Wikipedia talk:Feedback request service: Difference between revisions

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Is there any mechanism for including more non-RfCs in this system, such as AfDs and RfAs? —⁠烏⁠Γ ^(kaw), 09:10, 19 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'd still like to request this. —⁠烏⁠Γ ^(kaw) │ 07:53, 02 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@KarasuGamma: Hi! Are you still interested in this? I may be able to get this built into the new FRS bot - it'd take some consideration as to how best to design it, though. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 22:49, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Naypta: Yes. I don't know anything about how this (or bots in general) works, but I imagine it would simply send out a notice for every RfA/B that pops up (and stays for a certain amount of time, to not spam people with fake/vandalism runs), and perhaps you can draw from the various WP:DELSORT pages. —⁠烏⁠Γ ^(kaw) │ 23:16, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@KarasuGamma: Hey, thanks for bearing with! Now that the new bot has launched, I'm planning a survey of FRS subscribers, which will be publicised by mass message to people who are subscribing to the FRS, and also at the Village Pump. It will feature questions about both AfDs and RfAs - as you'd expressed an interest in these, I'd love to get your feedback on whether the questions asked are good ones, and whether you think there should be any modifications, or if any other questions that are not currently included in the survey ought to be. If you have the time, it'd be great if you could take a look at Wikipedia:Feedback request service/2020 survey before I publicise it - thanks so much! Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 10:55, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Naypta: I like that survey, and don't have anything to add on the question side, but I've already prepared responses for when it's live. Thank you again for everything you've done to rebuild the FRS. —⁠烏⁠Γ ^(kaw) │ 09:40, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Naypta: Thx for getting the bot for this (Yapperbot (talk)) enabled. Now I am getting invites. I asked for no more than 30 per month, which to me means about one per day. Unfortunately, I got all 30 invitations in one day. [1] Is there a way to revise the frequency to not be so overwhelming? --David Tornheim (talk) 08:58, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@David Tornheim: Hi David, sorry for the trouble. As explained on the user page, as well as on the main FRS page, the bot was working through a backlog of all the RfCs that were still pending. That's now cleared, so you shouldn't ever receive such a large volume simultaneously again - it'll send you messages distributed throughout, as people create the RfCs. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 09:13, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. I see this being discussed:

• User_talk:Naypta#Yapperbot_is_frisky_this_morning
• Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Please_stop_Yapperbot_NOW <-- This one has most activity.

--David Tornheim (talk) 09:10, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Moved to User talk:Yapperbot/Archive 1 § Frequency functionality continued

--David Tornheim (talk) 00:37, 17 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Been about a week since I added myself here, in two separate categories where I said I wanted no limit on the number of RFCs I'm invited to take part in every month. Haven't heard a peep. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 15:31, 16 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm suffering from the same issue. No idea why. Pinging @Naypta: — Yours, Berrely • ^Talk∕_Contribs 17:47, 9 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

For context, Yapperbot's FRS task was down entirely from November 4, 2020 to January 15, 2021 and again from February 9 to March 19, 2021, which probably explains why Berrely didn't receive messages. No idea what happened with Zeke, the Mad Horrorist, but he seems to be receiving messages now so it's not worth investigating. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 22:26, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The categories seem a bit busy. Would it be possible to add volunteer defined subcategories? Or at least allow volunteers to specify what branches of knowledge they are comfortable with?

For example, in Religion and Philosophy, users could specify whether religion or philosohpy, they could specify what religion, Islam, Evangelism, Catholicism, Judaism, etc...--TZubiri (talk) 20:23, 17 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This may in theory be a good idea, but is in practice highly unlikely to happen because the Feedback Request service is reliant on a set of bots whose operators are either entirely absent or not actively responding to requests to update their code. Also, it belongs at Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment and/or Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations rather than here, since it is fundamentally a question of what the RfC/GAN categories should be, and the Feedback Request service list only reflects upstream decisions. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 22:26, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There are currently 662 editors on the RfC section of this list, requesting a total of 29,614 notifications per month, plus 46 editors with no specified limit. This is far more than the bot that processes the list can handle (it sent a total of 1,253 RfC notifications in the month of March, which isn't a perfect comparison since it was down for part of the month, but is close enough), and also is far more notifications than seems reasonable to me: there a little over 100 RfCs per month, which means that the bot would need to notify 296 editors of each RfC in order to reach the total. (For context, the bot currently notifies between 5 and 15). Some cleanup to address this problem may be in order. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 21:58, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What's the problem here? Is Yapperbot hitting some kind of rate limit? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:10, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a rate limit, but a deliberate decision by the bot operator (who's been inactive since August 2020). I believe he explained his reasoning for doing this at Wikipedia:Feedback request service/2020 survey#Random selection. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 18:43, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what the problem is. It sounds like editors have requested "too many" notifications and the bot op has already sensibly reduced that to a reasonable amount (because we don't actually need a hundred people notified about the same RFC), and ...the problem is where? We need to care about how many people are getting the notifications, not how many have offered to be helpful.

