User talk:EpochFail/NICE

Questions/Comments/Suggestions
Please feel free to let us know your thoughts and troubles. We're here to help. --EpochFail (talk|contribs) 19:30, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Summary of purpose
I'd be much more likely to paste this into my monobook.js if I knew what it was supposed to do. You may want to add that to the documentation page. --Gimme danger (talk) 22:38, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Since we are trying to determine the individual usefulness of each modification, those modifications are randomly assigned to you when you first install the tool. Due to the nature of this experiment, summarizing the individual modifications on the documentation page is not possible until we get past the first stage.  I'll go have a look at the doc page to check to see if there is any information I can add at this time. --E poch F ail (talk 15:30, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

How is this Undo tool different from what we have today?
Please tell. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 14:30, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The "NICE" interface is a set of modifications that we determined might be interesting from some previous analytic research (Accepted by WikiSym '09. The final version of the paper will be available some time before July 10th.)  Since we are trying to determine the individual usefulness of each modification, those modifications are randomly assigned to you when you first install the tool.  Due to the nature of experiment, I don't want to give too many details about the inner-workings, but I can tell you that all modifications are made to the UNDO screen and that the modifications are designed to provide you more information allow and allow easier communication.  Once the first stage of the study is completed a final version of the tool will be made available. --E poch F ail (talk 15:23, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
 * It's a fantastic idea and I look forward to the results, but wouldn't you get a more accurate and wider set of data from simply capturing undo/rollbacks/reverts from the recent changes feed? Viriditas (talk) 12:37, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
 * We will be using our own logging in combination with the recent changes feed and the Wikimedia Foundations dumps to build a bigger picture. --E poch F ail (talk 15:49, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Other projects?
Can you use data from the other (non-english) Wikipedia projects? --Tgr (talk) 06:54, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
 * We haven't done any testing with non-english Wikipedias. --E poch F ail (talk 15:45, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Results?
Any results since this began? I'm interested... JoeSmack Talk 07:05, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the delayed reply! I've been out with H1N1 and have just fallen back into my working groove.  We are working on analysis at the moment.  Sadly, it is difficult for us to publish results until after the work has seen peer review.  As soon as we can, we will link to our write-up.  I'll drop a link on your talk page when our work is done. --E poch F ail (talk 18:42, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Posting revert messages in duplicate
I've had NICE installed since the first trials. When I use the field for posting to the talk page, it posts my message twice in two separate edits, eg see this talk page history. Previously this has always happened without any error messages. Today, when posting to the talk page linked, I got an error message "Unable to post to talk page" or similar. I clicked OK but the result was the same as usual (duplicate postings).

Other gadgets I use include RefTools, WikEd, Twinkle, "Add a clock in the personal toolbar that displays the current time in UTC", "Add page and user options to drop-down menus on the toolbar", "Display an assessment of an article's quality as part of the page header for each article", "Change the "new section" tab text to instead display the much narrower "+", "Focus the cursor in the search bar", "Open external links in a new tab/window", "Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page" and "Allow up to 50 more characters in each of your edit summaries". My monobook.js

Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 01:54, 22 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the bug report! I've tested in Ubuntu x86-64 + Firefox 3.0.15, Windows Server 2008 + Firefox 3.5.2 and Windows Server 2008 + Chrome 3.0.195 with those gadgets and failed to reproduce the erroneous behavior.  There must be something I am missing from your environment.  From your user page, it looks like you use Firefox.  What version are you currently using and on what OS?  -- EpochFail  (talk 19:56, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I'd been thinking it was a problem with my Wikipedia account as I'd had trouble with Twinkle before... But I just tested NICE from a computer at uni and it worked just fine. I'll give you the details of my home computer when I get home, in about 6 hours. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 03:54, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Seems it's something to do with Firefox. I test-reverted myself using IE7 without any problem, sending a single message to my talk page. Then I tried with Firefox 3.0.13, and once again I got an error message: "Unable to post to Adrian J. Hunter's talk page. Continue with revert?" or something similar. I clicked OK, and it actually worked fine, sending me a single message. The Firefox add-ons I have installed are Adblock Plus 1.1.1 (which is awesome), AVG Safe Search 9.0.0.696, Java Quick Starter 1.0, and wpcite 0.1.4.8. I'm running Windows XP Professional, version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 Build 2600. Let me know if I can test anything else (I'm watching this page). Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 10:36, 24 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't have an installation of XP handy to test, but I was planning to set up one in VirtualBox anyway. I won't be able to do any testing with the setup until I get a chance to sit down with it after the holiday weekend.  In the meantime I'd recommend an upgrade to Firefox 3.5 if it supports all of your plugins and you have the time/energy.  The upgrade may not fix the problem, but the performance is considerably better. -- EpochFail  (talk 16:01, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I upgraded to 3.5, but still the same problem. Actually it's slightly different: looking at my contributions, it seems one of the posts to the talk page occurred immediately before the revert, and the other immediately after. Hmmm... my computer is a little screwy in general, so if no-one else has reported this bug I wonder if it might be something specific to my system. Thanks for checking it out, though. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 11:02, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I finally got that virtual XP installation going and convinced myself that I couldn't reproduce the problem you are experiencing. I've intended to overhaul the way in which NICE goes about making talk page postings for a while now, but it has been pretty low priority.  I should be able to get it taken care of sometime in the next week.  Would you mind doing some testing for me at that point? -- EpochFail  (talk 04:10, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Sure, happy to help any way I can, provided my laptop still works :-/ The connection between the screen and the rest of it is getting less reliable by the day, so no telling when it will finally surrender. I have a new one on the way but it won't be running WinXP. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 05:29, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I just had the bug occur from my new laptop, running Windows Vista and Firefox 3.5.7. Apparently it's not specific to my old computer, which I guess means it's either something about my Wikipedia account, or something about the way I do things that's the same on my new and old computers (eg Firefox addons). Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 02:50, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your messages. I've installed the new version, but now whenever I click Save page on an undo edit, I get a dialog box saying "Posting to arrayPrototypeUniq's talk page". The message reappears immediately after I dismiss it, but stays gone after a second dismissal. I haven't noticed any adverse consequences associated with this error message. I did a few experiments which you can see from the history of User:AJHtestaccount – the messages have come up whenever I've used Firefox, even in safe mode, even after upgrading, and even from a different computer; they did not appear when I used Internet Explorer. I logged out and closed the browser between each test edit. I indicated in the edit summary when I first noticed the interface modification, which is not to say it hadn't appeared before, only that I hadn't noticed it (it's quite subtle if you don't know what you're looking for). I haven't tried using any of the Nv2 functionality yet.

