[WikiEN-l] Article Feedback Tool - Request for Participation

[Howie Fung]

   As you may know, we launched the Article Feedback tool a few weeks 
ago as part of the Public Policy Initiative. (See 
http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2010/09/22/article-feedback-pilot-goes-live/ 
and 
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_feedback/Public_Policy_Pilot/FAQs 
for information about our motivation for building this tool.)  The 
feature has been well received, with over 12,000 ratings submitted since 
the feature was launched on Sep 22.  We've also received positive 
feedback from users, which is encouraging.  Please see 
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_feedback/Public_Policy_Pilot/Early_Data 
for some data from the project.

To increase our understanding of the value of these types of ratings, 
we'd like to find out whether the ratings (in aggregate or segmented) 
reflect actual changes in the quality of an article.

The first part of this is to identify articles that are being worked on 
as part of the Public Policy Initiative and map the ratings against the 
revision history. Additionally, we want to observe ratings on a set of 
selected articles that are likely to undergo substantial revision in the 
near future.

While the 2010 United States mid-term elections are behind us, there are 
many other types of articles that may fit the bill (e.g., upcoming 
movies, other elections, etc.).  Right now we're targeting approximately 
50 articles:

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_feedback/Public_Policy_Pilot/Additional_Pages

We'd appreciate your additions and thoughts regarding articles that 
would make good test cases.  And if you'd like to be part of the Article 
Feedback workgroup, please sign up on here:

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_feedback/Public_Policy_Pilot/Workgroup

Howie