Topic on Talk:Edit Review Improvements/New filters for edit review

To complex for ordinary writer

13
Arcy (talkcontribs)

I‘m a programmer an from my opinion thefilter is far to complex. The former one was easy and usable. Just allow both with the complex one as scond choice or default by user settngs.

Kdammers (talkcontribs)

I didn't even know about the previous filtering, but I found the description of the new set of filters land and not especially simple. Will anyone who is not a computer person or a native speaker (probably both) take advantage of the filters with this description?

JMatazzoni (WMF) (talkcontribs)

I'm sorry you find the new interface too complex. Changing the interface was required to accommodate all the new functionality that was added. If your work doesn't require any of the new tools (highlighting, the Seen/Unseen filters on Watchlist, the machine-learning filters on selective wikis, Live Update...), you can easily opt out on the Watchlist or Recent Changes tabs of Preferences.

Trizek (WMF) (talkcontribs)

We can also help you in exploring the new interface. Please ask for the use cases you are blocked with or you miss.

I now use the filters on my volunteer account and, like @JMatazzoni (WMF) reports, I had to accommodate myself with the new features. Now I can't work without them.

Clump (talkcontribs)

Some thoughts I had on this, as I tend to agree with the first two comments that the complexity of the filter interface is excessive.

I think it comes mainly down finding the category structure rather confusing and hard to control. I understand that each category represents a set of related suboptions, but the logic that controls that is not always easy to understand. For example, "Significance" includes "Minor edits" and "Non-minor edits". I can see those as mutually exclusive, and I realize that checking both ORs them together, but so does not checking them both. Why am I being given 2 ways to express the same thing? This does not make much sense. I tend to think of checkboxes as switches, and a design that results in leaving all switches off having the same meaning as leaving them all on is just bizarre.

It becomes more complex in larger categories where it is less obvious how the coverage of the individual options interacts. For example, on "Watchlisted pages", I can select "On Watchlist" and "Not on Watchlist". Logically, ORing those together, that should cover everything, but there's a third option "New Watchlist changes". So if I don't select that, then I would see pages on my watchlist, but not if they are new changes? That's either a contradiction or at least a peculiar combination to support, and moreover makes it even less clear what the design principle is. The options within a category are ORed together, but how are they derived----they are clearly not meant to be covering (partitioning the space), since they include negative versions, but they also do not sum to 0 (cover in both positive and negative senses). Having some options subsumed by others results in unclear combinations (A OR not-A, but not (B subset A)?).

Basically, an AND/OR structure to the across/within categories does makes some sense and is easy to reason about abstractly, but it does not always seem clear how this works with the way the options within categories are formed, using positive and negatives that sometimes includes overlap.

I imagine lots of thought was put into the logical design and that other interface designs were considered. Just to be sure, though, were there reasons why a simple list of selectable, non-overlapping, positive-only options (perhaps only stylistically separated into categories) was not sufficient?

Other, more specific issues I have noted:

  1. . I have checked all filters in the "user registration and experience" category, so I can highlight some of them differently. This works, but in the list of active filters they are all shown greyed out, and any that I did not change the highlighting for are declared as having no effect. However, having selected some to highlight, had I not selected the remaining ones those would be excluded. So, contrary to the mouseover text, they actually are having an effect.
    After some investigation, digging through the help text, I did find out that highlighting and filtering are independent. So I guess I could leave them all unchecked, and just modify highlighting to generate the same effect. This, again, comes down to the confusing ability to specify the same thing in two ways. It also points to an interface design problem----the filtering and highlighting are in the same row, prefixed by the filter checkbox, visually implying the checkbox controls both features. Perhaps putting the highlight drop-down prior to the checkbox would make it more obvious that these are independent.
  2. Bots are shown despite selecting "Human (not bot)" and not selecting "Bot". For example, "Bawolff bot" edits continue to be shown. That doesn't gibe with my understanding of how this works at all, so either I remain confused, or this is a bug.
  3. Under the "Translations" category I originally selected "Not translations", and not any of the other options, hoping to exclude translations. But translations still showed up! I understand (now) that this option is referring to the separate sub-pages for translation units, but those unit-pages are an (obscure, low-level) artefact of how translations are implemented. Certainly it did not match my expectation of what it meant to show or not show "translated pages".

