Hey All, This new feature has caused a bit of flack on English Wikipedia; which gives me a bit of a platform to bring up some issues that have been rolling round in my brain recently. A lot of the criticism on Wiki has been overly harsh - so I want to try some constructive feedback here on the mailing list :) Firstly, congrats to the developers on putting together a nice, easy to use tool. It's not to my taste (FWIW) but there is effort and care put into the tool - and whatever anyone says or moans; kudos for that. I'd *love *to see those involved consider tweaking and improving the Wiki interface/theme/UI to make it more modern and nice :) The second point to make is that this is also a somewhat "misguided" tool. It has been pitched as a way to promote inter-editor friendship and increase editor retention. The issue here, of course, is that WikiLove does not really address the problem that affects new editors (or experienced editors) and drives them away. Those problems are to do with editor interaction, poisonous atmosphere, lack of communication - but not the sort that can be solved by slapping a "template" on the page. No, that problem is really only solvable by going the other way - to make a determined effort to leave personal and thoughtful messages (I hope I am not preaching here; I make a huge effort to do this myself). The way that this ended up appearing to be pitched as a "golden solution" has not gone down too well because it appears as if the developers are not "getting" the problem (when actually I am certain they are doing so; and realise this is just one small part in the whole picture). The other problem is that it somewhat undermines and trivialises what a barnstar is. Sure they can be handed out freely as it is - but it does take a small modicum of effort. In my year back editing Wikipedia I have received 7 barnstars from editors for my activities. I specifically recall what they were all for - and behind each is a piece of effort, time or trial that I am extremely proud of. Not least because someone else out there thought "yep, this guy has done a good job here". The point of that somewhat lengthy paragraph is this: trivialising Barnstars removes their current purpose (a relatively difficult to obtain piece of quiet pride). This would be fine if their new "purpose" was as-or-more important. But as mentioned above I don't think it is. Barnstars. But I am getting off topic. The other thing that has grated is this: for the most part us editors appreciate developer attention (and we do not show that enough, sorry). However English Wikipedia is also strongly *independent *and makes its own decisions. Major changes to how the software works, or to the UI (especially if it affects the social infrastructure too) is instantly controversial and should be discussed with the community. Very little discussion ocurrred r.e. rolling this out. For example no trial was offered, no "Request for Comment" was taken to guage community opinion. I know these are our processes and a significant part of the blame lies with the editors - but even so announcement of the feature suddenly seemed to "appear"on-wiki the day before :) (that may not be an accurate picture - but for most that is how it appeared). It was only *after* deployment that is was explained that the extension is amazing customisable on-wiki (a really thoughtful idea. You guys need to write more extensions like this, awesome stuff). So, more miscommunication. This comes to the crux of the issue; I think the feature probably will be accepted by the community, with some tweaking. But communication issues have turned some people heavily against it (mostly, I suspect, because they genuinely feel no one was able to give feedback prior to roll out). I've seen this happen before numerous times - Wiki does something. Or a dev does something. There is miscommunication and people who would probably see eye-to-eye are growling at each other across tables. The established Wiki editors feel put out and the developers feel under-appreciated (did I mention: WikiLove guys!). [Ironically *the same problem* is a big part of the editor retention issue on-wiki] It comes down to a lack of understanding of the processes, attitudes and "languages" involved in both the developer and wiki communities. So the question that this leads me to is this: what can we do to improve communication between these two groups. How can we vocalize the communities thoughts, ideas and independence. How do we get the creativity and versatility of the developers in front of the community. Do we need some sort of group to cross this boundary and focus on smoothing out these hiccups? Fire away :) Tom On 1 July 2011 03:45, Howie Fung <hfung(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: