Wikipedia talk:Article Feedback Tool/Version 5/Archive 4

Lots of stuff is being incorrectly automatically marked as abuse
Such as this, this and this. Shouting or repeat characters. Neither are valid reasons to mark it as abuse. Feedback comments are not going in the articles, with the type of abuse rules that apply there. Many people use capitals just because they are not advanced enough to know how to use lowercase. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 12:13, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
 * As discussed above, we should get someone to uncheck the auto flag box on Special:AbuseFilter/458. The repeating characters is trickier, as some are advocating hiding all feedback that doesn't contain intelligible suggestions, and most of the feedback that trips the repeating filter are unintelligible. (The only fully false positives on that one seem to involve periods like .... which could be refined) Monty  845  13:10, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Disagree. Repeat characters come in all sorts of valid feedback. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 14:10, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
 * If you guys want to have it unchecked, you're free to do so :). Edit filters are a community-managed element for (amongst other things) legal reasons and I won't have any beef if you want to tweak that filter or its settings. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:55, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Free to do so? How so. I can't edit any edit filters. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 23:20, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Edit filter/Requested :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 00:48, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Edit feedback
What do people think of allowing a group of editors to edit the comments of other users? I've seen a number of feedback comments (such as this) which is helpful but, in its present form, disruptive. Allowing some people to modify the comment would mean that, in this instance, the excessive exclamation marks could be removed without hiding a potentially useful comment. This could be part of the rollback & reviewer monitoring tools, or could be reserved for a smaller group (administrators, for example). It would, of course, require strict policy controls to prevents abuse (a requirement that the meaning is not changed at all, for example). ItsZippy (talk • contributions) 15:38, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I think it opens up a heck of a load of development work. First we have to make it editable and build the UI for that. Then, to prevent abuse, we have to make the edit appear in some sort of dedicated, per-feedback-post page history, with diffs, and in contributions, and.... ;). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:56, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't think the example given is disruptive. I suggest if this was changed is would be with automation or not at all. Making an edit with the meaning is not changed is sometimes impossible within articles so I doubt it's different here. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 15:57, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Hmm, fair enough. Thanks for the replies. ItsZippy (talk • contributions) 19:07, 19 July 2012 (UTC)


 * A better example of where it would be useful to be able to edit feedback is Special:ArticleFeedbackv5/Fernando_Colunga/173852. The feedback is clearly good faith, contains useful information, but also contains an email address, which based on our current practice, should be hidden for privacy/anti spam reasons. Being able to redact the email while leaving the rest of the helpful feedback would be the ideal solution. Monty  845  14:06, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Featurted: Add a note
A note for featured isn't of much use in my view. The feedback must be good to feature it and a note can't be read anyway. Could simplify by removing the note. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 23:17, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Does it not appear under "view activity"? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 00:48, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I now see it does. Still think that a note is unnecessary but never mind. On a related issue the "View activity" is not stats but has a stats icon. Perhaps it could have a more appropriate icon and maybe rename to "view log"? Regards, SunCreator (talk) 01:16, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
 * That's a really good point - I'll bring it up with our interaction designers. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:18, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Seems like it's considered too big a dealie to change at this point - which confuses me slightly, but :(. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 23:10, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

I like feedback but my army of android slaves is too busy to search thousands of pages
Have I missed something, or is there no way to know if feedback has been posted for an article other than checking the feedback page for that article? (This is all very well for pages that are being worked on actively, but since the feedback doesn't flag up on an editor's watchlist or appear on the talk page, it effectively removes any chance of an editor responding to a reader's feedback unless the editor is regularly checking the feedback page.) Yomangani talk 14:37, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
 * We're going to be building some watchlist or watchlist-equivalent features as soon as possible :). At the moment, I appreciate it isn't too easy. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:26, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Mass bot-generated feedback cheats
AFT5 allows everyone to post feedback without proving that they are human. This gives a possibility of mass bot feedback cheats. Dear developers, could you consider adding a CAPTCHA check, at least for IPs? Nikolay95 (talk) 20:59, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Risk seems greater that someone would just edit articles with spam, and we don't CAPTCHA that. We can block the IP if when it happens. Monty  845  21:11, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Agreed :). There should be a limiter - someone could post bot-feedback, but not above N per minute, and everything gets screened through the spam blacklist. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:51, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

As a reader button post button was near invisible
I tried posting feedback as a reader. What I found was the post button was so light it took me a while to find it. Maybe it's because I'm using the MonoBook skin, but if not, then feedback will not be posting because the button is almost invisible. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 23:11, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
 * okay, only an issue on MonoBook skin so not affecting readers. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 23:14, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks; sorry to hear there's a problem! I'll see what I can do. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:05, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Not really an issue because readers do not use monobook skin. 17:31, 23 July 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by SunCreator (talk • contribs)

% found what they were looking for
How come this say 100% when one person said no? Because the no item is flagged as abuse? Shows you that context is everything. Sexing is determining what the gender is of animal, in this case a turtle and perfectly sensible feedback. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 00:31, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Definitely should be looked at. I marked it helpful, if enough people mark it helpful will it override the abuse flag? Just wondering. Monty  845  01:48, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm almost certain the flag was added in good faith. I might well have made a similar mistake. —WFC— 23:05, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Hmn; I'll bugzilla it :). Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:04, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Double hyphens
The "What's this" pop-up says "Wikipedia would like to hear what you think of this article. Share your feedback with the editors -- and help improve this page." Can we have an en dash instead of two hyphens, unless it is written with a typewriter, in which case it might not be possible. thanks. Nurg (talk) 04:28, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes—the improper use of hyphens extremely irks me. [Starts twitching.] David  1217  What I've done 04:43, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Heh; I'll make an inquiry :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:42, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Dolphin browser not supported
I'm on my Android smartphone at the moment, using Dolphin HD, Android's most popular browser. When I pull up a feedback page, I get the message " Sorry, your browser is not supported by this prototype. To see this page, please use a different browser." The page renders just fine, but as soon as it finishes loading, the message appears. I understand that mobile support for Wikipedia is in a bit of a beta state, but it should work on Dolphin. Jesse V. (talk) 04:50, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, we don't currently support any mobile browsers :). It is on the to-do list. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:42, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Why not add an ability to edit your own feedback comments?
It could be useful when you've made a mistake or want to rephrase your comment. But I think that one should be able to do it a limited number of times. --Николай95 (talk) 07:00, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Vanishing feedback
Looking at an editor's contributions, I noted that they had given feedback to our article Jesus - when I clicked on the page, the feedback appeared for a second or less then vanished. What's going on? Dougweller (talk) 10:05, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Not currently a feedback article. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 10:09, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
 * It clearly was, see - so I gather its status changed? Dougweller (talk) 10:43, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, here. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 11:14, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks. What was particularly confusing was seeing the actual feedback for less than a second! Dougweller (talk) 08:21, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, this is very funky. The feedback is included when the page is served up, but hidden on the client side. You can view "hidden" posts by stopping your browser before it finishes rendering the page. Shouldn't the suppression be happening on the server side? ~ Ningauble (talk) 16:33, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Random ramblings
Just want to say that, while there is inevitably a lot of irrelevant feedback (both positive and negative), overall I'm finding this tool a dream.

It has helped be make small but decidedly positive edits such as, and , action an article which probably doesn't meet our notability guidelines , forward things where I have been able to make progress but couldn't find a source for , give insight where I think there is something in a comment but don't know enough , and in general highlight things that were downright excellent.

Things that I think could make it better:


 * Split the featured and resolved functions. Sometimes a comment helped me improve Wikipedia, without necessarily being something that anyone would benefit from reading again. On the other hand I have seen some truly excellent feedback, such as the very last link above, which even if resolved I would continue to cite as an example of feedback making a big difference.
 * A quicker way of thanking anonymous users for feedback which directly led to an article improvement. It might help convert this tool into productive editors, or simply encourage them to continue to provide feedback, knowing that their efforts are appreciated. I know thank you notes on talk pages are always an option, but the extra time that takes might dissuade people from doing so.
 * A way of un-flagging a comment which is unquestionably not abusive.

Sorry about the randomness of this post, but I felt it would be quicker to write off the top of my head than wade through the many sections above. Hopefully some of it helps. —WFC— 23:35, 21 July 2012 (UTC)


 * What is great is the concept of getting written feedback from readers(better then the star system). Some feedback like this is awesome as it resulted in the addition of a hatnote that hadn't even been conceived of. The implementation however is buggy and the majorly missing ingredient is the integration with the watchlist. That will be the make or break of it, without an easy way of being alerted of the feedback it will generally be ignored. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 00:16, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Agreed :). WFC, thanks for your comments - I agree with all of them. It remains to be see how many new things we'll be able to fit in, though - the developer team is small :S. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 00:23, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Looks like we'll be working on a way to void non-abusive feedback that has been marked as such; the other stuff will have to wait until our next pass over the software :(. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:21, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Needed functionality, ability to mark items as "read"
Unfortunately none of the pages that I watch are part of the test, as far as I know, so my experience with the new system has been limited, but I can already see that the most important thing for making it usable will be an ability to mark specific items as "read" (by me, individually), and then not have them appear on the feedback page when I look at it. I don't mind looking at a bunch of useless feedback, but I'm probably not going to be using the system if I have to look at the same useless feedback over and over again. I expect that will be a difficult thing to support, but I think it ought to be possible, perhaps with the aid of an external tool. Looie496 (talk) 16:43, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
 * As a note, adding Category:Article Feedback 5 Additional Articles to any of your pages will give them AFTv5 instantly. David  1217  What I've done 18:46, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Hmn; this could be a difficult thing to institute. But I'll ask and see what we can do :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:19, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Looks like we don't have time to work on that right now :(. We're prioritising building a watchlist function, voiding poor feedback and making a more prominent link to the feedback page - but we'll be making another pass to add incremental features and fix future bugs in 6-12 months, and I'm going to note this idea down for the discussion then :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:19, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Manually adding
Is it ok to manually add an article into this version. B  S  00:06, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I believe so, just add Category:Article Feedback 5 Additional Articles onto the pages you want. David  1217  What I've done 00:09, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, per Wikipedia_talk:Article_Feedback_Tool/Version_5. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 00:09, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that link, i should of looked higher. Thanks again. B   S  00:22, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Merging help subpages
Currently there are 4 help pages at Article Feedback/Help, Article Feedback/Help/Editors, Article Feedback/Help/Monitors, and Article Feedback/Help/Oversighters. There is considerable redundancy between the pages, particularly between the three aimed at autoconfirmed and higher user groups. I propose we merge the 3 pages designed for autoconfirmed and above into one page that contains instructions for all three, with the higher level permission information in sections by permission, perhaps with anchors/redirects. This would preserve one page with simple info for leaving feedback, and through consolidation of the rest into the autoconfirmed+ page, would make it easier to understand the full scheme of tools, would make maintenance of the pages easier, and reduce subpage clutter. Thoughts? Monty 845  00:53, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, at the moment those pages are linked to through the "help" link on the feedback page, which autodetects what user class you are. So from a user point of view, only one of those pages need exist :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:18, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
 * That is; people aren't likely to mind there being four because they only see one. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:18, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Sort by most recent action
I would suggest adding an additional sort option to the feedback panel, we currently can sort by most recent feedback, but there is no way to sort by most recent action on a feedback. For instance, it could allow you to see the feedback most recently marked as abuse, without which, a feedback that is several days old (or older) when marked as abuse may escape review. Monty 845  05:49, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
 * That's a really great idea! I'll throw it at the team :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:05, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes indeed a great idea! Callanecc (talk • contribs) talkback (etc) template appreciated. 11:29, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Looks like we don't have time to work on that right now :(. We're prioritising building a watchlist function, voiding poor feedback and making a more prominent link to the feedback page - but we'll be making another pass to add incremental features and fix future bugs in 6-12 months, and I'm going to note this idea down for the discussion then :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:19, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Mass bot-generated feedback cheats

