The theory that the Article Feedback Tool may be encouraging newbies to edit is an interesting one, though not in my view born out by the statistics. http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm
Comparing the number of newbies in recent months with the same month last year I can't help but notice that last year we were getting rather more newbies. This current testing phase gives us the opportunity to test not just against the earlier version but against no AFT at all. Of course its possible that if we didn't have the AFT encouraging readers to rate rather than edit articles we would be having an even steeper decline in the number of newbies. But logic and the statistics make me think otherwise.
WereSpielChequers
Message: 2 Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2011 10:58:42 +0000 From: Tom Morris tom@tommorris.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Article Feedback Tool 5 testing deployment To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: <CAAQB2S_BGKFabA1MLondrSxt7e+wXEpWz+qQfcY3PniL-BV6Sw@mail.gmail.com
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On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 02:41, Liam Wyatt liamwyatt@gmail.com wrote:
I'm NOT making the argument that the AFT is inherently bad (in fact I'm
really looking forward to the v5 of the tool to see how much good-quality reader feedback we get, which will hopefully enliven a lot of very quiet talkpages). I'm also NOT making the argument that the WMF needs to seek some kind of mythical consensus for every single software change or new feature test. What I AM saying is that now that v4 has been depreciated it is both disingenuous to our readers and annoying to our community to have a big box appear in such valuable real-estate simply because it will eventually be replaced by a different, more useful, box. As you say, this replacement is "still quite some time away" so it's a long time to leave a placeholder on the world's 5th most visited website.
From what I understood, part of the point of the article feedback tool
was that it increased the number of readers who edit - because they click through the star ratings and then were invited to edit (apparently, despite the phrase "the encyclopedia you can edit" and a big link at the top of the article saying "Edit" and little links next to each section that say "edit", and ten years of people in the news media, academia and so on excoriating Wikipedia for being unreliable precisely because anyone can edit it, there is some group who do not know that you can edit Wikipedia).
Even if we are no longer using the data collected from the previous incarnation of the AFT (I've looked at a few articles I've written to see what the AFTers think of it, and it is a minor curiosity), the fact that it may be encouraging newbs to edit seems like a fairly good reason for us to not jump the gun and switch it off prematurely.
-- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/
Sure; we are doing those tests (I think this marks the fifth, or possibly sixth time Dario and/or I have communicated this to you :p) and won't draw any conclusions until we've gathered the data.
you say 'logic and the statistics make me think otherwise' - can you explain what statistics? If you mean the below data, as I have already explained to you, that logically doesn't fly. The data merely provides our rate of decline - it does not provide any clues as to the reasons for that rate, or possible factors retarding it.
On Friday, 23 December 2011, WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@gmail.com wrote:
The theory that the Article Feedback Tool may be encouraging newbies to edit is an interesting one, though not in my view born out by the statistics. http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm
Comparing the number of newbies in recent months with the same month last year I can't help but notice that last year we were getting rather more newbies. This current testing phase gives us the opportunity to test not just against the earlier version but against no AFT at all. Of course its possible that if we didn't have the AFT encouraging readers to rate rather than edit articles we would be having an even steeper decline in the
number
of newbies. But logic and the statistics make me think otherwise.
WereSpielChequers
Message: 2 Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2011 10:58:42 +0000 From: Tom Morris tom@tommorris.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Article Feedback Tool 5 testing deployment To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: <
CAAQB2S_BGKFabA1MLondrSxt7e+wXEpWz+qQfcY3PniL-BV6Sw@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 02:41, Liam Wyatt liamwyatt@gmail.com wrote:
I'm NOT making the argument that the AFT is inherently bad (in fact I'm
really looking forward to the v5 of the tool to see how much good-quality reader feedback we get, which will hopefully enliven a lot of very quiet talkpages). I'm also NOT making the argument that the WMF needs to seek some kind of mythical consensus for every single software change or new feature test. What I AM saying is that now that v4 has been depreciated
it
is both disingenuous to our readers and annoying to our community to
have a
big box appear in such valuable real-estate simply because it will eventually be replaced by a different, more useful, box. As you say, this replacement is "still quite some time away" so it's a long time to leave
a
placeholder on the world's 5th most visited website.
From what I understood, part of the point of the article feedback tool
was that it increased the number of readers who edit - because they click through the star ratings and then were invited to edit (apparently, despite the phrase "the encyclopedia you can edit" and a big link at the top of the article saying "Edit" and little links next to each section that say "edit", and ten years of people in the news media, academia and so on excoriating Wikipedia for being unreliable precisely because anyone can edit it, there is some group who do not know that you can edit Wikipedia).
Even if we are no longer using the data collected from the previous incarnation of the AFT (I've looked at a few articles I've written to see what the AFTers think of it, and it is a minor curiosity), the fact that it may be encouraging newbs to edit seems like a fairly good reason for us to not jump the gun and switch it off prematurely.
-- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/
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