Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Survey

Question 15 needs fixing - if you select "other" which is a text entry, you cannot progress unless you also select another answer - this will warp the results. --Cameron Scott (talk) 12:23, 25 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

I have the same problem, with both questions 15 and 20. I would assume it applies every place where "Other" is an option. I have aborted entry of my survey and will try again if this is fixed. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 13:49, 25 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

Problem with number 14 for me in using the "other choice." Also, I got to the end of the survey and clicked "Done" and it seemed to reset all the fields rather than end the survey, as everything became blank and the survey did not progress. Big problem! Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:53, 25 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

Also - could the survey team please link to their Wikimedia accounts? There are names on the page but no usernames. Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:55, 25 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

I'll try to fix those problems now. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:23, 25 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

Okay, the bugs should be fixed (sorry about that) and usernames are now provided. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:26, 25 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

Strange, everything worked perfectly when I did the pre-release test. Could it be a browser issue? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:44, 25 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

Team names have been linked, but apart from bugs that can be reported here (we have two time zone shifts watching this page), all feedback on the poll should be addressed according to the instructions on the poll. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:44, 25 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

No - I'm not willing to give you my email address, you either take it here or nowhere. --Cameron Scott (talk) 15:46, 25 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

Then just don't fill that entry in :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:48, 25 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

Then how would you get the meta feedback about the problems with the survey? As it currently stands, you can do the survey without providing an email but if you want to alert someone of a problem, you have to use your email address and email them. If only we had access to some sort of software where people could collaborate... we could call it Colloboratipedia! --Cameron Scott (talk) 15:50, 25 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

You're welcome to drop Howie or myself a talkpage note too - our usernames are linked on this page - the email address is just there for ease of reference. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:19, 25 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

Does it apply to English Wikipedia only? That isn't clear. Andrew Dalby 19:51, 25 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

It does; I'll leave a clarification on the survey proper. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:03, 25 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

Clarification left :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:04, 25 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

Started completing, but I don't intend giving out, for example, even a false age. This is the same problem as with your previous surveys. Unless you are prepared to include a "don't wish to say" option against all the questions then include me out. Jan1naD ^{(talk • contrib)} 20:20, 25 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

That's fair enough. Age is, however, one of the crucial aspects of the survey; since it aims to (a) gather data on new page patrollers and (b) see if the assumptions people have about patrollers are true, we'd be remiss not to specify age. One of the common beliefs, from which a lot of others stem, is that new page patrollers are all fairly young. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:07, 25 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

Provided you decline the offer to be included in the mailing list, the poll is completely anonymous. zAs Okeyes has said, a rough estimate of age is one of the key points of this survey, and age/maturity appears to be the major issue currently concerning new page patrolling. We hope through this survey to tailor the design of the new tools to the requirements of less experienced users, and the information received will also help the community to decide whether or not NPP should be a user right. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:37, 26 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

You can say this as much as you like, but if a reasonable number of users fail to complete the survey because they find it intrusive, that in itself devalues any results that may be claimed from the survey. Jan1naD ^{(talk • contrib)} 10:04, 26 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

This is true. However, we're currently standing at 469 responses, having only messaged around half of the users on our list - we were only expecting 450 responses to start with! I appreciate your concerns, and as said, an in-domain replacement is being worked on, but I don't think the "intrusiveness" of the survey is a serious concern to large numbers of users. The identifying data will all be stripped before any public release anyway. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:07, 26 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

(If there is a public release, of course). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:08, 26 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

Q10, "What user rights do you have on the English Wikipedia?" needs fixing too. It requires an answer, but does not include an answer for "none". jonkerz♠ 06:50, 26 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

Now fixed; thanks for bringing it to my attention :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:07, 26 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

I'm curious what my gender, age, and location on this planet have to do with my experiences as a new-page patroller? Moreover, I'm curious as to why those make up the required questions, but the lesser identifying items such as when I edit are not required. JPG-GR (talk) 05:50, 26 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

These are among the most crucial questions. NPP is a magnet for the least mature and least experienced of users. The developers of new tools expect to be able to address these issues from the returned information. Location is important because there are times when the USA (for example) is asleep (such as now), and copyvios, attack pages, spam, and blatant vandalism are arriving from other parts of the English (or semi-English) speaking world. I'm curious why you asked this question on the bug reporting page. I hope this helps. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:40, 26 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