 * Moved from User talk:Utar --22:08, 23 July 2012 (UTC), Utar (talk)

AFT5 allows everyone to post feedback without proving that they are human. This gives a possibility of mass bot feedback cheats. Could you consider adding a CAPTCHA check, at least for IPs? Could you also think about blocking blank feedback comments? --Николай95 (talk) 06:46, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't mind blank feedback comments - it gives an indication of how useful people are finding an article. ItsZippy (talk • contributions) 22:12, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I think there's a limiter, actually, but I'll find out. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 05:10, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
 * There had better be a rate limiter, or there will be a repeat of the moodbar flooding debacle. Reaper Eternal (talk) 19:26, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Funny combo when getting read lock
When I got a read lock on 2012 Summer Olympics, the error combined with AFT5 is a bit funny :) → Aza Toth 02:42, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Hah! I'll Bugzilla it :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 05:11, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
 * This is somewhat related to: 38474 —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 11:49, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Helpfulness/Relevence scores
I was curious, what if anything do the helpfulness and relevance scores on feedback do? I know they can be used to sort in the feedback interface panel, but do they do anything more? Currently, an abuse report wipes out 5 helpful flaggings when it comes to the relevance metric, so if its being used for anything we should look into the values. Monty 845  15:09, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
 * It's just for sorting :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:17, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Watchlist function
If I have understood correctly, rollout will be completed before the watchlist functionality has been added, and without any sort of categorisation system?I am a massive, massive fan of this feature's potential, but that strikes me as a fundamentally flawed strategy. With around 1 in 12 articles under the new feedback system, I have found it possible to action spam and abuse, attempt to action feedback where I feel capable of doing so, and perhaps most importantly feature seemingly good feedback when I am not an expert, so that the comment is easy to find later. At that rate a few committed volunteers can ensure that a significant proportion of substantive feedback gets highlighted, even if they have no expertise. At 100% rollout, the sheer volume of feedback will mean that the central feedback page will only be useful for combatting abuse and spam. On the other hand, watchlist functionality or the ability to search for feedback relating to articles in a certain field are the only effective ways to ensure that good feedback gets read and if appropriate actioned by those with the knowledge to do so effectively. The whole point of inviting people to contribute is that we can make changes or respond to constrictive feedback, allowing people who care about our content to see that their contributions make a real difference. At full capacity we would be systemically incapable of doing this within a reasonable period of time, and therefore we should not be significantly expanding until the necessary system is in place. —WFC— 01:52, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Actually, no, the watchlist function is going to be pre-full deployment. We'll go to 10 percent, and then I think it's highly unlikely we'll scale further until we've finished a load of scalability fixes..which takes a pile of time :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 07:39, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the clarification Okeyes. It's a shame that full scale deployment will need to wait, but I'm glad to see that those working on it understand the necessity of holding back. —WFC— 01:56, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Indeed :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:27, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
 * It's great that this is correctly understood to be a scalability issue and that work will be done on it. I'll properly ignore things related to article feedback until the watchlist function lands. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 00:24, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
 * That's fair enough; shouldn't be too long now :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:04, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Missing tool from Ramakrishna Mission Vidyamandira
For an unknown reason, this tool is missing from the article, Ramakrishna Mission Vidyamandira. Instead, it contains a template named "Help Improve this page". Can anyone lend a hand there to add "Page rating template". Thanks--NAHID 22:46, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Its on the page, thats the new Version 5. B  S  22:51, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
 * @NAHID: You are asking for Version 4 but that one is actually replaced by Version 5 on 10 % of enwiki articles with Ramakrishna Mission Vidyamandira being one of those sample pages. --08:34, 27 July 2012 (UTC), Utar (talk)


 * Thanks Utar. I do support version 5 and its neutral features. Nice effort on developing this tool.--NAHID 17:36, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Utar is one of those editors who deserves direct credit all on his own - he's been doing really great work on it :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:58, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Can this tool be forced onto an article?
As far as I can tell, this is being tested on a limited selection of articles (which makes sense to me) and can't be forcibly added (by editors) to more articles? I am interested in this tool and would like to test it out more, but of the numerous articles I edit, I've so far only seen it on a stub. The rest of the time, I only see the old rating feedback tool (which is quite useless as the ratings are vague and usually reflect older revisions and their changes can't be viewed over some kind of time series). I'd like to test this out more, and particularly use it to see where I can improve articles I'm working on, but so far I've had little luck in finding articles that use it. Is there a way to force it onto an article in place of the rating tool? John Shandy`  &bull; talk 14:32, 28 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes.&mdash;Toccata quarta (talk) 15:17, 28 July 2012 (UTC)
 * @John Shandy`: It may be too late. 10 % of articles are already covered and no more will be (automatically) added for some time, according to AFT5 newsletter. I am not sure if the just-put-the-article-in-that-category-and-AFT5-will-appear way is not blocked somehow, though, beacause there are scaling issues that make it dangerous to deploy wider. So it may be wiser to not add that category to a lot of articles so as to avoid overloading of the system. Do just one for your testing purposes and wait for more coverage to come by itself. --21:58, 28 July 2012 (UTC), Utar (talk)
 * I don't mind being patient, so I'll go ahead and wait. I mainly just wanted to know, so that if I must wait then at least I can be mentally prepared. :) Thanks!  John Shandy`   &bull; talk 22:16, 28 July 2012 (UTC)
 * As always, Utar is correctamundo :). We're trying to avoid more additions because of scaling problems. Individual articles are probably fine, but I don't want to encourage it too much. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:51, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Happy to help. I also read your reply as: No, that way is not blocked now. But, if it will be used too much, we will find some way to stop it. :D --16:12, 29 July 2012 (UTC), Utar (talk)
 * Appropriately, see the thread below :(. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:21, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

AFT5 disabled
Hey all.

So, as of about 20 minutes ago, AFT is disabled on enwiki. We're not quite sure what went wrong at this point, but it started overloading one of the databases and Tim had to shut it down. I've let everyone know what's going on, and hopefully we'll have more information (and a solution!) shortly. Thanks for understanding :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:21, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I just noticed it was missing - as well as the old "5 star" feedback box. Just thought I'd mention it in case you hadn't noticed the old version is down as well. --- Crakkerjakk (talk) 01:27, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Huh; this, I did not know. I'll find out :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:18, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Do we know why it affected the old version as well. Blethering  Scot  00:18, 31 July 2012 (UTC)


 * It didn't, but the old version was turned off for safety's sake. We should have a fix in tomorrow, fingers crossed! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 00:19, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Okay; now fixed! Thanks, everyone :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:31, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Customizing the look of the extension
Is there a way to css customize the look of this extension? Or do I need to go through the code to do this? If I need to go through the code can someone point me in the direction of getting the titles/color?

Also, I cannot access Special:ArticleFeedbackv5. Does this mean I installed the extension incorrectly? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.6.88.84 (talk) 00:57, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Thank you in advance! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.6.88.84 (talk) 00:53, 31 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure if you can customize it using CSS. What do you want to do that for? About AFTv5 not being available: see thread above. David  1217  What I've done 04:02, 31 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I want to customize it, because I am using the extension on a different wiki and I want to color scheme it differently. Also, eventually I want to go through the php and change some of the text/options. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.6.88.84 (talk) 19:54, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
 * That would require altering the CSS files in the extension, yes :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:31, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Awesome! Ty. So, I've been working through the css and editing some of the basic look by having a common.css script. However, I wish to make the feedback box a bit more simple. I do not need all the different feedback tabs. Where do I look to change this? I want to make it so that it simply has an option for "helpful? yes/no" and a box to leave feedback. Also, when I test the extension and leave feedback, it does not get stored anywhere... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.108.7.83 (talk) 18:00, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Filter feedback by category
As said a few weeks ago I consider it very important to provide tools that work on the category level, e.g. retrieve lists of most commented or most disliked articles in a category subtree. This is especially important for the German community. I don't think they will accept the tool if you can't filter the feedback by category. This would make the tool a lot more useful and will make a big difference when the question is asked if the German community wants the tool or not. --TMg 11:26, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
 * So you would like to see something like CatScan's search options, at least its original ones but hopefully even advanced ones? Just to have something to match with. --13:06, 31 July 2012 (UTC), Utar (talk)
 * We can stick it on the list, but to be honest we're running out of time to add new features. However, I will certainly consider it for our next software pass - which is, iirc, late next year :(. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:32, 31 July 2012 (UTC)


