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?
* <http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.commons/2566>
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.