Actually there are a number of other tests we need to run before we know whether Article Rating really is a net positive or a net negative.
I hoped they would compare the 100,000 with a control sample to see which gets more edits: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Thread:Talk:Article_feedback/Is_this_a_positiv...
It should still be possible to keep a control sample of 100,000 articles without the rating system to see if their average quality improves more or less quickly than those with that huge AFT template.
And while I can appreciate the excitement that 15% of raters could be tempted to edit, I'd like to see that broken down between:
1 Article improvements 2 Useful talkpage comments 3 Is awesome type comments
I'm cynical about this article feedback system for several reasons, chiefly the worry that it could exacerbate the templating trend of commenting on lots of articles rather than actually improving a few.
But I accept it is a another great test of the theory that people are basically nice and constructive as opposed to the theory that people are better behaved if they feel they have a reputation at stake. Though judging from the proportion of vandalism amongst IP editors as opposed to registered editors I think we know how that one will pan out.
WSC
On 27 July 2011 09:08, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 27 July 2011 08:34, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
On 07/16/11 4:42 PM, Dan Dascalescu wrote:
After rating an article, there is this link asking "Did you know you could edit this page".
Just saying that is not enough to inspire people to edit.
It turns out it is:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/07/15/%e2%80%9crate-this-page%e2%80%9d-is-com...
"The feature brings in editors. One of the main Strategic Goals for the upcoming year is to increase the number of active editors contributing to WMF projects. The initial data from the Article Feedback tool suggests that reader feedback could become a meaningful point of entry for future editors.
Once users have successfully submitted a rating, a randomly selected subset of them are shown an invitation to edit the page. Of the users that were invited to edit, 17% attempted to edit the page. 15% of those ended up successfully completing an edit. These results strongly suggest that a feedback tool could successfully convert passive readers into active contributors of Wikipedia. A rich text editor could make this path to editing even more promising.
While these initial results are certainly encouraging, we need to assess whether these editors are, in fact, improving Wikipedia. We need to measure their level of activity, the quality of their contributions, their longevity, and other characteristics."
- d.
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