Article feedback/Version 5/Release Plan 2013

Article Feedback form, shown at the end of Wikipedia articles

Here is our proposed 2013 release plan for the Article Feedback v5 project (AFT5) and related tools.

In 2013, the Wikimedia Foundation's Editor Engagement team deployed an updated version of AFT5 for testing on English, French and German Wikipedias and is now working on these next milestones:

• support the AFT5 tool during these limited 3-6-month pilots in 2013
• support a full deployment of AFT5 on these sites, if requested by their communities
• discuss more AFT5 releases on other sites, based on the results of the first pilots
• encourage upgrades to AFT5 for sites using older AFT4 and ReaderFeedback tools

Goals

Article Feedback Slides

Our overall goals for Article Feedback v5 in 2013 are to:

• engage readers to contribute productively to Wikipedia
• help editors improve articles based on reader feedback
• test this tool in multiple languages and regions
• help projects deploy this tool more widely

We are now testing a new version of Article Feedback v5 on the English and French Wikipedias -- and plan to make it available on an experimental basis to other projects that wish to use to AFT5 in the second half of 2013.

We propose to accomplish these goals in these incremental phases:

Phase 1: First pilots

• Deploy the updated version of AFT5 on the English and French Wikipedias (DONE)
• Test this new software in limited pilots throughout 2013 (ongoing)
• Monitor community discussions about wider releases of AFT5 on their sites
• Support wider releases if requested by communities (or remove software after pilots end)
• Start discussions with more non-English Wikipedias and other projects interested in AFT5

Phase 2: More projects

• After a full release on a phase 1 project, select a second group of projects that have reached consensus about adding AFT5 on their sites
• Priority will be given to projects that have old software that can be replaced by AFT5 (AFT4 or ReaderFeedback)
• Support the release of AFT5 for that second group of non-English Wikipedias sites

Phase 1 is already under way and is expected to continue until Q4 2013, when the French Wikipedia plans to release it widely. Phase 2 is likely to start in the fall of 2013, based on available resources.

Note that we will support these first pilots with bug fixes and simple feature tweaks, but are not planning to develop any more new features this year. Based on the outcome of the first two phases, we will review pilot results and determine our next steps. In the meantime, projects who would like to experiment with this tool are invited to contact us with an estimate of how many comments they expect to generate per month, as described in the first paragraph of the "Checklist" section further.

Projects

New moderation tools

Now that feature development has ended, we are prepared to support a second group of projects, particularly if they are showing strong interest with community consensus, and/or using old software that could be replaced with AFT5, as outlined further.

For our 2013 release plan, we are targeting two different groups of projects:

• Large Wikipedia projects (e.g. English, French Wikipedias)
• Smaller, but interested projects (e.g. Hungarian, Persian, Kannada, Telagu Wikipedias)

Interested projects:

• Commons (RfC in progress)
• Kannada Wikipedia (consensus reached)
• Swedish Wikipedia (help pages only)
• Wikibooks (portuguese)
• Wikinews (ru, en)
• Wikivoyage (en, it)
• Etc.

Projects with AFT4:

• Chinese Wikipedia (AFT4)
• English Wikipedia (AFT4)
• Hindi Wikipedia (AFT4)
• Hungarian Wikipedia (AFT4, consensus reached)
• Portuguese Wikipedia (AFT4)
• Serbian Wikipedia (AFT4)
• Spanish Wikipedia (AFT4)
• Spanish Wikinews (AFT4)
• Meta-Wiki (AFT4)

Projects with ReaderFeedback:

• Chinese Wikipedia (ReaderFeedback)
• English Wikibooks (ReaderFeedback)
• English Wikinews (ReaderFeedback)
• Russian Wikinews (ReaderFeedback)
• Turkish Wikinews (ReaderFeedback)

Checklist

Here is a checklist of actions to consider for any release of Article Feedback v5 on a new Wikipedia site:

Contact us about this release

• Contact our product manager Fabrice Florin (fflorin-at-wikimedia-org) to discuss your interest in releasing this tool on your project (e-mail is preferred as a communication channel).
• We recommend that you identify an english-speaking community representative to act as a liaison with our team (and provide us with their e-mail address)

Discuss this release with your community

• We recommend that you start an online conversation (or request for comments) to discuss this tool with your community
• Make your community aware of the tool's benefits (e.g.: engage readers to participate, give editors useful suggestions for improving articles)…
• Also make them aware of the its costs (e.g.: feedback needs to be moderated, only about 40% of the feedback appears useful)
• Try to reach consensus to confirm that the community is prepared to use this tool and moderate comments

Consider a limited pilot

• We recommend starting with a limited pilot for a few months, to confirm that the tool works for your community
• The pilot duration should be at least a month or two, so that you have time to make decisions about settings and tweak the tool as needed
• At this time, the Foundation will not be able to support new pilots until the summer of 2013 (except for English, French and German Wikipedia pilots)

Plan your release

• How many articles would be enabled with AFT5 for this pilot? are you prepared to try them across your entire site?
• How many feedback posts are expected on a monthly basis for the wide release? (this number is needed so the Wikimedia Foundation can provide database storage)
• Contact the Wikimedia Foundation's editor engagement team with this information, as well as special needs for your project

Namespaces and categories

• What namespaces should AFTv5 be enabled on? (e.g. only main article namespace, also help pages, etc.)
• What percentage of the articles should AFTv5 be enabled at? (note: this is configurable per namespace)
• What categories should be used to blacklist / whitelist AFTv5 on a certain page? (e.g.: "Category:Article_Feedback_5")

Enable/Disable tool Would you like to deploy feedback across your entire project? Or would you like to start by releasing it on an opt-in basis, so editors who want feedback can add them to the articles they work on? If you would like to start on an opt/in basis this Enable/disable tool makes it easy for editors to request reader suggestions on articles -- or disable feedback if there are too many comments to process. To learn more about the enable/disable tool, check this feature overview -- or our detailed feature requirements.

Moderation tools and filters

• Check access and permissions matrix defaults for each user right
• Confirm that the right tools are available for your user rights
• Change access configurations if needed

Abuse filter
The purpose of this feature is to reduce the noise on the feedback page, by automatically disallowing inappropriate posts that include swear words or other objectionable content. This requires that the latest version of the Abuse filter extension be included on each site, and also requires the addition of about a dozen new "feedback filters", which of course would need to be translated to disallow offensive words in the correct language (rather than English).

Help pages
Note that when we introduce the new moderation tools and filters, we will need to update this reader and editor help pages, as well as these feedback moderation guidelines. You would be responsible for creating an updated version of these help pages in your language.

More info

To learn more about Article Feedback v5, visit one of these pages:

• AFT5 project hub
• Feature requirements page
• Testing page (for trying out new features on prototype site)
• Technical design page

Once you've tested AFT5, please share your feedback on this discussion page or report bugs on Phabricator.