 * @Utar: Of course not. This is insanely complicated. I simply want to select a single category on the Central Feedback Page. I want to see only the feedback posted in a selected category subtree. But you are right, a depth limit would be helpful. --TMg 16:29, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Just wanted to add my +1 to this request. This would work very well alongside our wikiprojects.  Someone from MILHIST should be able to see feedback for all MILHIST articles, it can either work using the main space categorisation or talk page categorisation done achieved through the wikiproject templates placed there. - hahnch e n 11:16, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
 * +1 :) benzband  ( talk ) 11:43, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Percentage not correct
For the feedback page on TYPO3, the percentage is not calculated correctly: 2/3 users should NOT be 100%. Great improvement otherwise, hope it will make it to the German Wikipedia too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jesus Presley (talk • contribs) 19:21, 2 August 2012 (UTC)
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ArticleFeedbackv5/TYPO3
 * Screenshot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Feedback_on_TYPO3_-_Wikipedia,_the_free_encyclopedia.png
 * Thanks! This is a known bug, but I'll up the priority :). And yeah, we're in active talks with de-wiki - I may be travelling over to the Austrian conference to speak on it. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:42, 2 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, I've noticed this problem as well. It's probably more difficult for editors of popular pages to catch since there is so much feedback that most editors aren't likely to sit and calculate the stats by hand, but I've noticed the same problem with simple percentage stats on pages with less than 10 feedback comments (where it's relatively easy to calculate).  I'm not a fan of the percentage calculations at the tops of feedback pages anyway (for the same reasons the old feedback tool was essentially useless: much of the "negative" feedback is casual users who don't understand about basic guidelines such as reliable sources complaining that there is no mention of idle gossip that can't be sourced, and/or users who have no understanding of "free-license" images complaining that there aren't any recent pictures of what a former child star looks like today, etc, etc), but if we absolutely must have percentage calculations at the tops of feedback pages, they should at least be accurate (regardless of how meaningless they really are  :P).  --- Crakkerjakk (talk) 10:51, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
 * The statistics are still wrong... I mean, honestly, how difficult can it be to program the tool to calculate the correct percentages?  When even I can look at a feedback page and see that the percentage is wrong, then I know it's not complicated math. --- Crakkerjakk (talk) 08:35, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Humans != computers :). But I'll drop Matthias an email to find out what is going on. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:45, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Cannot access Special:ArticleFeedbackv5
When I try to go to Special:ArticleFeedbackv5, I get the following notice: "Invalid page ID". I followed the instructions for installing the extensions and did not run into any hiccups there. Also, when I was testing the feedback extension and submitted a comment to see where it would store or what would happen. The only thing I got was a notification that my feedback was received, but I cannot view it nor does it change anything on the page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.108.7.83 (talk) 01:07, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Special:ArticleFeedbackv5 works for me. What browser are you on (I'm using Safari 5.1.7)? The reason nothing is automatically changed is that editors of Wikipedia must review the feedback and then edit the page to include the suggested changes. You can look at feedback by going to the page you submitted on, clicking on the "Talk" tab, and then clicking the "View reader feedback »" link. David  1217  What I've done 01:21, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm using chrome and firefox. My special articlefeeback, can you see anything when you go to the page?
 * Huh; this is very odd. I can see the page fine, logged in or out. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:20, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah looks fine to me too. I guess Wikipedia didn't like you for a bit there; I think you need to edit more and it should start working properly again. :) &bull; Jesse V.(talk) 22:18, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh, you mean AFT5 on your wiki! . That gives me the same error you got. David  1217  What I've done 22:32, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure the issue here, I'm afraid :(. I would suggest leaving it for a bit? We're still working on the software, so it is going to be a bit cranky :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:13, 9 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Alrighty, I'll check back here every now and then for an update on the extension then. hopefully it works out soon! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tnlu5t (talk • contribs) 23:03, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Is the tool not supposed to accommodate wikilinks?
I tried to link to a page that had a list of things that could be done on an article (it contained suggestions from a peer review that hadn't been fixed). It acted as if it was nowikied. Is this purposeful? - Purplewowies (talk) 05:44, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
 * It excludes HTML and wikimarkup, to my knowledge, to prevent issues with vandals or abusers of the system :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:11, 9 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, the feedback guidelines said to avoid "Programming code other than links", but I wasn't sure if that counted wikilinks. Thanks for the response. - Purplewowies (talk) 22:31, 9 August 2012 (UTC)
 * No problem :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:41, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Forcing a bucket
Is there a way to force all viewers to only see a certain bucket? Since AF5 has so many different styling of the comment box... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.112.139.28 (talk) 18:43, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Hmn; we should only have one bucket active :S. How many different styles are you seeing? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:12, 9 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I get two styles. One with "was this helpful? yes/no [comment box under it]" and the other is "suggestion/praise/question/problem [comment box under it]". this is the same guy as the topic above with the Invalid page problem. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tnlu5t (talk • contribs) 23:05, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Hmn; I'll find out what is going on. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:48, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * If you're logged in and autoconfirmed, you should only get one (or, at most, two) with a patch we made this morning :). Try clearing cookies/your cache to make it work. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:20, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Awesome! This may be a dumb question, but do I need to get a new download of the extension? I am not using git. Just a curious question, is there a way I can force a certain bucket (just in case)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tnlu5t (talk • contribs) 22:50, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

New watchlist feature
Hey all. So, we had an AFT5 deployment earlier, and one of the new features allows you to see feedback from articles you're watchlisting, via a blue link at the top of the watchlist. Hope people find this helpful; if you have any problems, give me a shout! Thanks :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:20, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that genuinely makes a massive difference! —WFC— 21:33, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd recommend increasing the font a bit though, but it's fantastic that it's there. Please pass my thanks to the rest of the team. :) &bull; Jesse V.(talk) 21:38, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Shall do! I'll talk about font increases too :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:49, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I like this new feature too. I do agree that the font size should be bigger though.  &mdash; Comp  dude 123 00:20, 15 August 2012 (UTC)


 * This is brilliant. Tonight is the first time I've really engaged with the feedback, it's great to have all the stuff I'm interested in in one place. One comment... the "learn more" sublinks of all the stuff on the right (Feature/resolved/hide/etc) all point to the wrong page.  They should for example be to Article_Feedback/Feedback_response_guidelines. --99of9 (talk) 11:17, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Very good! I first didn't see the link "Feedback from my watched pages »" and the blue bubble on my watchlist, but found it here :-) Thanks! --Atlasowa (talk) 13:03, 15 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Works for me. ~ Ningauble (talk) 16:35, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Great to hear people like it :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:45, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Allow users to reply to feedback regardless of whether it's resolved
There should be an option to allow users to comment on certain feedback, regardless of whether it's resolved or not. I mainly edit airline articles, and much of the feedback from these articles are things like "what's the phone number for this airline" or "how much does it cost to fly from City A to City Z?" I know what you might be thinking, how can the original feedback poster see my reply? I would suggest maybe including an option like "email me when this problem is resolved" that people can check-mark when adding the feedback. Thanks for your consideration, Comp  dude 123 00:17, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Or perhaps a link to a user's talk page from the feedback interface would help, too. &mdash; Comp  dude 123 00:28, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia isn't a travel guide, so maybe we should discourage that type of feedback. David  1217  What I've done 00:34, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * How would you do that? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:07, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I'll add it a WP:NOT vio to the list of single issue notices to create. Also, in that case feel free to mark it as resolved (as it is never going to happen - see WP:AFT5/FRG). Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 02:38, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Well AFT5 records who provided the feedback, and links to that user. At the moment, you can start a new section on the user's talk page, and say something like "Thanks for your feedback to the Delta Airlines article! I've added that in; care to take another look?". Commenting on it would be easier either by adding a link to the user's talk page or by implementing a "Copy to article Talk" button. &bull; Jesse V.(talk) 04:31, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

What happens when I mark a feedback as featured or resolved?
I have resolved some questions/comments and featured some posts– since I thought those should be discussed in talk page and may be helpful for improving the article. But, what happens when I mark a feedback as featured or resolved? -- Tito Dutta  ✉  04:45, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Also is there any way to link/send a good feedback (with some valuable points) to article talk page? -- Tito Dutta  ✉  04:46, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * On that last point, no there's not. You have to do it manually. You'll see in the section above that I proposed such an idea. I would strongly support it, but of course that is another thing that can be abused. There's not really a need to copy all the feedback to the talk page, and it'd be really annoying if someone ended up doing that. :) But maybe enable that for only the ones that have several people indicate that the feedback is helpful. &bull; Jesse V.(talk) 06:23, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * When you feature something, it becomes more prominent in the "most relevant" view; when you mark it as resolved, it drops down again because the feedback has been handled :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:48, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Cannot administrate posts
I cannot feature, hide, request oversight on, or take any action on posts when in post-only view or when in article-only view. (See Special:ArticleFeedbackv5/Line (geometry) or Special:ArticleFeedbackv5/Line (geometry)/260721.) Clicking the links just causes my browser to navigate to the top of the screen. Thanks. Reaper Eternal (talk) 17:46, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh wow, that's weird :S. Mind emailing me browser/OS/gadget/common.js (or monobook.js, or vector.js, whatever) info? . Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:49, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Emailed you. Reaper Eternal (talk) 19:01, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks :). You've got JS on, right? Just to be sure. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:07, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Yep, cause otherwise all my scripts would fail to work. Reaper Eternal (talk) 19:12, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Alright, on bugzilla :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:18, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Feedback in toolbar
Add this to Special:MyPage/skin.js or Special:MyPage/common.js to add a Feedback link to the left toolbar:

It opens the Feedback for the current page. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 19:38, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * That's brilliant! Seriously, that should be default. &bull; Jesse V.(talk) 00:42, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
 * That is awesome :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:41, 16 August 2012 (UTC)


 * I now see and  in the Toolbox. ---—  Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 18:53, 19 August 2012 (UTC)


 * OK: articles that are automatically placed in Category:Article Feedback 5 have the and  portlet links. Other articles, including those manually placed in Category:Article Feedback 5 Additional Articles do not. ---—  Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 23:12, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Is it bad etiquette to feature your own feedback?
If I submit feedback to a page, and it fits the reasons to feature it, is it okay to feature my own feedback? Or is it bad etiquette? - Purplewowies (talk) 03:59, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
 * At least the way I think the featured feedback system should be used, (flagging actionable feedback for further review) I don't see a fundamental problem with featuring your own feedback. That said, an experienced editor would probably be able to find a more effective way to get action on feedback. (Talk page discussion, talking to a related project, requesting help from someone who appears active on the topic, etc) Monty  845  04:27, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
 * See WP:AFT5/FRG. We had an issue with this happening so added the COI conditions. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 06:50, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Okay. And yeah, Monty, there are more effective methods I could probably take. I had just been checking out the new feedback tool to see how it worked, and I thought up this question. Thanks. - Purplewowies (talk) 17:14, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Love to see this deployed on a hot bed issue page...
Hi,

Just a comment. I would love to see the new V5 deployed on a potential "hotbed" page, such as the Paul Ryan article, to test the limits of extreme pressures due to current events. We are already using the feedback on the Curiosity rover page to help improve the article. Great idea, and long past due. Cheers.  O liver  T wisted (Talk) (Stuff) 05:52, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Try adding it to Category:Article Feedback 5 Additional Articles. &bull; Jesse V.(talk) 06:42, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't see where I can edit that page, but I did try manually adding the category to the page. It appeared to work. If this was improper, please revert with my blessing.  O liver  T wisted (Talk) (Stuff)  06:52, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
 * That's right. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 07:19, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Filtering defaults and more obligatory whining
Are there defaults for what's filtered? Like not showing the resolved ones until you tell it to, or whatnot... or can it even do exclusion filters?

More to the point, I feel like whining some more about how completely unintuitive all these buttons are. Like what do they actually dooooo? Etc. blah blah blah.. 

