Wikipedia:Article Feedback/Feedback response guidelines

No formally adopted guidelines exist to guide those editors interacting with the Article Feedback pages on how to respond to different types of potentially problematic feedback. The following is a draft version of a guideline.

For information on how the tools on the Feedback pages work, please see Wikipedia:Article Feedback/Help/Monitors.

This is a draft of the current guidelines. Non-minor changes should have consensus on the talk page.

Featuring and resolving feedback

Featuring

Any feedback which is reasonably actionable, may be useful to the community, is likely to improve the article and at some point is likely to be marked resolved either as done or as rejected (as opposed to unuseful), should be featured. The format of the feedback (such as whether it is all in capitals or not) should not be considered when deciding whether to feature or not.

If a user continually features unhelpful feedback, the community may come to a consensus to ban the user from participating in Article Feedback. Discussions of this nature should take place at the Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents.

Resolving

When feedback is featured a new option, to Mark as resolved appears. Users are encouraged to look through featured feedback and see if they can make the suggested changes (etc) to the article. When the suggested change is completed mark the feedback as resolved (please include the diff)

At the moment, the tool does not allow for unfeatured feedback to be marked as resolved. Feedback should be marked as resolved if it has already been fulfilled (that is, it is already in the article). Feedback should also be marked as resolved if it includes a reasonable suggestion (which would normally meet the conditions for featuring) but is clearly not going to be fulfilled on policy grounds (please also state the policy as a comment when you mark it as resolved).

Marking feedback as un/helpful

Marking feedback as helpful or unhelpful does not affect its appearance, only the percentage shown below the feedback.

Mark feedback as unhelpful if it does not contribute to the development of the article (such as "Justin Bieber is great" or "ksnknck"), but is not abuse and does not warrant hiding.

Mark feedback as helpful (as well as featuring) if it provides one or more specific suggestions on how to improve the article (for example "please add this specific image to the article").

Hiding and unhiding feedback

Hiding is different from simply reverting, it is more akin to a revision deletion. Only monitors (editors in the adminstrator, reviewer and rollbacker user groups) are able to hide feedback and see feedback once hidden. Generally, only the following should be hidden:

H1 Copyright violations.

H2 Insulting, degrading, or offensive material, including personal attacks directed at specific editors or Wikipedia editors in general (this criterion should be interpreted liberally).

H3 Purely disruptive material that is of little or no relevance or merit to the project. This includes nonsensical text (such as aksnksckdjdvfpqsk), allegations, harassment, grossly inappropriate threats or attacks, browser-crashing or malicious HTML or CSS, shock or phishing submissions, and spam links (which are not related to the article).

H4 Personal information not serious enough to be oversighted (such as email address, which do not include real names or other identifiable material).

H5 BLP violations which are not serious enough to be oversighted.

H6 Non-contentious housekeeping including correction of clear and obvious unintended mistakes in previous hides, changes to hides based upon communal discussion and clear consensus, adding information to the notes.

H7 Ignore all rules. Monitors are encouraged to use their own judgement and discretion when assessing whether a submission should be hidden or not. If you are unsure, mark it as abuse, as this filter will usually be viewed by other monitors, or hide it and leave an explanatory reason.

Monitors are strongly advised to make reference to the above reasons by adding a note when prompted. They are anchored as H#, for example WP:AFT5G#H2.

The ability to hide feedback is inherited from other user permissions. If an editor is hiding feedback inappropriately, and the issue cannot be resolved through discussion, the ability to hide feedback may be removed using the normal process for removing the parent right that is granting the ability to hide. In the case of the reviewer or rollback right, any admin may remove the right, though it may still be prudent to start a discussion at a relevant noticeboard such as at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents.

Feedback submitters, if you believe your feedback has been hidden incorrectly, please leave a message at the AFT5 noticeboard.

Requesting oversight

According to the usual oversight policy, Oversight should be requested on feedback which contains non-public personal information, such as phone numbers, home addresses, workplaces, schools or identities of pseudonymous or anonymous individuals who have not made their identity public. This includes hiding the IP data of editors who accidentally logged out and thus inadvertently revealed their own IP addresses. Suppression is a tool of first resort in removing this information

Email addresses should be hidden, but Oversight should not generally be requested unless the email address contains identifiable information.

If in doubt it is better to request Oversight and leave the decision up to the Oversighter, rather than not request it and have potentially problematic information stay live.

Once a feedback submission has its initial Oversight request declined, Oversight should not be re-requested. If a monitor feels that it should have been Oversighted they may re-request Oversight using the tool leaving a detailed reason.

Conflict of interest

In general, an editor should not use any auto/confirmed (for example, featuring feedback) or monitor (for example, unhiding feedback) tools on feedback they submit. With the exception that monitors are permitted to hide feedback they submitted with the account they use to hide it.

Wheel warring

The requirements listed at WP:Adminstrators#Reinstating a reverted action ("Wheel warring") are applied to all actions by monitors (that is the word "administrator" is replaced by "monitor").

In general, if a monitor has already reversed a monitor action (for example, hiding feedback), there is very rarely any valid reason for the original or another administrator to reinstate the same or similar action again without clear discussion leading to a consensus decision. Discussion of this sort should take place on the the AFT5 noticeboard.

Sanctions will vary depending on whether the users involved are admins or reviewers/rollbackers. Admins are subject to the conditions at WP:WHEEL, so usually in an immediate Request for Arbitration. Reviewers and rollbackers may have these rights removed by an uninvolved admin; whether removal comes before or after discussion at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents would depend on the extent of the wheel-warring.