I’ve been on wikiHow for a little over a year. I liked it when I first joined, but throughout the time I was on here, it has gone down. -The Recent Changes widget appearing on the right side of the screen shows talk page messages being posted. -On the Recent Changes page, on default, it is set to not show bots. Even with that option, I still see a few bots (Copyviocheckbot and Votebot to be a few). -In December 2012 or January 2013 or sometime, Votebot was launched but has messed up some articles. I really think this bot should be shut down. -During the summertime 2013, I noticed that when you rollback an edit, it rolls it back but automatically jumps to the next edit. I liked it better when you manually clicked “Mark As Patrolled” because it is much easier to make a Quick Edit after rollbacking. -I suggest that edit filters be used for vandalism, not just spam. Edit filters should block out all profane language and blanking edits. -Tips Patrol should be open only to NABers and admins. Newer users have added tips that I remove because they’re commonly badly written. Also, I’ve been on the redesigned site for over a month, and now I decided that I prefer the old version. The new version seems kinda more difficult to use, and I don’t like the articles being shown in pictures. Please make these improvements as soon as possible.
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Great suggestions, Rock! Here are.my thoughts. - I actually prefer it that way. It adds a touch of personality to what would otherwise be a very serious widget. -Not so sure about that one. Tagging @Anna
and @Krystle
for info. -Partially agree. However, if votebot is to be phased out, the voting of tips might lose some importance. I feel the bot should be improved, rather that phased out. - Totally agree. It would be a lot more convinient than manually visiting the article and editing it from there. -Completely agree. I was just about to suggest this myself. Article blankings are among the more common forms of vandalism, and a filter could go a long way in reventing them. Wikipedia has them already. -Disagree. With the recent improvements to the tips addition, namely qg,and a tips patrol coach in the works, I feel the quality of tips added will dramatically increase. We already have an enormous backlog of tips to be patrolled,let’s not add to it
- I disagree.It is a matter of preference,really, and will be subjective. Change is inevitable. I did not like it at first, but find it much better than the old version now. Thanks for reading my two cents worth. Regards, Abhishek
Thank you for your suggestions, Rock! I appreciate that you’re trying to help make wikiHow a better place. Talk page messages should still appear in RC; I don’t see any reason why not. Some people might want to stay updated on those messages; maybe to patrol them, maybe to see what talk page messages are being left around the site, and for several other reasons. I agree with Abhi about Votebot. I understand that it can mess up articles sometimes, but we need
the bot to help with thumbs-up and thumbs-down voting on tips. Yes, the “rollback and automatically mark the edit as patrolled” feature should be fixed. One might click “rollback” and need to make a quick edit, post a quick note, check a page history, or fix an accidental rollback. Tagging @Anna
and @Krystle
on this – I would like to hear their thoughts. I’d have to disagree with the edit filter change. Vandalism is not a very big deal here at wikiHow – it quickly gets rolled back in RC patrol, and vandals come and go, as discussed in this forum thread
. Tips Patrol is fine when open to everyone. I agree that Admins and Boosters might be more experienced, and are more familiar with the difference between good tips and bad tips. However, there are a few costs of restricting the tool to Admins and Boosters. First off, the wikiHaus is thinking about launching a Tips Patrol coach. That coach might help new contributors (and new tips patrollers) do a better job at Tips Patrol. Secondly, now that we have a Quality Guardian feature for new tips, it is much easier to keep our articles free of low quality tips and “wikibloat”. As for the redesign change, I understand how you feel. However, it has been a month since the redesign launched, and it seems like everyone has gotten used to it (including myself), so we do not need to revert back to the old site. The redesign is also a step to our MediaWiki upgrade
, which might come with some enhanced features and improve the site for everyone. It does not take everyone the same length of time to get used to the redesign, but you will get used to it eventually.
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I think the edit filter is a great idea. It nips vandalism at it’s root.. Article blankings are a big deal. They will get rolled back in rc, but that doesn’t happen immediately. In the meantime,the page is left with no content. An edit filter allows us to stop blankings completely.