But seriously, when it says 'add a note', I did not make the connection that that is the summary/reason/thing that winds up in the log entry until I tried it and followed the thing home, probably because usually the thing is refereed to as the summary/reason/thing that winds up in the log entry or something more along those lines. Also doesn't help that when other things mention notes, they often refer to notes being sent to users. And this thing does involve users, even if most of them are unregistered... so yeah. 'Note' is just kind of vague, I suppose. -— Isarra ༆ 19:18, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Would someone please comment at ANI about an issue raised there?
See WP:ANI. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 07:02, 19 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for bringing it to our attention :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:21, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

A suggestion
This tool is excellent, I've already improved several articles thanks to feedback. I would like the tool to notify me when there is feedback to articles on my watchlist. As it is I can always see the link to watchlist feedback, but I can't see if there is new feedback or not.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:04, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

% "found what they were looking for"
Hi guys. So I've been using this for a few weeks and I've noticed what seems to be a flaw. 15 people have left comments on an article I regularly monitor. Of those comments, 6 were from people who indicated they did not find what they were looking for, meaning that 9 (60%) did find what the were looking for. However, at the top of the page it says "40% found what they were looking for". I'm not sure if this is somehow supposed to be reversed (i.e. if it's supposed to say 40% did not find what they were looking for) or some other problem. In addition, it seems like comments that have been flagged or otherwise hidden should not be included in the totals. For example, if the comments are "more naked ladies", then I don't think that "vote" should be included as part of the total. Plus, it seems like that total should decline once a problem is resolved. Please advise. Thanks, epicAdam(talk) 03:21, 21 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Empty feedback (where the reader has either chosen FBD-Assets-Emoticon-Happy.png or FBD-Assets-Emoticon-Sad.png but not entered any text) also counts towards the total. benzband  ( talk ) 09:01, 21 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Benzband. I see that there are some instances in which the Feedback Page lists blank comments, so those were included in my calculations. Are there more instances in which the empty feedback is not recorded on the page that counts to the total? It seems like it should be one way or the other. Regardless, if a user did not find what they were looking for s/he should have to enter a comment for it to be recorded. Otherwise, the tool becomes as useless as the previous version; a rating with no information on how to improve the page. Best, epicAdam(talk) 13:19, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Non-actionable feedback
What are other people doing about feedback that is non-offensive but non-actionable, like "Great article"? Is it worth marking it 'resolved' so that it will be less prominent to others?

What about feedback that is very obviously in the "won't fix" category, like a request for a practical how-to guide? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:33, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * It looks like people are marking it as "resolved", from what I've seen, with an appropriate note. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:00, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Empty feedback
Please exclude empty feedback posts from the list, for editing purposes they are just a waste of time, and they can be easily filtered out. Paradoctor (talk) 20:19, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Proposal: AFT5 should appear by default only for the non-autoconfirmed
"The goal of this project is to engage Wikipedia readers to participate more actively, inviting them to give feedback on articles they read, and encouraging them to become editors over time". Given that goal, there doesn't seem to be any strong reason why the tool should appear at the bottom of the article for autoconfirmed editors, as they have more helpful avenues of giving feedback and participating, and they are already editors. Where experienced editors are involved with the tool at all, it's on this side. Thus, I would like to formally proposed that the tool be enabled only for anonymous or new users. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:57, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Support. I really like this idea! Toccata quarta (talk) 18:07, 21 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, you know you can just turn it off, right? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:00, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Yep, but as I'm sure someone would be happy to point out, it's not all about me ;-). More seriously, yes, I am aware that there is a means of suppressing the tool on an individual level via preferences, I just don't think that's the most effective solution. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:39, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Redirects
AFT4 just asked me to "rate" a redirect:


 * Coleman Theatre
 * From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


 * REDIRECT Miami, Oklahoma
 * This is a redirect from a topic that does not have its own page to a section of a page on the subject.
 * View page ratings
 * Rate this page - What's this? - Trustworthy - Objective - Complete - Well-written

If I do rate this, perhaps "this is the most boring and unimaginative redirect page I've ever read", and someone comes along later to write an actual article on the Coleman Theatre, what happens to the existing ratings? Are they discarded? K7L (talk) 17:53, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
 * They'd be included; do you mean AFT5? AFT4 doesn't ask for comments :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:57, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Feedback feedback
Most of the feedback I am seeing suggests that most of the commenters are either a) braindead, b) clueless in how use a Wikipedia page or c) unaware of what they might expect to find in an article. Of the pages I'm watching, about one comment in 40 is of any constructive use, the rest is mostly nonsense. FB on Amelia_Earhart is a good example of this: "I like chicken", "Parabens", "no", is a general sample of the feedback. Span (talk) 23:18, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Well that's helpful in so far as it gives us an idea about the intellectual level of the readership we are addressing. Maybe we should just migrate everything to the simple english wikipedia. ;). I've gotten some really good and useless pieces of feedback, but most of is pretty useless I admit. It does motivate me to write though, to actually know that people are reading. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 23:31, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Most of the good feedback ive found is people looking for things that when i have investigated is already in the article. Blethering  Scot  23:39, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I second the comment that the vast majority of the feedback from this tool is garbage. I don't intend to spend much time sorting through the comments on my pages, it just isn't worth it.  The "rate this page" scores would probably be more useful for editors than open-ended comments - anyone know how to access those scores?  MakeBelieveMonster (talk) 14:41, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I've said before that the volume of junk/unhelpful feedback might be reduced by using a "Do you think this article could be improved? If so, please let us know!" text in the feedback box. And yes, it's surprising how many people request information that can be found just by looking at an article's list of contents (example). Toccata quarta (talk) 16:17, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
 * It also makes me wonder about the quality of feedback on the star ratings. If commenters can't find a bibliography that is clearly listed under the heading 'bibliography' or an external link to a subject's official webpage given as 'official webpage', what good is their overall opinion of the article? Is a particularly narrow demographic writing comments? Does it attract especially bored eight year olds, for some abstruse reason? Span (talk) 18:03, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

LoL
Special:ArticleFeedbackv5/Employment/296913. Return to AFT4? benzband ( talk ) 19:01, 24 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Because of one exception? Obviously not. Toccata quarta (talk) 16:08, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Ideas for more fluent feedback evaluating
Are those changes possible? --09:44, 25 August 2012 (UTC), Utar (talk)
 * 1) When you click Mark as resolved and other tools with "Add a note" area your pointer would move to that are and you can start writing. No need for another clicking in that area.
 * 2) Those notes would be stored the way edit summary is so you don't have to write the same things again and again.
 * Hmn; I'll ask :). I'm not sure how possible these will be in the limited amount of developer time we have left, but there's no harm in checking. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:09, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Assuming that the request is actually to set the focus to the text area rather than moving the pointer, I think this would be a simple change to make, using the "focus" function of Javascript. Looie496 (talk) 16:05, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that's it. I was not sure about the proper definition. --13:02, 29 August 2012 (UTC), Utar (talk)

Filter: "Not resolved"
I'd really appreciate a filter setting for "not resolved". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:28, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * That is, show everything that isn't resolved, or a mechanism for saying "I can't resolve this piece of feedback" and filtering accordingly? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 07:34, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Show everything that has not been marked as resolved. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:29, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
 * +1. There's really not much point showing us the stuff that has already been resolved. --99of9 (talk) 14:09, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
 * +1 --R e o + 22:06, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Option to filter by "Not Resolved" gets my vote too. Just finished marking a dozen or so requests for date of birth resolved at Special:ArticleFeedbackv5/Paula_Broadwell and would definitely be helpful to be able to show only remaining unresolved feedback. Gmporr (talk) 21:33, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * We're working on that now :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:38, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Workaround
Adding  to your user CSS should hide resolved feedback. There are several ways to do this.
 * Use the bookmarklet available here. Clicking the bookmarklet will toggle between displaying and hiding resolved feedback.
 * Add a new user style to Stylish with this content:


 * Add the following line to your personal CSS:

The bookmarklet will override either of the other methods, which you can use to set your default. Stylish can of course be used on its own, it's just two clicks instead of one. Happy editing! Paradoctor (talk) 20:02, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Warning label for IP publication or Feedback deletion option
I strongly believe the feedback tool needs to come with a big bold warning that your IP will be shown alongside your feedback comment for everyone to see! Otherwise, I will never leave feedback in Wikipedia again (as I just did by not being logged in and thinking this a a harmless tool). The alternative is that the user can delete his/her feedback within a few minutes after posting it. This would allow one to leave feedback under one's Username if so desired. MatthiasG (talk) 05:21, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Such a warning would end up substantially increasing the size of the tool. We do link to the feedback data policy, which states that data like IPs may be made public: I've been trying to make it more explicit for a month and am waiting on legal. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 07:35, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Point people to the reference desks?
I just looked through all the feedback from my watchlist. About half the questions from unhappy people weren't appropriate for improving the respective articles (clearly being out of their scope) but would have been fine for the reference desks. Is it feasible to point people there to get their questions answered? Cupco 01:20, 30 August 2012 (UTC)


 * If they're IP addresses, chances are they won't receive the message / someone else will receive it instead. benzband  ( talk ) 11:11, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, depends on the age of the comment :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:20, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Suppose so. benzband  ( talk ) 11:29, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I mean in the AFT interface. Something like "If you are looking for information which may be outside the scope of this article, try asking at the reference desk" maybe in small type below the form, or maybe show that to them right after they submit their feedback so it won't prevent any feedback.
 * Or maybe just "Also consider asking at the reference desk" after they hit submit. I don't know if you've seen the reference desks recently, but they get several answers for every question, and lately people have been joking around way more than is really healthy IMHO. I bet they could really use more questions. Cupco 11:34, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Here is an example. Why not show everyone "Please also consider asking for the information you want at the Wikipedia reference desk" right after they hit submit? Can you turn that on for an hour or two and see how many extra questions it generates? --Cupco 19:10, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

View Reader Feedback Link Missing from Article Talk Page
Hi. The "View Reader Feedback" link seems to be missing from certain talk pages, but present on others. I can view it just fine on Talk:List of capitals in the United States but not Talk:Washington, D.C. Perhaps there's a bug? Thanks, epicAdam(talk) 15:23, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
 * AFT5 is not fully deployed on all articles just yet. It's still being ramped up. &bull; Jesse V.(talk) 16:12, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi Jesse V. AFT5 is on these two articles and Talk: Washington, D.C. used to have the "View Reader Feedback" link but it's disappeared over the last day or so. Thanks, epicAdam(talk) 16:42, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Okay, that's...I think the technical term is "weird as shit" :p. I'm going to stick it in Bugzilla now. Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:58, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Okeyes. It still doesn't seem to be working. Doesn't seem to be a problem on any other pages. Perhaps there's something like a template that's interfering... Very odd. -epicAdam(talk) 16:42, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Remove from Help:Searching
Is it possible to remove AFT from Help:Searching? The "feedback" is just descriptions of what the users were hoping to find (like telephone numbers). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:28, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I'll check in with Peter Coombe (WMF fellow working on help pages - requested this be turned on) - but I can't see any objection. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:45, 3 September 2012 (UTC)


