Last modified: 2014-02-12 23:47:31 UTC
Talking to Maryana, Ironholds and various other people in the office it seems that the heuristics first line of the UserProfile are not as useful as it could be. For example: https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:UserProfile/Ironholds has Oliver as a "new editor," even though he's been editing for 1,000+ days. Also high edit count doesn't equate to good editor. I would suggest that we pay more attention to roles: For example on the diff view: https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/789288...789310 Brion is shown as "BUREAUCRAT, CODER, IMPORTER, ADMINISTRATOR" These seem far more useful indicatiors of what Brion does on the project. Personally, I think the number of days registered is useful for identifying newcomers to projects but I can see views on total edit count...
It's a useful indicator of what the user does, but it can be taken as heirarchically-indicating too, which is worrisome.
Might be nice to have some sort of background process churn over your edits and create tags based on what you've done for real. But.... that sounds hard. ;)
Prioritization and scheduling of this bug is tracked on Mingle card https://wikimedia.mingle.thoughtworks.com/projects/mobile/cards/1308
I'm not sure what would cause someone to be named a new user, needless to say, it currently doesn't seem to be recognizing new users well, until we fix that, I'd say it makes sense to substitute "This is a new user" to "BUREAUCRAT, CODER, IMPORTER, ADMINISTRATOR." Plus, a "prolific contributor" especially can be a redundant label considering how I can draw my own conclusion looking at their edit figures and time spent on WP. If those figures aren't making people read then we'd need to find another way to. In the case of new editors, I can see the value of letting people know that fact and reminding peeps not to bite these editors.
(In reply to comment #4) > In the case of new editors, I can see the value of letting people know that > fact and reminding peeps not to bite these editors. Or these people may feel themselves labeled as n00bs.
You've got a point. If they feel offended we should find a less noobish sounding label.
There is general consensus that ADMINISTRATOR, ROLLBACKER are helpful but in the context of profiles they have the unintended side effect of propogating hierarchy. Also some of the titles are pretty jargon heavy. At the same time we do need some insight. Edit stats may not mean a whole lot to readers, they are just numbers. We need to get to more meaningful insights which will require some thinking + extra egg effort Two quick ideas- 1. What if we only called new users out based on their total edit count? Saying - 'This may be a new user, see if they need help' 2. Also we could leave it as is until we introduce the free form field where users express themselves and then turn this off?
I've captured the gist of this a story in Mingle since this is a feature enhancement request: https://wikimedia.mingle.thoughtworks.com/projects/mobile/cards/1321 I leave it to you guys and Kenan to flesh this out into a proper user story.
(In reply to comment #7) > There is general consensus that ADMINISTRATOR, ROLLBACKER are helpful but in > the context of profiles they have the unintended side effect of propogating > hierarchy. Also some of the titles are pretty jargon heavy. > > At the same time we do need some insight. Edit stats may not mean a whole lot > to readers, they are just numbers. We need to get to more meaningful insights > which will require some thinking + extra egg effort > It's not about what they mean to readers - that's not the problem here. The problem is that they are a wholly inadequate heuristic inside and outside the editing community. I add 50,000 bytes of text to an article. I solve a really tricky inter-user dispute. I fix a typo. All of these things are one edit, and the use of editcount as a heuristic simultaneously undervalues and overvalues contributors without providing any actual detail as to what they do, how good they are at it, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editcountitis may be a useful read. > > Two quick ideas- > > 1. What if we only called new users out based on their total edit count? > Saying - 'This may be a new user, see if they need help' > See above re 'editcount is not a useful heuristic' > 2. Also we could leave it as is until we introduce the free form field > where users express themselves and then turn this off?
This has now been removed. Instead there is a smaller less prominent footer which includes this information but makes no assessment about the editor.