As said above - the basic identifying information is centred around one of the most common myths around New Page Patrollers - that they're 14 year old boys editing from High School ;). Since the objective of the survey is to find out if some of our assumptions need to be re-evaluated before we go ahead and finish designing the new Special:NewPages interface, it's important that was we find out that sort of info. The rest are non-mandatory not because we don't want to know the answers, but because we tried to have as few mandatory questions as possible. I'd actually contest Kudpung's statement - we're finding that users are neither particularly young nor particularly inexperienced. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 07:42, 26 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

I took part in one of the early drafts of this. The location bit is partly in there because I want to find out how our patrolling resources vary around the clock and the week. Are they broadly in line with the flow of new articles, or is there a great imbalance with times when we are falling over each other and other times when stuff slips through. I'm fairly sure that we are in the latter situation, but it would be nice to check and have evidence for that. The sorts of changes we need could be different in the two scenarios, it would also be useful if we could tell patrollers whose experience comes from patrolling at either our most undermanned or overmanned times that their experience is not the same as if they were in a different timezone. Even if all we could say was "don't worry if you can't keep up at that time of day,its when we have our highest ratio of new articles to patrollers. A few hours later our patrollers in x will log in and catch up". ϢereSpielChequers 18:04, 26 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

Empirical experience tends to show that while it is somewhat quieter when theUSA is asleep, there are nevertheless many articles arriving from my opposite end of the globe in Asia, and fewer patrolers, and even fewer admins, hence it's quite lonely out here. The demographics are vital to this survey, and it remains to be seen if theories will be confirmed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kudpung (talk • contribs) 18:49, 26 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

I'm willing to bet that the majority of NPPers will be male, age 18-30, have at least undergraduate education, be single and not have any children, just like the majority of Wikipedia editors are. I wish the survey had been more precise as to what age people are in, I'd really rather narrow the age range down -- is it late 20's or early 20's who are more likely to edit, etc.

• Just for the record, I did not include any permissions other than my adminship in my response. I would think the reason is fairly obvious - if I was to mention that I was also a Checkuser and Oversighter, it would be incredibly simple to identify my responses. Given the very small pool of users with one or the other or both of these permissions, I'd suggest they not be included in the future. Risker (talk) 23:41, 9 November 2011 (UTC)Reply

I just completed the survey but when I press the Done button it just returns to the top of the page. I haven't missed any questions and I was forced to press the Exit this Survey button. Should I take the survey again? Mo ainm~Talk 09:20, 26 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

No need; it saves your data, but for some reason the survey program occasionally chokes on the "done" button. We're taking all issues into account when we review the data (and what we'll do for surveys in the future) but we can't fix it at the moment. I have jotted off an email to the company that maintains the service. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:25, 26 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

Grand thanks. Mo ainm~Talk 09:27, 26 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

And thank you for filling out the survey! Your answers are genuinely appreciated :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:29, 26 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

The bot has sent the invitations to several users who don't exist or have never edited any pages. For example, User talk:Skäpperöd (instead of User talk:Skäpperöd). The error seems to be occurring with usernames that contain non-English letters or the "@" symbol, or have a space followed by a number at the end, and a few others (User talk:Snek01 673, User talk:User talk:Darthedit and User talk:NoisyJiÒnx). The earlier invitations seem to have skipped the incorrect usernames, but they have not been sent to the correct talk pages. At least one (User talk:RRuk/Intro) has gone to a subpage but not to the user's main talk page. Most of the errors are also in the list at Wikipedia:New pages patrol/patrollers#Users who have patrolled more than 10 pages since 1 January 2011 (is this the source of the list?). It also looks like users who are blocked or have been blocked recently have not received the invitation (was this intended?) Peter E. James (talk) 20:09, 26 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

Both questions are true, yup :). I'm going to go through the contribs of the bot in a tick, delete any misplaced messages and replace them with actual messages on the relevant users' talkpages - just working on summat else at the moment. Thanks for bringing it up and reminding me, though! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:15, 26 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

Peter, thank you for this excellent feedback. Wikipedia:New pages patrol/patrollers#Users who have patrolled more than 10 pages since 1 January 2011 provided roughly half the targets. and was compiled by a bot. The entire target list was checked several times both with regex and manually, but with this number of items on a list , some errors will of course occur. from A- D, the messages were delivered by User:MessageDeliveryBot, several hundred more were delivered semi-automatically by AWB, and the remainder by User:EdwardsBot (probably one of the best) that was designed by User:MZMcBride. Blocked users were deliberately filtered out. Although there are several reason for blocking, due to the fact that many of them are probably for socking and vandalism, it was thought more expedient to leave them out of the survey rather than expose the poll to possible silly responses that would contaminate the accuracy of the data. About 40 such user names were removed. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:11, 27 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

