Topic on Talk:Article feedback

Continued Rollout of AFT

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Howief (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Just a note to let everyone know that we will continue the rollout of AFT starting tomorrow, June 13, 2011. Our current plan is to deploy the feature in increments of 5,000 articles while carefully measuring the performance characteristics. If all goes well, we will continue the rollout over the next week or two.

Please let us know if you observe anything unusual during this rollout period. Also, we're still using the Article_feedback/Ideas_log to collect feature enhancements, so I encourage people to put features ideas on that page.

This post was posted by Howief (WMF), but signed as Howief.

Bensin (talkcontribs)

I suggest you halt this project until you can show you are backed up by the community of the wiki where it is to be implemented.

"Please let us know if you observe anything unusual during this rollout period."

Well... I know it's not what you are thinking of, but the most unusual thing I'm observing is the foundation pushing this forward without showing there is consensus to do so, despite pretty words of taking the criticism seriously.
Jorm (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Here's a statistic from the survey we have been running along with the tool:

  • 92.2% of all the users who took the post-rating survey (N=2132) found the tool useful, only 4.8% didn't find it useful and the remaining 3% didn't answer.
Bensin (talkcontribs)

Any chance those liking the tool are using it and those not liking it are abstaining from doing so?

Also, I'm not talking about support from the users of the tool, I'm talking about support from the users in the community. One user, one vote. I'm talking about a poll like in the case with flagged revisions. Here's what scares me: The foundation is taking upon itself to decide what's best without letting the community have a say in it. To forego such a poll, thus eliminating the risk of a no-go, is a mandate I don't think the foundation has. If it does have the mandate, I don't think it should.

Jorm (WMF) (talkcontribs)

The total of the Wikipedia user community is around 4.8 hundred million people. The sum total of what is typically considered the "community" is about 10,000 individuals.

That's a different level of mandate, I think.

Wasbeer (talkcontribs)
Bensin (talkcontribs)

First: w:Special:Statistics says there are 143,047 active registered users on enwp, the wiki where this roll-out is taking place. That's the community I think should have a say in this.

Second: Your post is not an answer to my post, but rather avoiding my two main objections. It is, however, duly noted that you seem willing to dismiss that community of 143,047 individuals (where everyone can vote) and at the same time refer to a survey of 2,132 users of the tool. I'm simply not prepared to put my trust in that survey. I want a poll.

Jorm (WMF) (talkcontribs)

I'm not avoiding your objections; I'm explaining who we are serving.

This is not a tool for the editor community. This is a tool for the millions of users who don't have a voice because they don't know that they can have a voice. Would you like some comments from these people? The tool is rather well liked by pretty much everyone. It has its problems and bugs, but really there are only four or five people who are actively engaged with promoting its demise.

We are going to roll out the tool. We are going to collect data. We are going to make changes and choices based on what we learn. We were told to do this by the community through the strategic plan. There is already consensus for the tool.

I'm sorry you don't like this; I wish I could help you with that. I (and others) have been listening to your concerns and we are going to fold some of them into future iterations of the tool. You have been heard.

Bensin (talkcontribs)

"This is not a tool for the editor community."

I am painfully aware of that. And it's a shame. Tools could, and should, have been developed to suit both editors and potential editors. One tool for editors to evaluate articles and one (or more) tools and features to engage potential editors.

"The tool is rather well liked by pretty much everyone." and "There is already consensus for the tool."

{{citation needed}} please. I don't contest the survey of 2000+ users of the tool, but on what do you base the support from the user community?

"We were told to do this by the community through the strategic plan."

I doubt you were told explicitly by the plan to develop and implement the AFT. If so, can you provide me with a link to that paragraph? (Not just "improve ways to measure quality" but rather something that supports your statement.)

I have also raised concern about the roll-out itself and what I believe is lack of evidence of community support. Is that something you will take into consideration for future roll-outs of other tools?

DarTar (talkcontribs)

We were reluctant to publish the data from the post-rating survey precisely because it cannot be used to make any rigorous generalization. It is very useful, however, to give us a feeling of how the community at large (which as Jorm notes includes our readers) is responding to this experiment. I find it ironic that, as biased as this survey data surely is, we should dismiss it and take the negative feedback from less than 10 self-selected editors participating in this thread as representative of the true feelings of the community.

If we want to discuss the figures, Jorm omitted one small detail. This is data collected over 1 week, i.e. between 2011-07-04 and 2011-07-11. There has been roughly the same amount of users giving us feedback every week since the tool was deployed to 100K articles. There won't be any poll to decide on this or any other new feature that we are implementing as part of the strategic product plan. As we said before, this project is going on until we have collected enough data to understand how to make it a useful tool for our community at large. Constructive feedback on how to make this happen is, as usual, very welcome.

Bensin (talkcontribs)

I have never claimed to be a representative of the community. I represent myself, only. But I also want other editors to have a fair chance of representing themselves. A poll on the wiki in question would be a good way to do that. If you have support for it, then fine, the problem is all mine. But what if you don't? Is it possible there are other solutions to the problem that you and I have not taken into consideration? Solutions that may arise when users comment in the poll? We all know crowdsourcing is a powerful tool when used right.

