On 1 May 2014 08:07, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
- friction in saving the entry (eg edit conflicts, login required,
user IP blocked)
Edit conflicts are supposed to be avoided, when appending text to a page via API. Please file a bug if this is not working, we have some reports but they're all quite incomplete. The rest may skew a survey from a scientifical point of view, but won't significantly spoil a simple collection of comments IMHO.
Interesting - edit conflicts are pretty rare in any case, so I can't speak to this with confidence, but I'm happy to take your word for it :-) I've only had one problem that I attributed to an edit conflict (something involving commons deletion-nomination scripts a year or two ago?) but it's always possible it was something else. So put this down as just relating to account/blocked-IP problems...
I suspect this sort of issue won't significantly affect the outcomes of the survey (probably not in a statistically significant way), they will annoy or distress readers who encounter them. "I tried to do something and it gave me all sorts of weird alarming messages about not being allowed to" - it's a very harsh way to make them annoyed with us, and so I think there is a definite risk of a downside if we start using this mechanism for general readers.
- privacy problems (comments are public and effectively attributed)
On the other hand you don't have to worry about private data, you're left only with public data. Of course users need to be informed.
Indeed - but that informing starts adding complexity and may deter some responses. (The private data may also be collected in such a way that makes it *less* sensitive - eg by not logging IP addresses of respondents - which we're not currently able to do with a mediawiki solution.)
Sure. In fact the goal is «capture user feedback about Upload Wizard as soon as they have completed their upload, while it’s still fresh on their minds» and that's exactly what mediawiki.feedback.js does currently within Special:UploadWizard, just not very prominently. (Even MoodBar does/did that I suppose.)
Definitely agree it's the most suitable tool for cases like this.