If you want to reduce the list, then one easy way to do that is to remove the names of anyone who hasn't edited in ~6 months, as notifications to them are presumably pointless. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:08, 29 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I went through the ===Biographies=== section and removed 18 names (~75 total requests). I only removed editors who hadn't made any edits since 2019 (per WP:NAVPOPS). It took about 10 minutes to review all the names in that section. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:25, 29 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There's a bot task currently configured to remove editors who hasn't edited in 3 or more years. That number could easily be tightened if doing so is desirable. And, the reason I started this thread was seeing various complaints about people receiving too few notices, such as User talk:Naypta/2021/March#Yapperbot's handling of WP:FRS stuff. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:33, 29 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest considerably shortening the inactive time period. If it's set to about 6 months, then perhaps 20% of the names will be removed. That should result in the remaining 80% of editors being more likely to get a notification. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:36, 29 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I did the math. Removing editors who haven't edited for 6 months would remove 12,350 notifications, or a little less than half. (Other numbers, if anyone cares: 3 months would remove 16,209 RfC notifications, 1 month would remove 17,411 RfC notifications, 1 year would remove 1,771 notifications). * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:42, 29 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Let's see how the first change goes. Maybe six months will be too short, but I definitely think there is value in reaching at least the one-year mark. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:45, 29 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have found the bot's config template and boldly reduced the inactivity from 3 years to 2 years. I thought that a stepwise reduction might be helpful, to avoid having too many editors get notified the next time the bot runs. Maybe next week, we can reduce it to 1 year, and a while after that, to six months. Six months should cover all of the "normal" schedule variations (e.g., school holidays). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:43, 29 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You also needed to update User:Naypta/FRS pruned/Message (which I've now done). * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:51, 29 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:51, 29 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

April 2021 update on the above numbers: 29,719 requests per month listed (+105), 663 total editors (+1), 44 users with no limit (-2), 1,066 total RfC messages sent (-187), and the bot was up the entire month. The pruning task only runs weekly on Mondays so hasn't had a chance to run yet. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:14, 1 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Pppery, the bot hasn't run. I don't think these changes worked. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:29, 5 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No, this week's pruner run crashed while pruning Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send before it got to this page. I would be willing to do the pruning semi-automatically if that is desired, but I would recommend waiting another week first. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 13:58, 5 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Let's just wait. That sounds easier. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:38, 5 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Pruner ran successfully this week, removing 40 users, so I figured I should post a number update: 28,975 requests per month (-744), 624 total users (-39), 44 users with no limit (unchanged), and the bot has sent 263 FRS notices so far. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 18:59, 10 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

And I've set the limit to 1 year (and updated the bot message) for the May 17 pruner run, per your above comment (next week, we can reduce it to 1 year) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:13, 11 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:23, 12 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Pruner ran successfully this week (except for the fact that I made a typo in the message the bot posts to removed users' talk pages), removing 67 users. Current count: 27,717 requests per month (-1,258 since last week), 44 users with no limit (unchanged), 559 total users (-65), 563 total messages set. I propose decreasing the limit to 6 months between the May 24 and 31 bot runs, thus causing the pruning to finish just as the next calendar month starts (and thus the bot resets its count of sent messages). * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 19:29, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nobody's complained here, nobody's complained at WT:RFC, nobody's complained at me, I think nobody's complained at you? Then I think it's okay to take the next step.

Do you think that we should stop at six months' inactivity? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:52, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Pppery, is it time to set this up? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:04, 27 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I did it already * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 15:07, 27 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Number update for May 2021: 15,701 requests per month (-12,016 since two weeks ago), 498 total editors (-61 since two weeks ago), 35 users with no limit (-9), bot sent 1,051 notices (-15 compared to last month). As for your question of do you think that we should stop at six months' inactivity?, I'm honestly unsure. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 00:10, 1 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There is a remedy proposed here, which can offset the lack of sufficient RfC editors. Esem0 (talk) 04:52, 16 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Redrose64, Pppery, and WhatamIdoing: (i.e., all editors involved above): Despite the effected updates to the RfC lists, the problem of getting enough editors, if any, to comment can persist. Even if we stop at six months' inactivity, the problem will be compounded and still not produce a satisfactory solution. IMO, the only remedy is to compensate by guaranteeing sufficient time to receive delayed RfC responders but also other “watchers”. This can certainly ameliorate the harm caused by closing prematurely and arbitrarily discussions by an outside over-enthusiastic editor and without the benefits of the RfC service. It is much better to provide time rather than cause a false outcome via a rushed “consensus” (let us not debate any specific subject matter here). This remedy is exactly proposed at Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment#Inactive RfC editors, to which you have already contributed. Some opposition may be valid if taken in isolation. However, the current problem here begs for a remedy to avoid failures of the RfC service and false WP outcomes. Such a specialized remedy should override possible minor inconvenience to an outside/uninvited editor improperly interfering with an ongoing discussion. I now believe that we all have an opportunity to arrive at a consensus (even an absolute one). This is by no means a matter of losing or winning a case for anyone, but an example to demonstrate WP proof of principles, namely, that it works using common sense, civility, and cooperation. Esem0 (talk) 06:54, 23 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Esem0, when you start an RFC, all editors are invited to participate. The RFC process has multiple methods by which we encourage participation – this is perhaps the least used and least important one – but for clarity:

• People starting RFCs are not entitled to any response from anyone who is signed up for this particular notification system.
• Comments from editors who do not sign up for this particular notification system may be more valuable than the comments from editors who did sign up for it.

I did a spot-check of other closed RFCs just now. One closed after a week. Most closed after a few weeks. One was open for many months. Yours was closed after four days, which is unusual. Please don't try to re-write the rules to deal with exceptional cases. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:21, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In other words, you believe we ought to allow arbitrary RfC closures, albeit infrequent, at the behest of any editor. This is for the sake of "don't try to re-write the rules to deal with exceptional cases". My change is only a tweak of rule #4 aiming to prevent abuse of the rules by way of a loophole either in good or even in bad faith: Not only an over-enthusiastic editor but also organized sock puppetry could take advantage of the existing weakness that can severely compromise WP principles. This overshadows all the hitherto presented minor objections. IMO, there must be a consensus on the existence of a vulnerability issue and its proposed rectification. Esem0 (talk) 04:27, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sock puppetry is a known risk. We are generally very good at handling it when it appears (a couple of times a year). WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:41, 18 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]