If you don't like it, you can turn it off for your account, without imposing your personal preference on the intended audience.
Better to be from the "Party of No" than the "Party of I can't give a straight answer", which you succeeded in yet again. Congratulations! Anyway, the point of my argument wasn't intended simply for my preference. I didn't come here to say, "I don't like it, so I don't want to have to see it". I just thought you should reconsider some of the negative effects (or just downright uselessness) of the tool, because I firmly believe that no good will come of it. And you should really check on that grammar thing I pulled you up on.
There is no grammar problem. In standard English, if the answer to "Are you suggesting ____" is no, then that means "No, I am not suggesting ____". Feel free to consult with an English teacher if you want to confirm this.
You're right. There's nothing wrong with the grammar, but it's not answering the right question. In standard English, or at least over here in Australia, we answer the questions we get asked. I guess it's just a courtesy thing. What you just said confirms that it should be fixed. You put the link there because you thought I was suggesting _____, which I was. That means the answer is a lie (the answer that says "No, I am not suggesting ______"), for me at least. It isn't for you, if you aren't sugessting ______. Feel free to consult this with someone who can answer questions, because I know that you certainly can't handle this kind of thing yourself (I still haven't got the answers to the questions I asked a few posts ago, and for you to answer this one about the FAQ, I had to post it twice).
FAQs are (always) written from the perspective of the user asking the site owner. The "you" in the question refers to the WMF developers working on the tool, not to users (e.g., ProfessorKilroy). Thus the question is correctly interpreted as "Are the developers of this rating tool suggesting that a high or low rating means that an article needs to be improved?", and the developers reply "No", because they aren't suggesting any such thing at all.
It still sounds a bit dodge. But I guess it's okay. Still, you could have saved insults about grammar and the ability to answer questions (which you still can't answer, by the way) by just saying that earlier. And you probably could have saved a lot of your time, if you just answered my questions in the first place, because I have no doubt that you have some kind of logical answer for that I'll probably disagree with, but you never know. Just give answering questions a try. It's polite, and sometimes satisfying for those asking the questions, and perhaps for those answering them.
I'll take this lack of a response to mean, "No. I cannot answer anything."
I would interpret the lack of response to be because "you (ProfessorKilroy) are not being very constructive, and in fact are being quite rude, and there is little to be gained by attempting to converse with someone who just spits at you."
I would interpret this response to be because you (Jorm (WMF)) have not realised that the insults (and spit) are flying in both directions. I came here with legitimate feedback and questions, and they remained unanswered. Is it too much to ask for questions to be answered. It's just polite, you know. Someone asks you a question, you answer it. After several attempts at directing WhatamIdoing to answer my question, I still have no responses to the questions. I don't really care any more now, but that's not the point. And another note: I think you're being a little hypocritical, as your response isn't at all constructive to the discussion either, and is a bit of a spit.
Actually, I decided not to answer your questions again because I decided that you were not capable of recognizing that my answer was, in fact, an answer to your questions.
Okay then, how about this: I am incapable of recognising your answers when they are so thoroughly disguised within your words. Congratulations on fooling me. Could you please answer my questions in a straight out answer directly to my question, so that I may understand your supreme intelligence.
Mr WhatamIdoing, you actually sound like a politician. If the ratings tell us something useless, then the ratings are useless. The following is a description of this tool: "The Article Feedback Tool is a Wikimedia survey for article feedback to engage readers in the assessment of article quality". So, if readers give it a bad rating, that means the article is of bad quality (supposedly), and therefore should be improved. What I am suggesting is that a large portion of readers who vote are not voting on the quality of the article, but rather the subject of the article. It can't be a coincidence that Hitler, Beiber, and Gomez have all been amongst the lowest rating articles. You seem to be the only one in favour of this system, WhatamIdoing, so I suggest you just take a step back and look at it, then ask yourself, "What am I doing..." No good can come of it. It is ultimately a fail.
I'm a "Ms WhatamIdoing", not a mister.
The answer's in the FAQ; I suggest that you go read it. Nobody has ever promised that the ratings produced by readers would accurately reflect the quality of the article. It is possible to engage people in a process that produces engagement without producing accurate ratings.
I understand that teachers do things like this all over the world: you try out something that gets students engaged in the class, and you hope that it results in increased student learning. It's entirely possible that any given class assignment will result in increased student learning—and it's entirely possible that it will have no discernable effect at all on student learning, or will even prove to be worse than a more typical teaching method. However, that doesn't mean that the attempt was worthless, or that it won't result in other desirable outcomes, like students being more likely to attend class in the future, or less likely to be disruptive.
Similarly, this tool seems to increase reader engagement—which was its stated goal, so it's successful on that point—but we don't actually know whether it is producing accurate ratings on all articles, on some articles, or on any articles. That we currently can't tell whether the ratings are useful for the highly limited purpose of identifying articles that need improvement doesn't prove that the effort is worthless, or that it won't result in other desirable outcomes, like more readers or less vandalism.