 * He took care of it promptly. Thanks.
 * There's a similar discussion at Village pump (proposals). WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:23, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Self-help
Hey, can the geeks behind this piece of software disable editors/ips from marking their own feedback as helpful? Tha would be very helpful. Cheers ~ benzband  ( talk ) 21:32, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Oi! And, yes; it's a known bug and should be in the system :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:43, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
 * And what about other features like Feature this feedback and Flag as abuse? --11:58, 7 September 2012 (UTC), Utar (talk)
 * Also in the bug :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:28, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Excessive abuse
This is a good example of way too frequent abuse of the feedback function. Toccata quarta (talk) 09:17, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Then you can ask an admin to turn it off for that page using the protect tool, or, if you're seeing abusive feedback of the same type repeatedly, ask for an abuse filter rule to be instituted :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:58, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Many of the comments given there do not have useful content but the act of making a comment is still useful information. It takes very little effort to ignore nonsense comments but the information that a vandalizing and communicative demographic is going to that article is useful to me. I am quite pleased to see that vandals are interested in political activism and I see this as an opportunity for someone to increase outreach.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   15:25, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

...
Is it just me or is AFT5 now on every page? --Nathan2055talk - contribs 21:29, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Version 5? It's not happening for me :S. Does it appear on Border City Brawlers? (random example from "random article") Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:37, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * No. Hmm, the odd thing is that it's appearing on random stubs when I'm logged out. Huh. --Nathan2055talk - contribs 00:37, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Hmn. That is odd :S. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:01, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Counter-productive
I think that there is something to be said for the pages that have the star rating system, but the 'Editing Wikipedia' feedback option (at least, I think that's where the 'Feedback from my watched pages' results come from) is counter-productive. It wrongly gives readers the idea that they should request improvements to Wikipedia articles instead of making them; all of the feedback I've seem implies that editors are employees responsible for a service that readers are being provided. I am sure that this has been discussed to death in the past, but I really think it takes Wikipedia in the wrong direction. CanadianJudoka (talk) 06:42, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
 * The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of people do not edit and are not going to make the changes, either because they have no interest or because they can't work out how. It's worth noting that people who submit feedback are presented with an opportunity to edit - and only 0.36 percent of them take it and successfully complete an edit. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:33, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
 * If that's the case, and most of the 'feedback' is "Why aren't there any photos here? Your article should have photos!", then what's the point? Maybe a 'did you find what you were looking for?' dialogue should instead lead to a tutorial on how to find specific types of things on the internet and use what you find to improve Wikipedia. CanadianJudoka (talk) 16:34, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
 * This is a very fine line here but I agree with CJ on this one. Definitely a good idea. --Nathan2055talk - contribs 19:29, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree that a tutorial on how to read/navigate/make sense of a WP page seems to be called for. I agree with one poster above that for the 1% of authentic queries some signpost to the reference desk might be a good thing. I work mostly with biographies and a significant proportion of the feedback I'm seeing suggests to me that many readers are still mistaking the WP article for the subject's personal webpage. They are frustrated that the home phone number and email isn't given, even though the official web page is usually linked in ELs. ELs seem to be all but invisible to feedbackers. If most (?) people don't realise the nature website they are viewing, then the feedback is going to be inherently odd. Do the feedback tools inherently assume that the users know what they are looking at? Span (talk) 23:31, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
 * It seems clear that the vast majority of people who are providing feedback have no clue how Wikipedia works, and they treat this particular feedback tool as a complaint form. Changing it into a learning tool would not only serve Wikipedia's purposes better, but it may perform a public service by teaching people how to research and learn things themselves. The only thing that it does now is give the impression that Wikipedia is a service provided by 'other people' who make changes at the direction of the reader. CanadianJudoka (talk) 23:44, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
 * With all due respect, a substantial number of people who are providing feedback treating the feedback tool as a complaint form is not a bad thing. A large number of readers are submitting requests for things that an article needs, and it's good to be able to have these suggestions, highlight them, incorporate them and resolve them. After submitting feedback, the reader is sent to an editing tutorial and reminded that they too can edit - this is being covered. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:59, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
 * This is why I want to see what happens when you point people to the WP:REFDESK for a few hours. It's a well known fact that refdesk regulars do improve articles in response to questions, and being experienced editors they are more likely to be able to tell the difference between what does and doesn't belong in the encyclopedia. After all, people aren't likely to add anything to an article that they don't already know, and if they're asking for it because they can't find it, that almost always means they don't know it. Please just for a few hours to see what happens? &mdash; Cup co  23:52, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd support refdesk exploration. Span (talk) 00:22, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
 * It would be interesting insofar as I think the sheer volume would cause the refdesk to bloat and die. We're receiving far more comments than the reference desk is able to handle. The good outcome is that the reference desk merely dies; the bad outcome is that the reference desk dies and we lose a large number of productive feedback submissions along the way, because the vast majority of readers are not able to handle wikimarkup (which is why they're submitting feedback instead of editing). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:01, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I've been trying to suggest pointing people to the refdesk the moment after they submit their feedback, so there would be no way it could interfere with feedback collection. The refdesk's problem, isn't that they are at risk for too many questions -- even on its busiest day there are several answers per question on average -- but lately it has become in need of more questions. For proof, look at the bureaucratic mess WT:RD has become over the past several months. There is a discussion there about creating a mission statement, for goodness sake. Perhaps you could overwhelm them, which is why I hope you will measure it for a fixed few hours.  Without measurement we will certainly never know.  The refdesk is a good place for people who don't know wikimarkup to learn it, because with several times more watchers than the Village Pumps, mistakes are quickly corrected by experienced users, and no actual articles are harmed. &mdash; Cup co  12:52, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Cupco, I know that you're interested in pushing the refdesk, but I wasn't really suggesting that and I don't want my suggestion to be evaluated on that basis. What I'm talking about is a new feature that in a very simple way explains what Wikipedia is, how to find the sort of thing you're looking for, and how to add to to Wikipedia once you've found it. Okeyes, so far your comments have been essentially "well, that won't work", but you haven't explained what useful purpose the current system serves or provided alternative suggestions. As for users handling markup, I think that Wikipedia should also be focusing on making it much easier to edit than it is. It's still an insiders' club, and sometimes it seems like that's deliberate.CanadianJudoka (talk) 15:25, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, we are trying to make it easier :). Things like the Visual Editor should hopefully substantially reduce the barrier to making that first edit. On the "why does this exist" front - it's not to drive more people towards editing. That isn't its primary purpose. The calls to action are there as a secondary attribute, but with a 0.36 percent success rate at that I'd be really disappointed at the software if it were a primary aim ;p. The primary aim is to solicit feedback from readers that can be used to improve our articles, and it's pretty successful at that, in my opinion. Sure, there's some abuse, but nothing that can't be mostly cleared up with judicious use of the protect function and some abuse filters - it's sort of like the "edit" button in that way. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:13, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Can you show me some examples where this has led to useful feedback? All I've seen is things like "this article needs photos", which is obvious and unhelpful. I am glad to hear about the Visual Editor, and hope that it includes an easy way to create and modify the most confusing part of articles for new editors: references, tables, and templates.CanadianJudoka (talk) 02:19, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I've seen plenty of useful feedback on the AFT5 comments, but I haven't seen any which have been acted on to improve an article yet. In stark contrast, less than 3% reference desk questions go unanswered and more than 90% have multiple answers. The obvious thing is obvious. &mdash; Cup co  03:59, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I saw a "needs photos" comment the other day, and you know what? The user was right.  So I added photos.  It took me maybe ten minutes and was fun.  If it weren't for that comment, I would never have noticed that the article didn't have any photos, and I never would have improved it.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:28, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Okay. Because I am more of a backend coder and reviewer here, I don't have many watchlisted article space pages. For some reason most of my articles that are getting feedback are about Minecraft or the creators of it. So, I'll take some stats from them. We have gotten: Of those posts, three can be distinguished enough to preform edits to resolve them. Even though this was only a month's study, I'm starting to wonder what the point is... --Nathan2055talk - contribs 23:53, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
 * 6 posts too general to act on
 * 5 thank you notes either to the contributors or the game developers
 * 2 address requests
 * 1 request for a detailed family tree of the creator
 * at least 1 post asking the subject of the article to make edits
 * 2 requests for better pictures
 * and a dozen spam posts
 * I have a watchlist of about 2000 articles and I have seen three or four useful-ish comments in the last month, regarding content. (The exercise itself might be useful in showing the wholesale lack of understanding as to what WP is and how it works). The responders requested extra info not already given but none of these were glaring omissions or errors. One wanted to know how many brothers the subject had; one wanted to add in a forthcoming book to a bibliography. There have been lots of misunderstandings. "There is no mention of the film I Want to Live! and Hayworth's Academy award for Best Actress in this Film"; which is largely because the film starred Susan Hayward not Rita Hayworth. Lots of requests for more photos and personal contact details. Span (talk) 00:34, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I just left some feedback and there was no "call to edit" as Okeyes said above. It simply requested for you to come review feedback. I'm not sure if this is just because I was logged in, but I think it should be changed. Another thing I noticed was that the example feedback was "This article needs pictures", which appears to b a bad example. --Nathan2055talk - contribs 23:47, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

I also find the feedback on Minecraft a general waste of server space; I'm watching that as well. Another problem is that it's not really clear how we're supposed to deal with non-helpful feedback. I find the controls vague, and there's no mouse-over text saying "use this if the post contains personal information" or "use this button if this is spam". This tool is not quite as helpful as I thought it was going to be. For one, the feedback tool is hidden at the very bottom of the page, which few people get to. &bull; Jesse V.(talk) 20:32, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree completely. When to use hide, flag, thumbs down, resolved, and oversight is very vague. --Nathan2055talk - contribs 21:31, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
 * And it follows that because it is vague there are going to be a lot of well-meaning editors who use a feature differently (perhaps incorrectly) than the developers had intended. Primarily due to this and the amount of unhelpful feedback, would this tool be useful sitewide? &bull; Jesse V.(talk) 22:56, 13 September 2012 (UTC)


 * I think we could write the advice ourselves. I've been marking these things as resolved:
 * Compliments, with a note saying thanks for the compliment;
 * Useless/unintelligible posts, with a note saying that there's no actionable request; and
 * Inappropriate requests, with a note saying that there is no request for encyclopedic information.
 * What else would you all add? And do you think Article Feedback/Help/Monitors (where the little "Help" link takes you) is the right place for our advice on responding to feedback?  WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:10, 17 September 2012 (UTC)


