Grants:IdeaLab/Allow users to rank articles on usefulness

Allow users to rank articles on usefulness
Currently there is no real way to say "this article really helped me", or indeed provide feedback on the helpfulness of content other than through complex mechanisms which most users have no time for. As a consequence, other than page hits, there is no way to identify authors or groups of authors producing meaningful content. This could be solved through end user account linked editable per page/page topic ranking of content usefulness.
countryUnited Kingdom
themeother
contact email• barry.w.robinson64@gmail.com
idea creator
BarryRobinson1964
volunteer
Very Fantastic DudeGryllida
this project needs...
volunteer
developer
join
endorse
created on06:19, 21 July 2018 (UTC)


Project idea edit

What Wikimedia project(s) and specific areas will you be evaluating? edit

Is this project measuring a specific space on a project (e.g. deletion discussions), or the project as a whole?
It's measuring the usefulness of content to provide a way for users to feedback to the community regarding that usefulness other than through admins or through other channels.

Describe your idea. How might it be implemented? edit

Provide details about the method or process of how you will evaluate your community or collect data. Does your idea involve private or personally identifying information? Take a look at the Privacy Policy for Wikimedia’s guidelines in this area.
There are two ways this idea could be implemented. The simple way would be to provide a star or numeric user ranking for each page or topic based on how useful or accurate the user found the content. The potential problem with this approach is that more popular topics will statistically be ranked more frequently, which would skew any meaningful rank toward popular topics. One strategy to avoid this would be to use the number of times the page had been accessed to normalise the data on usefulness, providing a ranking based on proportional usefulness.

Are there experienced Wikimedians who can help implement this project? edit

If applicable, please list groups or usernames of individuals who you can work with on this project, and what kind of work they will do.
Implementing this idea would require re-engineering of the Wikipedia site and apps.

How will you know if this project is successful? What are some outcomes that you can share after the project is completed? edit

There will be a means to measure user engagement other than page hits and time spent on a page.

How would your measurement idea help your community make better decisions? edit

After you are finished measuring or evaluating your Wikimedia project, how do you expect that information to be used to benefit the project?
It would allow for a more accurate metric to be established regrading the usefulness of an article.

Do you think you can implement this idea? What support do you need? edit

Do you need people with specific skills to complete this idea? Are there any financial needs for this project? If you can’t implement this project, can you scale down your project so it is doable?
Due to existing commitments at work I simply don't have the time to take on any other projets, and TBH I should be looking through technical documents right now rather than writing this.

Get Involved edit

About the idea creator edit

I am a software engineer in network management and networking infrastructure with a degree in information systems analysis and design form Kingston University in London. I'm also a photographer :-)

Participants edit

  • Volunteer Id love to help in any way i can! Im also a Graphic Designer Very Fantastic Dude (talk) 10:31, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
  • Volunteer There is an implementation available at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ArticleFeedbackv5 and maybe it could be checked what WikiHow is using. I endorse this idea and would be glad to help out. The difficulty is in how to moderate the content but I believe this difficulty may also be overcome if there is a plan how to do it. For example on pages with a huge number of visitors the feedback form may be shown more prominently to 1 user out of 100 while the rest only see a smaller link. And at smaller wikis the feedback form could be shown prominently to every visitor because there is not so many of them. Gryllida 01:10, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

Endorsements edit

  • This sounds like a great idea! Id love to help with it. Im a graphic designer, so if it needs design work id love to do that! Very Fantastic Dude (talk) 10:31, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
  • Usefulness is a good overall evaluation measure. Accuracy, comprehensiveness, style, clarity all play a part. It may need to have a scale of 10.
    Given that a Wiki article is a moving object, it also needs to distinguish recent from older comments. A "good" article can be spoiled in quite a short time. Recent comments need to be weighted higher than older. Chris55 (talk) 11:07, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
  • I quit editing Wikipedia for several years due to burn-out from dealing with disagreeable users, and contributed to Stack Exchange sites, instead.
    On WP, the only times you ever interact with other users are negative: reverts, arguing, disputes, wikilawyering, etc. It hurts morale and leads people to leave in exhaustion.
    On SE, you mostly interact with other users in positive ways, by voting up their questions and answers, and every time you visit, you see your reputation increase from all the users who have found your content helpful. It's very good for morale and reminding you that your work is appreciated.
    The "Thanks" feature that's been added to Wikipedia is a step in the right direction, and I've been trying to use it, but there is room for more. Combining this idea with https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Encourage_Editors_To_Keep_Editing might be even better. — Omegatron (talk) 01:10, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
  • Agree with @Omegatron -- very useful for morale and feedback. (another former editor who got burned out) Mscuthbert (talk) 03:05, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
  • I sustain this idea, ask readers (for which Wikipedia is written) what they think about an article is a way to have a look on our work from "the other side of the bridge". Camelia (talk) 15:00, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
  • This idea may address the most common objection about Wikipedia, i.e. how reliable is the information? Rightly so. Incorporating a small graphic user rating (e.g. at the beginning of each article) would provide guidance not only to the readership, but also to editors. Side by side, I would like to suggest (as per another entry) another graph quantifying articles on the basis of statistics (number of visits and/or citations and/or edits, etc.). Lusilier (talk) 23:34, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Expand your idea edit

Would a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation help make your idea happen? You can expand this idea into a grant proposal.

Expand into a Rapid Grant

No funding needed? edit

Does your idea not require funding, but you're not sure about what to do next? Not sure how to start a proposal on your local project that needs consensus? Contact Chris Schilling on-wiki at I JethroBT (WMF) (talk · contribs) or via e-mail at cschilling wikimedia.org for help!