[I'm posting this here because although the experiences described relate to en.WP, I'm sure it applies to other projects as well]
I have trained over 100 people to edit Wikipedia this year; in around a dozen different sessions.
Not a single session has occurred, when someone has not had a problem with our CAPTCHA interface. Often, several editors in a single sesison are confused.
A user saves an edit, and the system responds with the requirement for them to complete a CAPTCHA .
Sometimes, they do not realise what has happened (the paragraphs beginning with the words "Your edit includes new external links..." seem insufficiently prominent), or they do not understand what is being asked of them (what words are they being asked to retype?), or they do not see the very small box where they are supposed to enter the CAPTCHA (on my screen, in Firefox and signed out, it is pre-populated with "Enter the words yc", where the "c" is half of a letter "o").
Naturally I am then able to assist them, but a user editing alone may simply abandon the task in frustration.
I urge each of you to try this, by editing while logged out
I suggest the WMF conduct some urgent usability tests around this feature, and either redesign or remove it.
Hello,
I confirm that the CAPTCHA has problems.
When someone is asked to do one, it is not clear why, and there is a strange and non-intuitive disconnect between saving the article initially, entering the CAPTCHA, and saving again. It is hard to explain but something odd happens in Wikipedia that does not happen in other websites with other CAPTCHAs- text is not clear and there is an extra step which seems extraneous.
I also consistently encounter this problem in outreach to new users. The problem is related to new users submitting external links.
yours,
On Thu, Jun 18, 2015 at 10:22 AM, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
[I'm posting this here because although the experiences described relate to en.WP, I'm sure it applies to other projects as well]
I have trained over 100 people to edit Wikipedia this year; in around a dozen different sessions.
Not a single session has occurred, when someone has not had a problem with our CAPTCHA interface. Often, several editors in a single sesison are confused.
A user saves an edit, and the system responds with the requirement for them to complete a CAPTCHA .
Sometimes, they do not realise what has happened (the paragraphs beginning with the words "Your edit includes new external links..." seem insufficiently prominent), or they do not understand what is being asked of them (what words are they being asked to retype?), or they do not see the very small box where they are supposed to enter the CAPTCHA (on my screen, in Firefox and signed out, it is pre-populated with "Enter the words yc", where the "c" is half of a letter "o").
Naturally I am then able to assist them, but a user editing alone may simply abandon the task in frustration.
I urge each of you to try this, by editing while logged out
I suggest the WMF conduct some urgent usability tests around this feature, and either redesign or remove it.
-- Andy Mabbett @pigsonthewing http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
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You might want check if there is already a bug listed for this under https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/mediawiki-extensions-confirmedit-(capt..., and if not then create a new one. (:
Pine
I'm here to confirm that I've seen the same issue in over almost every wiki-workshop.
Part of the problem is the lack of prominence of the notice, and also the CAPTCHA often being hidden "below the fold".
I would not be averse to experiment in just turning it off for a bit.
Thanks, Pharos
On Thu, Jun 18, 2015 at 11:58 AM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
You might want check if there is already a bug listed for this under
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/mediawiki-extensions-confirmedit-(capt... , and if not then create a new one. (:
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On Thu, Jun 18, 2015 at 9:07 AM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@gmail.com wrote:
I'm here to confirm that I've seen the same issue in over almost every wiki-workshop.
Seconded. I can't remember one that didn't run into this. Especially for editors thoughtful enough to try to link their sources.
Part of the problem is the lack of prominence of the notice, and also the
CAPTCHA often being hidden "below the fold".
I would not be averse to experiment in just turning it off for a bit.
+100. Seems like an easy thing to spot-test. Both turning it off and varying interfaces elements.
Previous discussions on this topic: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2014-November/079318.html
Dan
On 18 June 2015 at 07:22, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
[I'm posting this here because although the experiences described relate to en.WP, I'm sure it applies to other projects as well]
I have trained over 100 people to edit Wikipedia this year; in around a dozen different sessions.
Not a single session has occurred, when someone has not had a problem with our CAPTCHA interface. Often, several editors in a single sesison are confused.