 * It is easy for me to understand when to use "helpfull" thumb-up option and when to use the "featured" one. Theyy are quite intuitive I think. But I am hesitant to use the un-helpfull button. It looks like I would be condemning the comment and it's author with it. After rethinking the situation - it is maybe needless worry, this is not You_Tube or somethink of that kind (the dislike would harm someone here), nevertheless the subconscious awareness to not give someone the thumb-down needlessly is pervasive. --R e o + 22:22, 12 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Disagree with the OP here. Taking a few seconds to identify useful ways of improving an article that really matter to at least some readers is a useful service. It's a much bigger investment to actually fix things themselves, and they may not have the time, resources, or skills to do so. This is akin to complaining about fact because "they ought to be finding the references". Dcoetzee 18:25, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Three tool gripes
Now that I've bothered to click the Feedback from my watched pages link ... what an excellent tool I find. Kudos. Three gripes, though. 1) The details page (e.g. ) does not have a nice bold link to the article using the article title as anchor. Instead it has a View article anchor. As wikipedians we're conditioned to look for the article title, not an anchor saying "View article" (a formulation of words which might as well be invisible.) As with the entries on, let's have an article titled anchor in the details page, please. 2) When marking some feedback as Resolved, incredibly, wikilinks cannot be used. See the feedback at this example. 3) It'd be good to be able to edit my Resolved comments after I've first committed them. thanks --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:47, 13 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Oh, I could go on. 4) Sort by Article here would be an invaluable aid to viewing a list of watchlisted article feedback. Is there a features request page? --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:49, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
 * And 5) links to the article talk page, in the main view and the detail record, wold also be useful. Oftimes it's worth adding the feedback to the talk page on the off chance that a watcher will be able to pick it up and run with it. --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:50, 13 September 2012 (UTC)


 * And ... apologies if all of this stuff has already been raised: a link from an article talk page to feedback for that article wold be handy; in the left side menu, if not at the top pof the page. --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:56, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I could have sworn there was a link on talk pages to their AFTv5 pages... David  1217  What I've done 22:26, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
 * There is. It's at the top. "View reader feedback »" &bull; Jesse V.(talk) 22:45, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Ah. It was disabled in a preference. Now turned back on; so we can forget that one. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:00, 13 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the suggestions! Unfortunately we've ended development for the time being, but I know we're hoping to make a second pass early next year. I'll add these ideas to the list :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 23:24, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Suggestion 6): I want to be able to filter out the resolved feedback, leaving only the unresolved. That would surely have been covered in UI-101 for an application such as this ;). --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:00, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
 * and 7) a means by which wikiprojects can see a list of feedback on articles tagged by the project. --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:59, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
 * and 8) a means by which from a feedback listingone can click a link, which copies the feedback into an article talk page (wrapped by some standardised wording about "here's feedback from the wikipedia feedback system...") and leaves the user to click the save button. I find I'm spending time lifting feedbck content and putting it on talk pages in the hope that someone will be able to deal with the request. I want the system to facilitate that with a minimum of keystrokes. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:21, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I'll add them to the list :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:13, 17 September 2012 (UTC)


 * About (6), which I and others suggested above, I have two questions:
 * Who's responsible for that section of the code, and
 * Is he open to bribes?
 * I'd rather not wait six months or a year for that particular feature, if there are alternatives. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:15, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Agreed. After a few days of playing, I conclude the Feedback Tool is a seriously great idea hobbled by its flawed execution; and feature 6 is the most needed. Okeyes, is there no possibility you could snag some more resources to make some fairly simple amendments to the code; and could we start a serious discussion about longer term should-have features? 9) the ability to comment without resolving or unresolving feedback. --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:06, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

I just dropped by to suggest a means by which wikiprojects can see a list of feedback on articles tagged by the project. But Tagishsimon beat me to it (7). I'm willing to chip in ten bucks and a barely-used kindle, if it will speed things up. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 07:22, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Hey guys. So, I had a meeting with Terry (our head of features engineering) yesterday, basically expressing a wee bit of frustration with the fact that we're calling the software as it stands now "baked" and just running with it. He agrees with me, and I'm preparing for him a list of "must-haves" (things we really need if we're going to make it work) and nice-to-haves. The idea is he can at least build in the backend elements before we call it quits, which will speed up any attempt to make the tool functional. So far I've included 6 and 7, along with a way of dismissing feedback that can't be resolved, as must-haves. What else is needed on the list? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:48, 19 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Yay, tou're a star, Okeyes. Here's my list again, with my preferred MoSCoW ratings. Happy to have other people add to, amend and rearrange this list. I'll probably have more time to think through this in about 8 hours time, so this is a holding response:

Must have

 * (6) Provide means of filtering out the resolved feedback, leaving only the unresolved.
 * (7) Provide a means by which wikiprojects can see a list of feedback on articles tagged by the project.

Should have
(note: first three are very quick chnges)
 * (1) Format the link from the feedback details page (e.g. ) using the article title, rather than "view article" as the anchor.
 * (5a) Add a link to the article talk page from the feedback details page. (Ah. there is a link to the talk page, but again because the format and placement is non-standard, it's all but invisible; and ambiguous. Does it lead to the article talk page or to a talk page associated with the feedback page. What's needed on, say this is something a little more like the top right of an AfD page - Articles_for_deletion/PRPS, for instance - where there's no ambiguity at all about the article for which feedback is being given, and the destination of the talk link.)
 * (5b) Add a link to the article talk page from list of feedback pages ( e.g. ),
 * (10) It should remember user settings. If I last used it with resolved feedback hidden, I next want to find it with resolved items hidden.
 * (13) Means by which I can review feedback I've commented on or changed the status of. ( Use case: I've started digging into an issue raised by feedback, I've commented to this effect. When I sort out the underlying issue which may take days, I want to be able to get back to the source feedback. And in this case, that feedback is not really associated with the thing that needs to be fixed and so advice to visit feedback via the talk page of an article won't work. And so I want to be able to look at my feedback contributions to find it.)
 * (17) There's a bit of a navigation snafu. Start at the central feedback page. Go into a feedback detail page. There's no link on that page back up to the central feedback page; there's only a link to the list of feedback for the article page ... which page also does not have a link back to the central feedback page. I appreciate I can use the back key to get back to the central feedback page, but it seems unarguable to me that if I'm dealing with feedback from the central feedback page, I want a link that takes me back to it.

Could have

 * (2) Enable wikilinks within text added when marking feedback as Resolved(e.g. See the feedback at this example).
 * (4) Sort by Article here would be an invaluable aid to viewing a list of watchlisted article feedback.
 * (9) the ability to comment without resolving or unresolving feedback.
 * (11) Some preset options for "Add a note" dialogue box associated with Resolved/Unresolved ... a few of the most common resolutions are 1) "thanks" (in the case of a compliment) 2) "I've changed the article based on the feedback" ... there will be more. If we could insert some standard wording into the @Add a note" box, for instance by having buttons like the "Mark as Resolved" button, which mark the feedback as resolved and which post the appropriate message. This would very much improve the rate at which we can resolve feedback. As we currently have about 370k feedbacks and 5k resolutions, anything we can do to speed this up must help. I think what I'm really trying to say is, we need a rapid 1 or 2 click way of knocking feedback on the head - particularly the "thank you" messages - as we rattle through a list of feedback; and that 1 or 2 click method should ideally be able to add a friendly annotation of the reason for resolving, against the possibility that the person who submitted the feedback, or other feedback readers, chooses to find out how it was disposed of. "Needs photo" and "needs more info" are two very common feedbacks, both of which should stay in the record but neither of which we can do much about. We need to be able to acknowledge them and make them disappear from our view so we can see the wheat for the chaff. (Ideally there should be a 1-click means of getting from "Needs photo" in the feedback to the addition of a "needs photo template on the article talk page.) --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:52, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Would like to have

 * (3) Provide ability to edit my Resolved comments after I've first committed them.
 * (8) Provide a means by which from a feedback listing one can click a link, which copies the feedback into an article talk page (wrapped by some standardised wording about "here's feedback from the wikipedia feedback system...") and leaves the user to click the save button. I find I'm spending time lifting feedbck content and putting it on talk pages in the hope that someone will be able to deal with the request. I want the system to facilitate that with a minimum of keystrokes.
 * All now added :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:39, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
 * (12) Basic stats, e.g. by day, week, monoth, on number of feedback items submitted, resolved, etc. Or in the alternative, if stats already exist, a clear link from the central feedback page to them
 * (14) Ability to display feedback for an article on the article talk page - something like a window on the talk page showing up-to-date feedback, in some form; similar in form to the ToDo boxes one finds on project talkpages such as Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geographical coordinates.
 * (15) Feedback for my watchlist should be like / work like my watchlist page. By which I mean, I want a list of articles for which there is feedback, listed in order of the most recent feedback. That way I can deal with watching feedback exactly as a deal with articles, by visiting a feedback watchlist page.
 * (16) Ability to view feedback for all pages linked to from a page. That way, users could if they wished draw up arbitrary lists of articles for which they are interested in feedback, by creating a page of links. That has to be a useful thing. An extension is to be able to view feedback for all articles within categories listed on a page.

User warnings
Hi everyone, I've finshed user warnings which can be used. See User:Callanecc/sandbox/AFT5. I'd apprecaiate it you'd have a look at them and leave any comments on the associated talk page. There has been discussion in the past about getting rid of levels 1 - 4 and just having a 4im and getting rid of all the levels and having a single issue warning. With the intention of using it for repeat offenders only - what do you think? Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 15:00, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

What does 2.7 percent mean?
The main article says of V4: About 17 percent of users presented with the invitation to "Edit this page" after completing their rating (aka "edit call to action") tried to edit, and 2.7 percent completed their edit. Does this mean 2.7% of 17%, or 2.7% of the entire sample? 4.79.245.132 (talk) 17:31, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
 * 2.7 percent of the entire sample, I believe, but I'll find out :). Thanks for bringing this up! I'll clarify it as soon as the research monkeys reply. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 06:22, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
 * The numbers are here, if someone can interpret/explain them... If I recall correctly, someone explained somewhere that "completed edit" does not mean a useful edit but mostly zero-edits. --Atlasowa (talk) 10:53, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Time for ! :D &bull; Jesse V.(talk) 14:13, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I just saw that higher up (on ) Okeyes wrote about a 0.36% rate of successfull calls to action/edit. --Atlasowa (talk) 19:41, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Yep; so it's 2.7 of 17 percent :). Just confirmed with Dario. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:42, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