A couple of thoughts: the buttons for sending the template messages look useful, but have you considered linking to some of the specialised welcome messages listed at WP:WT? Template:Welcome - Copyright is one that I've found useful on several occasions. Also, I normally watch the talk page of a good-faith new contributor I've welcomed or warned, so a way of doing that from within the NICE interface would be very helpful.

Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 12:08, 21 March 2010 (UTC)


 * First of all, sorry for the embarrassingly late response. I've finally got a chance to site down with NICEv2 again and have gotten rid of the alert message that I should have caught before I asked that you try out the interface.  Please let me know if it bothers you again.  Next on my todo list is to find a good way to make the buttons for adding template messages customizable so that you'll be able to define your own without waiting for me to create new ones.  I'll ping you when I have an updated version for you to test.  I've squared away some time to do some work on this next week, so you should be hearing from me again soon. -- EpochFail  (talk 22:22, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Cool, no worries; I'd just assumed the error message was an extension of the problem I'd had before, hence the test edits. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 11:13, 3 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I've made modifications to the script so that you can customize your own talk message templates (or have none at all). See my vector.js for an example.  Please let me know how you feel about modifying javascript to get the templates you want.  There are other ways to allow the templates to be modified. This one was the easiest.


 * Next on the list is to figure out how to properly allow you to add the reverted users talk page to your watchlist. I'll let you know when I think that is working correctly.  -- EpochFail  (talk 16:06, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Looks interesting. I don't know javascript but I can use your vector.js as a template. Am I right in thinking that (1) I wouldn't need anything above  and (2) the difference between vector.js and monobook.js is only what skin the script will take effect on? Also, is there a reason w-basic is the only template explicitly subst'd in your vector.js? Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 18:07, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Question
Does NICE work on the Safari web browser?  Nerdy Science Dude :)  (✉ click to talk • my edits • sign) 05:52, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
 * It should since I've been able to test successfully in other WebKit based browsers. If you have any trouble running it, please let me know. -- EpochFail  (talk 21:25, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

consent form
hi! i just installed NICE but to view the consent form i had to use the wayback machine — it wouldn't load in my browser (or, i'm assuming, anyone else's). i'm not sure how "current" the experiment is or if the info on the consent form is still accurate, but i think the documentation probably ought to be adjusted to incorporate the extra information on that page/streamline installation or the link or webpage should be updated. ~ Boomur &#91;talk&#93; 00:51, 6 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi Boomur! Thanks for pointing out how outdated the page was!  I made updates linking back to the results of the study.  I wasn't aware that anyone was still making use of this tool, so I stopped maintaining it a while back.  If you run into any trouble with it, I'd be happy to pick it development back up.  just let me know.  Thanks! --EpochFail (talk &bull; contribs) 04:23, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * hum, the tool isn't actually working for me at all. i've refreshed my browser cache etc. but all i get when reverting is a notice at the top of the page saying i have NICE installed...no other added features. oh well! perhaps it would be better to try my luck elsewhere. are there any similar tools available? it might make more sense to use an active project, anyhow (if there are such things). ~ Boomur &#91;talk&#93; 03:02, 10 August 2013 (UTC)