Steven, it sounds like you're proposing we allow for user customizable
photo avatars.
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*Jared Zimmerman * \\ Director of User Experience \\ Wikimedia
Foundation
M : +1 415 609 4043 | : @JaredZimmerman<https://twitter.com/JaredZimmerman>
On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 3:11 PM, Steven Walling <swalling(a)wikimedia.org>wrote;wrote:
On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 2:52 PM, May Tee-Galloway <mgalloway(a)wikimedia.org
wrote:
The smiling registered user icon might seem like
a random idea but it
isn't. Reason we decided to go with a more uplifting face is to help make
WP a friendlier environment (yes small, but still a step towards
somewhere). We want people to assume good faith on other users' actions but
that is alot of times harder than it sounds. When someone makes an edit
that you might disagree with and when you make an effort to find out who
this user is, you are greeted first with a smiley and then a name,
reminding you this is a person of emotion, be nice!
I am fully in agreement with your goal, but I think this is just a wrong
way to go about it. It is just too obvious and weak a method for
engendering a nicer community.
People are nice to each other when they have empathy. People have
empathy for each other when A) they know who someone is B) are able to put
themselves in their shoes. I am not able to empathize with a generic smiley
face. I'm able to empathize with a unique individual. So I think the smiley
face icon both defies the normal design pattern here and doesn't accomplish
the intended goal.
This is similar the exhortation to "Be nice!" in the Flow input area.
Wikipedia editors (new and old) are very smart people. They are just as
likely to feel talked down to and insulted by cutesy instructions like
this, and may in fact be meaner in reaction to it ("You can't tell _me_ how
to talk to people."). We can collectively think of more effective ways of
creating more friendly discussion spaces and creating empathy in general.
--
Steven Walling,
Product Manager
https://wikimediafoundation.org/
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