Adelaide, vandalism does get rolled back in RC Patrol, but sometimes the rollback occurs several hours after the vandalism edit. I’ve seen a few articles that had vandalism quite old (a few weeks).
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Precisely. Wikipedia faced the exact same problem, and that’s why they now have filters. wikiHow could use them too. Not full blown filters like Wikipedia, but simple ones to prevent some of the more common forms of Vandalism like blankings, profanity etc.
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I Think It’s missing a topic on trends and lifestyle because the replies needed was mostly trends and lifestyle
Good suggestions @Rock20000
… I agree with edit filter , Tips Patrol blocked out to strangers, and also I agree - the old design was better. Edit filter would help to avoid profanity…blocked Tip Patrol’d help to avoid stupid tips.
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Thanks for sharing these thoughts! A lot of these issues are thing we’ve discussed at some point, so I’ll try to briefly cover all the basesI’m not sure what the problem is with talk page messages being shown in the siderail RC widget. If you mean that we should not patrol talk pages, that’s something we’ve considered giving people an option to avoid when they’re patrolling. It’s not a change we’ll be making anytime soon because of the upgrade, though. In RC, you should only be seeing bot edits when they are bundled with other unpatrolled edits. If you see bot edits by themselves, please let me know, and send me a screenshotVotebot has had some fixes so that it shouldn’t be messing up articles anymore. If you have any recent examples (no older than the past week) please send the diff link my way! With the rollback jumping to the next edit, that’s something we might change after the upgrade, or with the next RC patrol “makeover”. For tips patrol, as @Adelaide1230
pointed out, we recently made a change that adds another layer of quality control by sending approved tips to QG, and we are also working on tips patrol coach (it is half-built right now). For edit filters, we’ve had this discussion in the past and we always get into a heated discussion about what is profane and what is not. There are a few words that everyone would agree are profane, but there are many people who feel strongly that some words are acceptable and others who feel those same words are totally unacceptable. Then there’s the issue of context, like a game that has a questionable word in its name. It’s a good idea in theory, but in practice it becomes a huge argument for our community that has no resolution.
This is true, and I like the improvement to tips patrol so we have more quality control.
I’m not saying don’t patrol talk pages, they should still appear in RC patrol, but not on the recent changes widget appearing on the right side of the page. I suggest that articles don’t be showed in pictures anymore, unless they’re featured. Many pictures are irrelevant. Thank you everyone.
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How about ignoring the profanity filter, and opting fir a blanking filter instead? This filter would block article blankings.
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@Mrappbrain
If this is something Wikipedia does, it might be available to us with the mediawiki upgrade! A page blanking detection bot would be awesome
You’re stupid, @Krystle
. Ignore my quote saying the bot was a good idea.
It is “technically difficult” to create a bot that can identify vandalism. Which edit is “bad” or “unsuitable” cannot be decided by a bot. Yes, if an edit contains a blacklisted external link (or something like that), a bot can identify that.
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I think people are misunderstanding. Let me explain. Wikipedia does not allow any user to blank pages. It is filtered. The filter is not a bot. Although Wikipedia does have vandalism detection bots (Cluebot NG comes to mind), filters prevent the malicious edit from happening. For example, if we incorporate this into wikiHow, malicious page blankings can be avoided completely, since if the user blanks a page completely, he gets the message ‘An automated filter has identified your edit as vandalism. Your edit could not be saved.’ Wouldn’t this help a lot in fighting vandalism? Mind that this is only a filter for a complete blanking, since as @Gaurangprasad
said, bots are not the best at identifying what’s vandalism and what’s not. This is not a bot, though. It is a filter, much like our current spam filter
I agree with @Mrappbrain
. If @Krystle
suggests an idea for a bot, and you’re saying it’s difficult for that, she’s way too dumb to be one of the staff here.
Another suggestion: Please remove “Meet a Community Member”. For users that have been on the site for a long time, they still see that thing, they know most users on wikiHow already.