I don't want to dismiss the survey, but the question of bias is unanswered.

Wasbeer (talkcontribs)

Jorm described the offer to ask for input from the community as a "threat".

Try it yourself. Ask a random person to make an account on Wikipedia. Explain that it is possible to hide the AFT. Then ask them how to hide the AFT.

Count the amount of clicks it takes for them to answer that question.

Then explain that (s)he is able to give feedback on the AFT itself, and ask them to provide feedback on the AFT.

Count the amount of clicks it takes them to give feedback.

Remember: the fact that talkpages are "hard to find and edit" is one of the things that should be solved by the AFT, but this discussion is held on a talkpage on a different wiki. LT makes commenting here even harder and confusing.

Millions of users who may have an opinion on the AFT don't have a voice because they don't know that they can have a voice. It is very hard to find this page, and lots of people do not know they can be a part of the decision making process. The fact that everyone is able to edit almost all articles is very strange to most people, and most people who do know that do not know they can have an influence on the interface too.

But lets assume, arguendo, there are less than ten people in the world who oppose the AFT. Wouldn't it be nice to have this overwhelming support confirmed by a poll on EN wiki?

He7d3r (talkcontribs)
the fact that talkpages are "hard to find and edit" is one of the things that should be solved by the AFT, but this discussion is held on a talkpage on a different wiki. (emphasis mine)

Good point. I think it could be useful to let people to comment about the tool directly on the wiki the tool is being used.

LT makes commenting here even harder and confusing.

Although personally I prefer LQT (because it has being in use on Portuguese Wikibooks for a long time now, and I like it - despite its bugs), I agree that it can represent an additional barrier to people who are accustomed to using the normal talk pages and village pumps.

Jorm (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Remember: the fact that talkpages are "hard to find and edit" is one of the things that should be solved by the AFT

This is not one of the motivations for the Article Feedback Tool and never was.

Jorm described the offer to ask for input from the community as a "threat".

This is being disingenuous. Your language said "I will rally the troops" and indicated that you would canvass people to storm the talk pages in order to "prove" something to me. Flooding a constructive discussion with non-constructive criticism would be pointless, and I called you on it.

Wasbeer (talkcontribs)

Where did you get that quote from? I never said "I will rally the troops", nor has anyone else here afaik. Please use quotation marks only for direct quotes.

Accusing me of being disingenuous is rather silly considering the fact you made that quote up yourself and you have been disingenuous in the past and removed the evidence when I called you on it.

I asked you twice if you wanted me to provide an indication that a direction change is required. The second time I wrote: "OK, do you want me to provide that indication? I can rally the troops if you want me to."

Emphasis added by me.

You said my comments "have ceased to be constructive in any way" on the 19th of June, but a lot of people here probably disagree.

For example, user Helder said I made a good point here, and user Subfader said I made some good points here, and user Tom Morris said I made a good point here.

User Rockfang thanked me for replying here, user Bensin agreed with me here, I asked a couple of questions and both user Dougweller and user Bensin said they would like an answer to these questions too here (under my comment), I made a request and user Helder copied it to the bugtracker "to make sure this is noticed by the developers" (see here).

Howief described the fact that I pointed out a bug here and filed a bugreport on bugzilla with all of the relevant details on my system environment as "very helpful".

These are just a few examples I could find quickly, more of those exist.

I'm afraid you might take the criticism of the AFT a bit too personal. This is not a personal thing. It isn't even very important. Most people do not have the time to debate about silly stuff like this because they have real problems. You even wrote: "Is your primary objection to its being there based around the fact that you are the primary editor of the article and that you feel that low ratings reflect poorly on you?" even though I changed nothing on that article.

Now you seem to be saying I pointlessly flood a constructive discussion with non-constructive criticism, and that you called me on it.

Please comment on content, not on the contributor.

Subfader (talkcontribs)

You made a good point with that one argument. That doesn't mean I agree with all your posts. TBH I think you completely ruined all serious discussion with your aggressive hater posting style. And to leave an objective comment: The happy majority never particaipates on new feature discussions. I think most people find it more useful than a waste of coding time. --Subfader

Wasbeer (talkcontribs)

Of course I know you were just talking about that specific comment, I just used that as an example to prove Jorm wrong.

Thank you for your honesty. As you probably expect, I disagree (I was much nicer to Jorm than he was to me, especially on IRC today), but I decided to move my attention elsewhere because this is obviously useless. Good luck everyone!

Timl2k4 (talkcontribs)

This just shows an incredulous level of cluelessness on your part. Why would someone use the tool if they don't find it useful? Once again, plain evidence that you are only supporting this tool because of the time and effort you have put into it. Not on an objective basis.

He7d3r (talkcontribs)

I have to agree that this "statistic from the survey" do not show "you are backed up by the community of the wiki where it is to be implemented", since it doesn't consider any data about people who doesn't use the tool (e.g. because they do not like it).

DarTar (talkcontribs)

If studying the data we collect from this tool makes AFT "our baby", then you've got a point. I wish you stopped reacting as if there was a secret agenda behind this tool different from its stated goals. There is actually quite a lot of criticism in the comments of the post-rating survey even though the majority of the respondents is supportive and we're trying to be as receptive as possible about future improvements.