Note that despite the above comments I do find these filters very useful, and I will continue using them on Recent Changes. It's just that my effective use of them has been based more on repeated, slightly frustrating trial-and-error than any kind of well reasoned methodology or clear abstract model given by the interface.

JMatazzoni (WMF) (talkcontribs)

#2 sounds like a bug--either of our system or of the bot. I haven't really seen bot results coming in on that setting. As to the rest, I'm pinging the designer of the UI, @Pginer-WMF, who may have thoughts about your observations.

197.218.88.111 (talkcontribs)

The #2 issue isn't a bug. It is a deliberate design choice by developers. Recent changes mostly focuses on actions rather than groups. For example, learners aren't neatly tucked into any group, and it only considers an action by a bot if it explicitly uses the bot flag. Admins for example, can act like a bot and have their changes hidden without ever belonging to the bot user group.

It could be changed but it would still be confusing, for example, a user makes a bot action, then later gets the bot group removed. Their actions would then suddenly have to appear in recent changes. Adding the BOT user group expliclity, will just add to the complexity of the interface, not reduce it. Furthermore, the older recent changes does / did the exact same thing.

Steelpillow (talkcontribs)

It's not just the complexity, it is not adequately self-explanatory and some options are not there where you think they should be.

  • For example by clearing all filters I get everything, so I would expect that checking only the Wkidata filter would filter OUT Wikidata edits. But no, it filters out everything else! Very counter-intuitive and I am at a loss to know what will happen if I click a bunch of filters, or all the filters in a given box, or whatever.
  • Then when I go to the Saved Filters toy, there is no way to edit them, and no way to save more - the tooltip saying to use the bookmark icon in a different toy disappears once a filter is saved: the bookmark widget really belongs in the Saved Filters menu.

RTFM should not be necessary with a smart tool like this. Whether or not the complexity proves ultimately useful, it is certainly not clear or usable for the average editor yet.

Having said that, I do think it has great potential, so do please keep up the good work!

JMatazzoni (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Hi @Steelpillow. Thanks for sharing your views.

As you've noticed, the logic of the old interface was focused on what you wanted to exclude. In the new system, users specify what they want to include.

Although that change may seem strange at first, for most users this logic feels pretty familiar once they start using it because it's common on big sites like Amazon. On such sites, your initial search—for "men's shoes" let's say—returns very broad results, which you then refine by selecting options. The options are presented in groups: style, color, brand, price range, etc. Within any group ("style," let's say) all options in the group are included until you pick one or two (e.g., "sandals" and "slip-ons"), at which point only results matching those options are included and all others are excluded.

My observation is that this system of grouped filters can be confusing at first, especially when users try to analyze or describe just what's happening. But in practice they quickly come to understand and use it perfectly. Meanwhile, the ability to include or exclude exactly what you want provides more control over your results.

I hope you get used to the change and come to appreciate the increased control. If not, you can opt out on the Watchlist tab of your preferences. Good luck!

Steelpillow (talkcontribs)

Thank you for explaining the paradigm. It makes sense once one has got the message. However the UI does not make it as obvious as it might, and the learning curve will put some editors off. I would suggest that a slightly plainer styling with smaller tickboxes would help to make the mental connection with both shopping and academic selectors, both of which are usually like that. Also, I am not "shopping" for specific types, I still want to exclude types I am not interested in. On many similar forms, such as selecting academic resources, there is a "Select all" option. One can then go through and de-select anything one is not interested in. This would be a welcome addition for me. (Don't forget the accompanying "Clear all" option for the focused shoppers among us!)

Pginer-WMF (talkcontribs)

Just to add a bit of context. During our initial user research we found that it was not easy to understand which was the state of the filters in the original version. As the screenshot below shows, the filters had a combination of "show" and "hide" options that users had to process to understand which types of edits were displayed (e.g., "show bots" means that bot results are not included). In addition, the way to operate the filters was not very flexible (e.g., you can include "minor edits" or remove them, but you cannot focus to view only these).

We wanted the system to communicate the status in a consistent way. Displaying the properties that edits have in the "active filters" area you can read and adjust the properties for the results. In addition, we wanted to cover more usecases with the filters (e.g., fight vandalism but also thank newcomers doing a good job), and adding more hide/show links was not a scalable solution.

Reply to "To complex for ordinary writer"