Thanks for taking the time to report this!

Could you describe which exact and well-defined problem you would like to solve? Tasks should describe a well-defined problem instead of offering one potential solution, also see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_report_a_bug :)

Let's see what we have:

• There are Talk/Discussion pages for pages.
• At least the Beta section of the User preferences provide links to discussion pages, see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures
• When you are in VisualEditor, there is a Help button in the top bar with a "Leave feedback" link.

Regarding the mention of Phabricator, feedback is way more than bug reports or enhancement requests which are handled in Phabricator.

It feels like there are many feedback channels currently and to me, consolidation might be a better idea than adding another one. (Technically) creating more feedback channels is not helpful if (socially) no-one handles that amount of feedback.

VisualEditor uses mediawiki.feedback, which is theoretically available for use anywhere in MediaWiki.

This is an interesting idea, although its implementation in Wikimedia would not be trivial at all. I mean, offering the Feedback button is simple, capturing environmental data is technically doable as well, but handling efficiently the feedback received goes beyond technology and implies resources to respond. Then again, if we have the feature ready, we can always enable it selectively in wikis (i.e. let's start with mediawiki.org, then small wiki with very engaged communities, etc.

First of all, let's agree on the scope: logged in users willing to report a problem in a MediaWiki page.

What data can we obtain automatically? Username, URL, what else? Google has a similar feature (I used it in Google Plus to report problems/suggestions) and they offer you the possibility taking a screenshot and attach it automatically.

What data should we ask the user to introduce manually? There is the evident description field. Title sounds evident too, but maybe it could be pre-filled and editable optionally. We could offer a dropdown with basic options to classify to problem, and some options could offer already a reply via JavaScript, before submitting more info. For instance:

Option: "There is a problem with the content of this page"
Instant reply: Please click <link>Edit</link> to fix the problem directly in this page, or explain what could be improved in its related <link>Discussion</link> page."

In fact, maybe the dropdown menu should be the one and only response after clicking the magic Feedback button, offering the different paths for different types of feedback. Let's continue on the "Report a software problem" here.

Once we have a bunch of automatic and manual data collected, it would be great to convert that in a Phabricator task, associated with the project related to the wiki where this feedback is being sent, and optionally to other tags added depending on the dropdown option selected. Phabricator's Conduit API should allow to do this if the user has an account in Phabricator.

Probably these users don't have an account yet, but since they have already a Wikimedia account, perhaps getting one almost on the fly would not be that difficult and disruptive? Anyway, these are details at this point. The main principle would be that anybody providing feedback should also provide the means to follow up the report and be reachable for questions.

In fact, should this task be merged with T29852: Wikimedia wikis need better issue reporting system?

Only if people agreed that providing "feedback" is the same as "issue reporting". And I doubt... :)

None of the five iterations of the Article Feedback tool wound up being successful, at least as far as content goes. It generated exponentially more useless data than useful. Bug reporting is a different story, a lot of the newer extensions out there do have links to leave feedback in some particular place.

https://ru.wikinews.org/wiki/%D0%A3%D1%87%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B0:Gryllida/js/feedbackstuff.js/doc is a javascript gadget to a similar effect. It adds a 'feedback' link next to the "username/prefs/beta/log out" menu.

I would like to suggest something like this written in a nicer ui toolkit if someone has the time to write and maintain it or show me how to do it.

Probably the same can be done in a box tucked away in a sidebar in an extension without relying on javascript.