Righto; now all fixed :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 02:46, 27 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

Although it says "done" for me, I don't see where/when the invitation ever came ... (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 12:07, 5 November 2011 (UTC)Reply

 Done Sent. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:31, 7 November 2011 (UTC)Reply

Long version: I was excited for a moment when I saw the survey invitation -- I thought someone had given me a barnstar. Then I read the message and found that the neat star was just there to look neat and didn't mean anything. In the future, let's just make the post look more like a normal post instead of dressing it up for no apparent reason. If the reason for the "shiny" is, "Well, we have to draw attention to the post to make sure that people see it..." then we run the risk of multiple groups starting to use the same reason since everyone wants "their" message to be read and the resulting war of escalation will eventually make our Wikipedia user talk pages look very much like a 12-year-old's MySpace page with glitter and spangles and animated gifs and shiny things everywhere. I'm not saying "don't give awards", don't misunderstand what I'm trying to say, I just think that "shinies" should only be used when there's a real and valid purpose for the shinies other than "We want to draw attention to this post."
Short version: If the reason for a "shiny" on a post is to draw attention to it, then we risk a war of escalation as multiple groups try to draw attention to their posts, making our user talk pages look like a 12-year-old's MySpace page. Banaticus (talk) 23:24, 9 November 2011 (UTC)Reply

Thank you. The point has already been made and taken above. And FWIW, almost immediately after the invitations were sent out, I realised that perhaps I should have used a different image. Nevertheless, I do not believe that great damage to the project has been made by my minor faux pas - this is a major survey, and if it has helped to draw attention to it , so much the better. Let us not forget however, that like all static 'non message' messages, it can, like talkbacks, project spam, and the Signpost, be removed uncontentiously when it has done its job, a bit like taking the decorations of the Christmas tree and and getting rid of it, leaving the living room uncluttered once again. You nevertheless raise a peripheral point: a great many user pages look very much like a 12-year-old's MySpace page with glitter and spangles and animated gifs and shiny things everywhere, and Wikilove banners also do little to help our younger editors to understand that Wikipedia is not MySpace, and even less to convince our mature readers and users that they have come to a serious project that should have, above all, a reputation for quality. In pre Wiki times, I used to buy the Britannica, but I probably would not have done so if its presentation had lent the impression that it may have been created by kids. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:54, 9 November 2011 (UTC)Reply

"this is a major survey, and if it has helped to draw attention to it , so much the better" Yes, but everyone thinks that their message is important, that if attention is drawn to it then so much the better. If people and projects don't think their messages are important, they usually don't bother posting the messages. Also, the survey invitation template was apparently substituted, so unless somene wants to create a bot to dig around through userspace to find all versions of this message in any possible archives, that NPP barnstar's going to be displayed forever.

Two things: you may not know the difference between a template, transclusion, and substitution; and you are perfectly free to remove anything from your talk page except a block notice, but messages should be signed ;) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:44, 29 November 2011 (UTC)Reply

I'd looked at it in the edit pane and it was a table -- neither a transclusion nor a template. I figured it had been substituted when posted. I know I could've removed it (and probably would've when I archive my talk page in a month), I just don't want the next survey in a couple years to have another star and colored background and whatever else people think it'll take to make it flashy enough that people notice it. :p Anyway, thanks for taking the liberty, Kudpung. :) Banaticus (talk) 00:09, 30 November 2011 (UTC)Reply

Hey guys! The results of this survey should be out within the next few days; thank you everyone who participated. The data will be used to further investigate how we can help improve new page patrol on a technical front - hopefully it'll turn it from a job everyone hates to, at least, a job everyone can tolerate :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:45, 19 November 2011 (UTC)Reply

Okay; looks like we're waiting on legal. Terribly sorry about this, guys - we've got everything written up, but just need to confirm whether we can release the full dataset/under what restrictions/etc, etc. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:26, 24 November 2011 (UTC)Reply

I don't see what's taking so long -- as long as it's released with all names hashed to something completely unrecognizable (like turning Banaticus into, say, g*&^uklg786LU), it shouldn't really be a problem, right? But then I'm not a lawyer. :) Banaticus (talk) 22:54, 29 November 2011 (UTC)Reply

You should worry - even the organiser has not been made privy to the results ;) --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:48, 29 November 2011 (UTC)Reply

Basically it's a question of "whether the clause we added to the survey actually gives us permission to release the data". Now, you'd think it would, but it needs clarification - I'm poking the lawyers again to find out what the heck is going on. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:51, 30 November 2011 (UTC)Reply