213.134.175.225 (talkcontribs)

Article feedback tool developer are completely ignoring feedback from community. Sooo great! What is possible for community: hide class "articleFeedback-panel" as default for all skins

This post was posted by 213.134.175.225, but signed as Bulwersator.

He7d3r (talkcontribs)

Unless there is no community consensus on the proposal of hiding the "articleFeedback-panel". But so far, this was not proposed on en.wp.

WhatamIdoing (talkcontribs)

Bulwersator, there's no question of "completely ignoring feedback from the community". Most of the community supports having some version of this tool. Only a small group of people oppose it. If you don't like it, then you can disable it for your account, but you really ought to quit pretending that the rest of the community agrees with you.

Bensin (talkcontribs)

"Most of the community supports having some version of this tool"

I'm not convinced. Even if it were true, it is unclear what that version is.

"If you don't like it, then you can disable it for your account"

One could also argue "If you like it, then you can enable it on articles in your watchlist and then update the articles according to the input from the tool". There is very little talk about who will actually do the work suggested by the data from the tool.

I'd also be a little surprised if the AFT will identify substantially more articles as "in need of attention" than is already identified by the community itself via templates and flags.

He7d3r (talkcontribs)

One could also argue "If you like it, then you can enable it on articles in your watchlist and then update the articles according to the input from the tool".

But to enable the tool by themselves, people would first need to know that it exists, and this is already a problem with the talk pages, which a lot of people doesn't know about.
Bensin (talkcontribs)

Your're talking about readers. I was talking about editors. That editors could enable the tool and then also take care of the comments and suggestions the tool provides and remedy the article's shortcomings. That way there is less risk of readers pointing out problems that are not taken care of.

It's frustrating when someone asks your opinion but don't listen to your advice.

WhatamIdoing (talkcontribs)

The primary target of the tool is non-editor readers. The English Wikipedia already have two very good systems in place for getting feedback from experienced editors: the talk page and the 1.0 team's assessment program. The whole point of this tool is to get non-editor readers engaged in the Wikipedia page—the very people who don't (and with respect to the second system, shouldn't) use those feedback options.

I don't think that these readers feel like their "advice" is being ignored. The typical reader probably thinks his rating is being given just as much attention as his Facebook "like" votes. Perhaps, though, this refers to your own feelings, resulting from other people rejecting your advice to make the tool unavailable to its intended audience?

Bensin (talkcontribs)

"Perhaps, though, this refers to your own feelings, resulting from other people rejecting your advice to make the tool unavailable to its intended audience?"

No, you got it right. I was referring to the voters, but it sure applies to the roll-out of the AFT too. With the major difference that the community was never asked what it wanted before the roll-out. If you believe it was, please supply a link to that discussion.
174.61.248.93 (talkcontribs)

I certainly don't speak for the foundations or the developers behind this tool but from an outside in perspective, this tool is more for the readers and to get their opinions rather than something designed for the community of editors itself.

Therefore, this "survey taking" of readers opinions doesn't seem like something that needs "community approval" since it is really not about the community at all. Thus, I don't see how the community can even have veto power over this or a reason to cry about lack of consensus. Again, it is not about them. It would be like the WMF deciding to switch to a new public relations firm and the community crying foul because they weren't consulted first for input.

Now....of course, there could be benefits of this tool for community and THAT is what I see the developers asking for input on as a courtesy to the community. With some tweaks and observations on how the readers are using the tool, AFT can be tailored to have some useful by-products that editors can use via dashboard enhancements, etc. But those benefits are only by-products and not the main purpose which appears to be getting reader feedback.

WhatamIdoing (talkcontribs)

It's not possible to supply "a" link to discussions, because there have been multiple discussions over many months, which have generally either been supportive or neutral. I and others have provided links to more than a dozen such discussions and announcements in the past, and I'm sure that there are more that I didn't see at the time. I don't have time to go look up a long list again, but I believe that you will find at least some of them at the end of the FAQ page.

In the meantime, I recommend that you think about what en:WP:Consensus says about the relationship between discussion and consensus: discussion might shape consensus and it might document consensus, but it is not a required step in forming consensus—and it is definitely not necessary to hold a single, organized, long, large, noisy discussion to have a consensus. We have a consensus when most people agree on something, even if nobody says anything out loud. It is not necessary for even normal editors to seek "written permission in advance" for good-faith changes. It is certainly not necessary for the WMF to seek written permission to make good-faith changes.

Fact: The WMF has surveyed thousands of users about this tool, and only about 5% have said that the tool is not useful. That's far less opposition than every single one of en.wiki's major policies received at the time of its adoption, and far more people expressing an opinion. You are doubtless one of the people in that 5%, but 5% out of thousands of users is never going to be accepted as a consensus against the tool.

Subfader (talkcontribs)

"It's not possible to supply "a" link to discussions, because there have been multiple discussions over many months"

Then post 2 or 3 instead.

WhatamIdoing (talkcontribs)

There are more than that linked at the FAQ; have you tried reading it?

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