[Foundation-l] On certain shallow, American-centered, foolish software initiatives backed by WMF

[Teofilo]

The WMF has been recently backing softwares that are a breach of
"Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not" (1). Recently a totally stupid pink
heart was added to user talk pages, making people believe it is
Valentine Day everyday, with the result that Wikipedia is now being
used as a social network or a game. For example see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Alleahruiz .

This sort of software enhances shallow relationships between people.
That might be fine for American people or americanized people but
everybody in the world is not American or Americanized or belonging to
a culture close to that one. I believe that in this world some people
value something else than shallow relationships based on US-centered
cultural codes such as a pink heart, for example trusting
relationships based on working together in the long term, using true
words really felt rather than just picking an icon on a game
interface.

Do you know that the pink heart tool was imposed on Wikimedia COmmons
by the English speaking community without consulting other language
communities ?

Now we are seeing the appearance of a feedback tool on the English
Wikipedia ? How long are the non-English Wikipedias going to be free
from this new stupid tool which has nothing to do with writing an
encyclopaedia ?

Where is the usability when adding new features at a confusing hurried rythm ?

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NOT#Wikipedia_is_not_a_blog.2C_webspace_provider.2C_social_network.2C_or_memorial_site