para wrote:
The last time this was discussed*, there were some interesting proposals for more descriptive icons, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Thebainer/thumbtest. Some of the icons, though maybe not these specific versions, are well known around the world as "more information". Time to move forward and implement one in MediaWiki?
I don't want to sound anti-icons, but...
Icons and pictograms are used on customer appliances sometimes for reason of space, but another reason is that they allow the manufacturer to sell the same device in multiple areas with different languages.
European driving signs tend to use pictograms for things that US driving signs use plain English for. One reason is that European driving signs are meant for an international audience - the truck driver from Italy should not have to scratch his head to understand a "begin freeway" sign in Germany, while US signs assume the driver reads some English.
Driving signs are learned for the driving test. But the strange pictograms in many devices and software are just a pain. There are lots of programs in which I cannot figure out the user interface, and I'm a computer scientist!
MediaWiki is fully internationalized. We can show a different user interface in each language. "Crédit photo" in French, "Photo credits" in English, are perfectly understood by everybody. Strange pictograms aren't.