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

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Erik Moeller, 29/10/2011 00:16:
 > In addition to English Wikipedia, WikiLove has been enabled [...] 
MediaWiki.org and Commons.

Perhaps we can even change the definition on 
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WikiLove , currently «extension 
designed to promote the spread of WikiLove within Wikipedia».

Liam Wyatt, 29/10/2011 04:38:
> Seriously though... in Wikilove can't the logo (the heart) and all of the
> individual awards (barnstars, food, animals) be changed on a per-wiki basis?

I don't know the icon (I think not), but the rest is obviously 
configurable. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WikiLove#How_to_customize

> So if there's an icon that's more culturally appropriate in a different
> language then it can be changed to that instead. If I recall correctly, the
> Burmese Wikipedia uses "lotuses" (rather than barnstars) and the French
> Wikipedia uses laurel wreaths. In those cases, for example, not only can
> those awards be used instead of barnstars but a little icon of a lotus or a
> laurel wreath could easily be used instead of a pink heart icon.
>
> The point being that "leaving friendly messages with cute invented awards on
> talkpages" is not an en.wp or American specific activity - most (all?) of
> the different language wikis have something equivalent. All the WikiLove
> tool does is make it easier to do and if the local community wants to use it
> but wants to change the way the tool looks/feels then I don't think there's
> any problem with that.

Basically yes, although I didn't check whether local implementations 
actually localised the extension; sometimes we have blind 
implementations of en.wiki concepts (which are often the default even in 
MediaWiki) because localisers are not bold/industrious enough. I don't 
think the extension's aim is to export kittens, beer (!) and other 
unknown amenities to all communities. ;-)

Nemo