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Incoming flood of incorrect Android app edits on Wikidata tagged with #suggestededit-add 1.0
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Description

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges?hidebots=1&hidecategorization=1&tagfilter=android+app+edit&limit=500&days=30&enhanced=1&urlversion=2 is currently being flooded with incorrect edits seeming to originate from the Android app edit with #suggestededit-add 1.0 in the description. Can't find any announcement or anything. First noticed at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Project_chat#suggestededit-add_1.0

I'm all for new features, but this one I had to rollback edits like https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q1186227&diff=prev&oldid=976820196 and the suggested edits like https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q2597930&type=revision&diff=976067873&oldid=850275235 don't even follow https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:Description .

Please disable the feature ASAP and just enable it on test first so it can be properly tested.

Event Timeline

Hi @Multichill - this feature has been active for several months, and has already undergone extensive testing. It seems like the vast majority of edits you have reverted were done by one user, Guccio G., who will now lose access to the feature because their edits have been reverted.

As you can see from this chart, the revert rate of Wikidata descriptions added through the Suggested Edits feature is far lower than the background rate:

Screen Shot 2019-07-09 at 23.58.38.png (966×2 px, 396 KB)

We appreciate your point about the capitalisation on the other edit you mention, and have spoken with @Lydia_Pintscher about the best way to remedy this.

I should also mention that Roy17's second interpretation is correct: the feature displays articles that do not have a Wikidata description, and asks users to write their own description based on the article. So in this case, Leofreitasa has unfortunately misinterpreted the article when writing a description: https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?diff=976058660

@Multichill: Here's where we posted back when we announced things. Is there anywhere in particular you'd expect this to be posted where it hasn't been so we can include it next time?

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Project_chat/Archive/2019/03#Edit_action_feed_(Android_app) (the number of required edits has been lowered since)
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2019/09
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2019/18

Thanks for this @Bencemac - I'll add a little more information on the ticket you mention.

You should probably write a project page/documentation that explains what "#suggestededit-add 1.0" in the summary means, maybe at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Suggestededit-add_1.0 or https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:App for example, and link to it in the summary.

It's not a problem to find users' genuine mistakes, but it becomes worrisome when mistakes seem to come from something generated by machines, and there was no explanation in the whole site about "#suggestededit-add 1.0".

Thank you for the suggestion @Roy17 - I will do that.

I've made a FAQ-style page answering the questions we've received, here: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Suggestededit-add_1.0

Closing this ticket out. The revert rate has gone back to 0% after Guccio G. lost access to the feature, and we are once again advertising the feature in Tech News (to go out 15 July), and linking to the new FAQ in the next Wikidata newsletter. Thank you for sharing your concerns @Multichill and @Roy17.

The remaining suggestion to notify users of Wikidata capitalisation rules is documented in T226446 and will be taken care of.

Screen Shot 2019-07-14 at 21.01.39.png (918×1 px, 400 KB)

Thanks for having a look at this @Charlotte . I just opened up the recent changes and I still see quite a few users like https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Ablazquezg adding descriptions with capitals. How does the app respond to an abuse filter warning?

@Multichill We will be adding the request to lowercase initial letters, per T226446, in our next minor release. So right now users don't necessarily know they're doing something incorrect, and their keyboards likely capitalise the first letter by default, so it's also not necessarily a conscious choice they're making to be abusive. We do know this is an issue for the Wikidata community, though, and are taking steps to warn the new editors asap. Thanks for your patience!

Edited to add: @Dbrant pointed out that the app does respond to abusefilter warnings by showing an error message to users. Though for the reasons mentioned above I'm not entirely sure that these edits quite fall under the rubric of abuse.