'Please now make these changes'
After feedback is given and submitted, could we not ask the reviewers to make the changes for themselves. For example, if a line of quoted poetry is wrong, they are essentially asking someone else to make the change when they could easily do it. We could even open the page for editing. Span (talk) 17:36, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Except it relies on people understanding things like wikimarkup and wanting to make the change - and if both of those things were true they wouldn't feel a need to submit feedback :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:51, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
 * There are comments above that suggest that one point of this feedback exercise is to draw people into editing. The idea of WP is that anyone can edit and anyone can learn. No random passing new editor understands wikimark up at first. I would say the majority of commentors still don't know they can edit or that they are invited to (despite WPs many efforts). I'd suggest a note after giving feedback saying something to the effect that 'this is Wikipedia, an encyclopaedia that anyone can edit. Please make the changes you have suggested'. Span (talk) 11:36, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
 * What if their suggested changes are really inappropriate? Even if it's a good suggestion, how does the software differentiate between "I don't know anything about ____, so please add it" and "Please add ____ to this article"?  WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:44, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Finding feedback
How would the editor of an article find feedback regarding that article? For example, there is Feedback on "Auto-Tune", which does not link to Auto-Tune and was not linked to from "Auto-Tune" or its talk page until I asked where it was on the talk page (unless I log out). Hyacinth (talk) 01:51, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
 * You can't see a link on the talkpage? Near the top? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:50, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Like Hyacinth, I cannot see a link to feedback on talk:Auto-Tune, although I can see links to feedback from pages such as talk:Grey's Anatomy. I've not tested, btw, but I wonder if I can only see links to feedback on talk pages if the page is on my watchlist. Playing with too small a sample size, this seems to be the case. Hmm. Or maybe not. Right now, though I've checked that my preferences settings are fine, I'm not seeing any talk page links to feedback. That said, I'm using IE6, so all bets should be off until I get access to a contemporary browser. --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:26, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Only difference I see it that Grey's Anatomy is in Category:Article Feedback 5 Additional Articles; Auto-Tune is not. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 13:42, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

This evening I see: So. The issue seems to be independent of category, watchlist and whether or not there's feedback. (Meanwhile, Okeyes, how widespread should links to feedback be? Beer collects feedback, but Talk:Beer has no link.) Very confusing. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:20, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
 * No link on Talk:Auto-Tune - not in Category:Article Feedback 5 Additional Articles, not on my watchlist, has feedback
 * Link on Talk:Easter Road - in Category:Article Feedback 5 Additional Articles, not on my watchlist, has no feedback
 * Link on Talk:Grey's Anatomy - in Category:Article Feedback 5 Additional Articles, on my watchlist, has feedback
 * Link on Talk:Dunning–Kruger effect - not in Category:Article Feedback 5 Additional Articles, on my watchlist, has feedback
 * I've bumped the priority of the bug up :S. Quite frankly, it is not acceptable that this problem is still occurring after all this time. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:34, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
 * What's the problem? Dunning–Kruger effect is in Category:Article Feedback 5 while Auto-Tune is neither in that one nor in Category:Article Feedback 5 Additional Articles. So all four are IMO showing/not showing the link in the right way. --13:17, 20 September 2012 (UTC), Utar (talk)


 * Well, we are collecting feedback for Auto-Tune, but not providing a link on its talk page such that users can access to feedback. Does that not seem like a problem to you? By identifying an additional category to consider, you may have identified the root of the issue. Now it is for the devs to explain why there is an imbalance between articles on which we collect feedback, and articles talk pages that have links to access that feedback. --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:41, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
 * OK, I forgot that there is some feedback. But you show four articles and three of them are doing it the right:
 * Easter Road is in Category:Article Feedback 5 Additional Articles and shows the link (just nobody posted any feedback before I did it today)
 * Grey's Anatomy is in Category:Article Feedback 5 Additional Articles and shows the link
 * Dunning–Kruger effect is in Category:Article Feedback 5 and shows the link
 * The only problem is Auto-Tune should not have AFT5 (or it should be in either AFT5 category and show the link). --17:37, 20 September 2012 (UTC), Utar (talk)
 * P.S.: And about Beer: there is (currently?) AFT4, not AFT5. So the page is collecting ratings, not feedback. No feedback link is thus needed. See AFT4 documentation page for more info about that version. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Utar (talk • contribs) 17:51, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Note that you can see the link to feedback if you logout. Hyacinth (talk) 01:03, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

The feedback pages should also link to the articles they are about, in a way that shows up on "What links here". Hyacinth (talk) 01:27, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Special pages cannot, under MediaWiki, have an associated "what links here" - nor do I know if they can appear in "what links here" outputs for articles. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:44, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
 * @Hyacinth: There is a "View article" link in the right upper corner of feedback pages. And to What links here issue: feedback pages are not listed there and IMO no pages from Special can be; because "Special" name space is not even listed in What links here page options. That's why those pages are called "Special". --17:45, 20 September 2012 (UTC), Utar (talk)
 * So special would mean "hard to find", not "distinguished", "unusual", or "superior"? That would be misleading. (according to Help:Special page: "Special pages are pages that have no wikitext, but are generated by the software on demand.") Hyacinth (talk) 00:38, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Since special pages don't exist (until demanded), it isn't possible for What links here to link to them. It can't link to a non-existent page (and you don't want it to, really.  The alternative is for it to list every single potential special page, with no way to tell you whether they were real or not).  WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:46, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Special means not like other pages, for the reasons WhatamIdoing describes above. MathewTownsend (talk) 00:57, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
 * At the risk of getting side tracked, what about once they exist? Hyacinth (talk) 01:01, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Good to know no one here knows enough about special pages to explain them. Hyacinth (talk) 02:09, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
 * As I understand it, the special page "exists" only for the tiny fraction of a second that it takes for the server to send the page to your computer screen, and then it doesn't exist any longer. So Special:Watchlist, for example, exists for a tiny fraction of a second when I click the link to display it, and as soon as the server has finished sending the information to my computer screen, it quits existing.  (In that instance, the list of pages that are being watched by me always exists somewhere, but the actual "Special:Watchlist" page itself does not.)
 * So at most, you could hope for a special page to be displayed in that list if and only if someone happened to be creating that special page in the exact tiny fraction of a second in which the server was also creating your list of what's linked here. That's not likely to be useful to you.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:11, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Viewing feedback
Hmm, not sure why but now when I click on the "Feedback from my watched pages" link on my watchlist I get a fleeting glimpse of any feedback then the page blanks with just the message "Article Feedback page not enabled for this page." Any clues as to what is or isn't going on here? NtheP (talk) 12:54, 21 September 2012 (UTC)


 * I suspect someone's playing with the code. I'm using my IE6 box right now, and get ten or so seconds of the page before it's replaced with "Sorry, your browser is not supported by this prototype. To see this page, please use a different browser." Which will please my employers :) IIRC, yesterday or a couple of days ago it was not rejecting IE6. --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:01, 21 September 2012 (UTC)


 * It's not working properly for me either. From my watchlist, I click on "Feedback from my watched pages" and sometimes it shows me the list of comments for a few seconds and then says "Article Feedback page not enabled for this page" and sometimes the link just leads straight to that message and I can't see any of the feedback. I'm using Safari 6.0.1, and it isn't giving me any browser error. Jsayre64   (talk)  03:49, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Progress of roll-out & role of categories
Some things I'm still not clear on, post the Auto-Tune discussion above and rememberance of a page which said AFTv5 would be rolled out to all articles by November 2012...

...Where are we in the rollout? Is AFTv5 enabled for all articles, or only a subset? When will it cover all articles? Do articles need to be in an AFTv5 category, or are the categories now redundant? --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:07, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Hello Tagishsimon, AFAIK:
 * Article feedback v5 starts wider deployment on Wikipedia. Posted by Fabrice Florin on WMF blog July 10th, 2012: We are currently testing this new tool on 3% of the English Wikipedia, and plan to gradually increase its reach to 10% by the end of July 2012. After final testing and debugging in the coming weeks, we expect to release this new version on all English Wikipedia articles in early fall — then to other projects in the following months.
 * Now look at the Article Feedback v5 dashboard, on the first graph you can see the feedback numbers climbing from July 10 to July 25. That must be the rollout to 10% of en-wiki (~400.000 articles). These get ~4000 Unique AFT posts daily and the Daily number of unique articles commented is ~2500 articles.
 * Now click on the dashboard's [random sample]. Those are random articles, they are listed in Category:Article_Feedback_5 and are 22,258 articles (which is a small part of the 400.000). For this group, the Daily feedback volume is ~200 Unique AFT posts, and the Daily number of unique articles commented is ~130.
 * What I don't understand: where is the rest of 370.000 articles with AFT categorised? And are they random chosen? The Category:Article_Feedback_5_Additional_Articles includes just 633 manually selected articles (high traffic and honey pot). Any ideas? --Atlasowa (talk) 18:46, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Randomly chosen and not identified by category (for obvious reasons - we've have to edit 300,000 pages. Categories only really worked as a selector when we were on 0.3 or 0.6 percent of articles). It's a pseudo-random lottery now :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:55, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I see :) Thanks! --Atlasowa (talk) 22:57, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

A few more questions.
 * I read on the wikimedia blog that based on the test results of 10% articles with AFT, with 100% "we now project over 2 million feedback posts per month on the English Wikipedia when the tool is widely deployed later this year (on par with the total number of edits per month)." That is quite impressive, but a little bit scary, frankly. This will double considerably increase the number of Wikipedia edits, wow (en-wiki has ~3,5 million edits per month). According to your evaluation (see slide) 55% of Feedback is "Not useful" and 22% should be hidden. That is quite a lot of monitoring for 1,462 administrators and 5,586 reviewers and 4,640 rollbackers (~6000 user total?). Have you thought about deactivating feedback on honeypotty articles? How much of the current ~4000 Unique AFT posts daily belong to high traffic articles? How much would the feedback volume decrease, if you disable AFT on - let's say - 2000 honeypot articles? Can you give some numbers on the daily feedback for the 633 manually selected high traffic articles in Category:Article_Feedback_5_Additional_Articles? --Atlasowa (talk) 22:57, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Yep; there's actually a "turn off AFT5" option on the protection page for each article. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:58, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
 * You're not really answering the questions? What does a "turn off AFT5" option on the protection page for each article mean? You expect the monitors (see above) to protect feedback pages by themselves, manually? Without guidance on how to use the function (Protection policy? Requests for page protection?)? Without analysis on which articles will swamp the feedback tool with useless comments? Without analysis on which kind of articles monitoring is currently working or failing? You'll just enable feedback on 4 million articles (including 593,000 Biographies of living persons) and leave it to "somebody else" to clean it up? I'm not really happy with this "answer" :( --Atlasowa (talk) 09:05, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
 * There is a new button on the "protect" page that allows you to disable AFT5. Can you explain which part of that you're finding confusing? And no, I expect administrators to do it - and for it to be fairly easy to work out what articles will swamp the feedback tool: look at what articles are swamping the feedback tool. The situation isn't perfect (I actually have a meeting today to decide what the heck we do with the software): hopefully I'll be able to provide a more satisfactory answer. And for reference, I've been editing for six years and a sysop for one. I'm not leaving it for "somebody else". Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:47, 24 September 2012 (UTC)