A user saves an edit, and the system responds with the requirement for them to complete a CAPTCHA .
Sometimes, they do not realise what has happened (the paragraphs beginning with the words "Your edit includes new external links..." seem insufficiently prominent), or they do not understand what is being asked of them (what words are they being asked to retype?), or they do not see the very small box where they are supposed to enter the CAPTCHA (on my screen, in Firefox and signed out, it is pre-populated with "Enter the words yc", where the "c" is half of a letter "o").
Naturally I am then able to assist them, but a user editing alone may simply abandon the task in frustration.
I urge each of you to try this, by editing while logged out
I suggest the WMF conduct some urgent usability tests around this feature, and either redesign or remove it.
-- Andy Mabbett @pigsonthewing http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On 18 June 2015 at 16:57, Dan Garry dgarry@wikimedia.org wrote:
Previous discussions on this topic: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2014-November/079318.html
That appears to be a disusison of teh CAPTCHA encountered during account registration, which has a very different user-interface
On 18 June 2015 at 15:22, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
Not a single session has occurred, when someone has not had a problem with our CAPTCHA interface. Often, several editors in a single sesison are confused.
I recall from November's discussion that not only does the captcha keep humans out, it's trivially solvable by spambots using OCR.
That is, we already know for a fact that it's literally worse than useless.
Switching it off would thus be an immediate improvement.
- d.
On 06/18/2015 09:03 AM, David Gerard wrote:
That is, we already know for a fact that it's literally worse than useless.
Switching it off would thus be an immediate improvement.
It's actually not useless: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2014-December/079762.html
-- Legoktm
On 18 June 2015 at 18:20, Legoktm legoktm.wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
Switching it off would thus be an immediate improvement.
It's actually not useless: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2014-December/079762.html
And again, that refers to CAPTCHA used for creating new accounts, not the one under discussion.
On 06/18/2015 10:48 AM, Andy Mabbett wrote:
On 18 June 2015 at 18:20, Legoktm legoktm.wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
Switching it off would thus be an immediate improvement.
It's actually not useless: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2014-December/079762.html
And again, that refers to CAPTCHA used for creating new accounts, not the one under discussion.
Um, no it doesn't? It referred to *all* CAPTCHAs. I would recommend you read https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ConfirmEdit/FancyCaptcha_experiments which has some more details.
-- Legoktm
" On 18 June 2015 at 22:25, Legoktm legoktm.wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
It's actually not useless: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2014-December/079762.html
And again, that refers to CAPTCHA used for creating new accounts, not the one under discussion.
Um, no it doesn't? It referred to *all* CAPTCHAs.
Really? It refers to "the CAPTCHA", singular, when the CAPTCHA under disussion was that for sign-ups. It also quotes:
With SUL, disabling captcha for account creation on one wiki effectively means we have disabled it on all wikis (create account on testwiki, visit enwiki, you're autocreated, edit!).
I would recommend you read https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ConfirmEdit/FancyCaptcha_experiments which has some more details.
So two things were disabled, and a change was noted. We don't know which of those two things caused the change. We have no evidence as to whether or not disabling the CAPTCHA *just* for (signed in) editors saving an edit would have a negative effect.
On Fri, Jun 19, 2015 at 12:22 AM, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
[I'm posting this here because although the experiences described relate to en.WP, I'm sure it applies to other projects as well]
I have trained over 100 people to edit Wikipedia this year; in around a dozen different sessions.
Not a single session has occurred, when someone has not had a problem with our CAPTCHA interface. Often, several editors in a single sesison are confused.
A user saves an edit, and the system responds with the requirement for them to complete a CAPTCHA .
Andy, have any of your sessions been using the VisualEditor? I always steered away from VE when conducting wiki training, but I hear it has improved and maybe you've been using it during your training.
Is that part of the problem? I see an old and very neglected task about that here:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T72266
Seems bizarre that task is still unresolved when WMF is proposing to enable VisualEditor for new accounts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29#Gradual...
-- John Vandenberg
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org