 * The evaluation on the slide (55% of Feedback is "Not useful" and 22% should be hidden) is a manual evaluation of an early test group (900 feedback comments). How does it compare to actual numbers/rates of hidden feedback and "not useful" feedback? If this is much lower, does it mean a) that the monitoring does not work or b) that the spam/abuse filter is very effective or c) that there really are fewer useless/abusive feedback comments? Any numbers? --Atlasowa (talk) 10:47, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
 * We're gathering that now :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:58, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
 * That's great! I expect these numbers to be available before a rollout to 100%. Will the numbers be available and analysed before a rollout to 100%? --Atlasowa (talk) 09:05, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I would hope so - this is another thing I'll work into my meeting today :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:50, 24 September 2012 (UTC)


 * I see a lot of feedback on indian/pakistani topics and by indian readers. Can you make a geographical analysis of feedback (mostly by IPs, possibly with a time pattern)? --Atlasowa (talk) 10:47, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
 * We probably could; I'm not sure if there are plans to at the moment. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:58, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
 * If the feedback is available in dumps (like it was for older versions), then Atlasowa could do this analysis himself. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:15, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

This Feedback is confusing
Please take a look at and then ennable the 'View more actions'... There appears to be a user named "Article Feedback V5" who voted on the helpfulness of a Feedback post after the post was marked as being "Resolved"... Shearonink (talk) 01:53, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
 * This is a known bug; we're working on it :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:44, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Acts of a blocked user
I have just noticed that User:Rodhullandemu—who has been banned from editing Wikipedia—has used AFT5 at least 2 times—see and. Somebody may like to look into this. Toccata quarta (talk) 16:57, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Aw hell; that shouldn't be happening. I'll let the devs know. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:16, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
 * That certainly is an interesting oversight. Monty  845  17:16, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, it was meant to be built in. I'm not sure what happened. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:02, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

What the AFT is telling me
Because there have been so many negative comments, I think it might be worthwhile to add a positive comment. Although this tool clearly generates a great deal of noise, it also is telling me some important things. Perhaps the most important thing it does is simply to give a concrete sense that there are a lot of people out there reading our articles, and even though most of them are not very sophisticated, they are hungry for information. On a more concrete level, the main messages are (a) our readers place great value on good pictures; (b) our explanations are often too complicated; (c) when it comes to diseases, our readers would like more information that has practical value to people who have to deal with them. Looie496 (talk) 17:28, 24 September 2012 (UTC)


 * That is exactly how my watchlist's feedback is running, but I'm getting very similar comments on articles like high school diploma, so it's not just medicine-related articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:17, 24 September 2012 (UTC)


 * That matches my experience. We, in biomed, may be getting fewer trivial responses than other topics. I did a little (N = 200) study of MED CAT article compared to random article feedback here. I didn't analyse the results but a quick scan tells me the quality of feedback may vary from topic to topic. Overall, I believe the feedback is valuable. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 06:11, 25 September 2012 (UTC)


 * I second that too.
 * However, I am speaking here mostly for the biological articles only.
 * (a) our readers place great value on good pictures ✅ and specifically more diagrams and their labelings (added by myself);
 * (b) our explanations are often too complicated; ✅;
 * (c) our readers would like have more practical understanding ✅ and examples (added by myself).
 * R e o + 22:39, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Can someone please add AFT5 to Cancer pain?
Is this the place to ask? I'd appreciate the feedback. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 06:11, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
 * It'll be added when we go up to 100 percent in a month or so (crossing fingers); I'm loathe to start manually adding them again - last time we did that, a lot of stuff broke :(. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:49, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I am looking forward to have it for the auxin article --R e o + 22:27, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Not working anymore for me
I was browsing the feedback occasionally, but now it is not working anymore: The link from my watchlist brings up the feedback for a split second, and then the page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ArticleFeedbackv5Watchlist?ref=watchlist) changes to an empty one, with only the notice Article Feedback page not enabled for this page showing. --- My mistake, or a bug? --Pgallert (talk) 07:39, 26 September 2012 (UTC)
 * It's caused by someone trying to get to the feedback page after turning off the "show the article feedback..." tick-box in the preferences. I've given the developers a Look, and they are fixing it - not wanting a big box at the bottom of every page you see != not wanting to triage feedback. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:12, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Unflagging as abuse
I noticed that if you mark a feedback as featured, the abuse flag is automatically reset. Is there a way to reset the flag without also marking it as featured? Monty 845  19:27, 26 September 2012 (UTC)
 * There's a "void flags" button when it gets at risk of being auto-hidden :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:19, 26 September 2012 (UTC)
 * You can unflag your own reporting of abuse, fwiw, by clicking on the flag box. --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:22, 26 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Right, but if someone is going through and reviewing abuse reports, wouldn't it make sense to void the flags on the legit feedback so that others monitoring the abuse flag wont repeat the work? Monty  845  20:30, 26 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Yup. :) --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:33, 26 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Completely; this was my suggestion. I was overruled - people felt that enabling editors to void flags every time there was a single flag would lead to people having to do repeat work. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 00:53, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Well I guess its just gonna mean featuring the false reports. Monty  845  01:20, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
 * You can then unfeature anything that you feature. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:48, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Request to change article to AFT5
Is it possible to make a request for an article to be changed from the old numerical feedback style to AFT5? (and apologies if this has been discussed elsewhere). I'm working on the article Malaria, and with the amount of views it gets daily, I'm sure I'd get some nuggets of feedback that would be more helpful in improving the article than knowing, for example, that its "objectivity rating" is 3.9. Sasata (talk) 06:35, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅. Added Category:Article Feedback 5 Additional Articles &bull; Jesse V.(talk) 07:23, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Can I do this myself (i.e. is any "permission" needed) in the future for similar situations? Sasata (talk) 08:18, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
 * If you read a few posts above, you'll see that 100% of articles will be covered by V5 in the short term. Perhaps you could have some patience? --Tagishsimon (talk) 10:52, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
 * You can do it yourself, but I would rather people didn't. One of the reasons that we haven't scaled up to 100 percent already is that it's hard getting the database to accommodate all the posts that would involve. Throwing it out to more articles right now could, quite frankly, break everything - it already did a couple of months ago. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:55, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Access keys
This may have already been raised, but are there any plans to create access keys for the feedback for a given article and the feedback watchlist? Toccata quarta (talk) 07:57, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Not to my knowledge; want me to add it to the to-do list? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:22, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
 * What do you mean by access keys? The feedback is gettable using the article title as a key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ArticleFeedbackv5/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect?ref=talk --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:27, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
 * @Okeyes: Sure, it would be great! :) @Tagishsimon: See WP:K. Toccata quarta (talk) 18:08, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Ah, thanks. Spending too much time in the company of databases --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:05, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Can't select AFTv5 with Tab key
RexxS noticed that it's not possible to select the AFT buttons with the Tab key, which is a serious accessibility problem. I've filed a bug (40595) already, but just posting here to make sure it doesn't get lost. the wub "?!"  18:14, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks! :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:45, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Oliver is /away
Hey all

So, I've been at the WMF for 346 days now, and I've spent 345 of them (weekends, weekdays, christmas, etc) working. As of now, I'm on my first proper holiday. If anything genuinely urgent comes up, you can find me via google talk (okeyes[at]wikimedia[dot]org) or on IRC in #wikipedia-en. Other than that, I am outta town until the 8th :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:46, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Slacker ;) --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:31, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Change from the default of always asking to "View reader feedback"?
The default asks viewers to look at reader feedback when none exists. Can we be prompted to view only when there is something to view? Biosthmors (talk) 15:44, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
 * But then we in some way also should hide My watchlist and other such links when no recent changes have appeared. Do you want that? Even when there are no feedbacks you can still use the Feedback page to get to Central Feedback Page. --20:23, 4 October 2012 (UTC), Utar (talk)
 * Nice try, Utar, but no thanks. There's a world of difference between inviting all and sundry to View Feedback when there is none, and a wikipedian clicking on My Watchlist to find that none of their watchlisted pages have changed within the time-scope of the watchlist. I agree with Biosthmors and think it brings the tool into disrepute by disappointing anyone who follows the link. I agree links to the central feedback page are very useful and to be encouraged; but we do not need to justify an obviously frustrating invitation merely because of the utility of the link. We could discuss other ways of promoting the link - in the toolbox, for instance. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:24, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Can we reset the ratings?
Ok, wrong page to ask probably, but at American Third Position Party there's an attempt organised by the neo-Nazi website Stormfront to give bad ratings, see[ http://www.stormfront.org /forum/t916979-2/]. Seems reasonable to reset the ratings if that can be done. This has always been a worry, that organised campaigns will skew the results. Dougweller (talk) 20:46, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
 * If I understand the plot correctly, Article Feedback Tool/Version 5 is being rolled out to all articles over the coming very few months. It does not have the star rating system and so presumably the ATPP issue will disappear when the article is V5d. I'd guess/hope that the analysis which led to the removal of the current tool apprehended the the concern you've expressed here; see, for instance, the second half of Article_Feedback_Tool/Version_5, especially point 3. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:34, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks. That should fix it I hope. Dougweller (talk) 05:59, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

PLEASE add Category:Article Feedback 5 Additional Articles to the list of categories at the bottom of the article. This is the first fully protected article that I've seen, and it appears that only admins can edit it. So to them I plead, please add the category in. That way we can hide/flag the inappropriate feedback while figuring out how to apply the useful stuff, which will be better than having the star system defamed. &bull; Jesse V.(talk) 08:43, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅ Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:39, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Great!
Wow, feedback - this is a great tool! I can't believe I've only just noticed it...

Is it possible to add an option to "respond" to the feedback, please? (as opposed to only having a "feature" and "resolved" options)? By all means, put a word limit on it (say, 160 characters) to stop it becoming a 2nd talk page, but for example on one page I contribute to when I have time and someone said they did not find enough info, I wanted to simply respond with "working on it" or something equally brief.

Also, can the "yes" and "no" answers in the "was this helpful" section require confirmation and/or a brief comment? because I responded to something as "yes" by accident when I meant "no" (stupid, I know, but hey, it happened! :-)

Thanks, and again - great idea :-) BigSteve (talk) 15:38, 5 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I think the Yes & No are self-cancelling. If you hit No, then hit No again and it gets reset to not-no, as it were. The tool is great. Workflow support in it less so right now. Dev's should be forced to sit for a day or so dealing with as much feedback as they can in the time allotted, so as to eat their own dog-food. --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:32, 5 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't think that we want to double the number of clicks just to guard against the occasional mis-click. "Resolved" lets you add a comment.  I usually work on it first, and then mark it resolved with a comment.  (Keep in mind that almost no one will see your comments, since most readers won't check back.)  WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:55, 5 October 2012 (UTC)


 * OK, thanks! BigSteve (talk) 15:00, 6 October 2012 (UTC)