Talk:User icons

The page should highlight somewhere that this is a highly controversial proposal. For instance, it.wiki discussed it many times in the last few years and it was always rejected. I'm sure other wikis had the same discussions with identical result. --Nemo 16:48, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Lots of things are controversial on one wiki and less controversial on others, so I wouldn't assume it's universally controversial. While I agree with you that it's important to note if some communities have discussed features in the past, Wikimedia features engineering is working quite a bit that could be considered controversial in some way, so it's not like this document is dramatically more or less controversial than say, the idea of using avatars in Flow. To be totally honest, whether something is controversial among Wikipedians has little to do with whether it's a potentially beneficial addition from a user experience design perspective. Steven Walling (WMF) &bull; talk   19:54, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Actually this may be considered worse than avatars because it can give false ideas on the social structure of the wikis. Anyway, I'm just assuming that when considering something you'll incorporate past experiences and discussions in your considerations; otherwise you'll waste the precious resource which our wikis' history is, only to repeat the same patterns over and over. --Nemo 22:16, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree in distinguishing bot edits with an icon, or even unregistered users. But absolutely not sysops or experienced users. It could give the idea "that user is more important than the other one". --Superchilum (talk) 13:34, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Strongly oppose

 * I strongly oppose the proposal. We risk to create "first class"/"second class" users. When we edit the main mainspace we are all the same: no differences (except some rare, technical cases). Therefore: no differences, no different color, IMHO. --Lucas (talk) 20:53, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree with Lucas. --Daniele Pugliesi (talk) 15:45, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Alternative to "experienced editor" icon
As an example, the whole "experienced editor" icon proposal doesn't have any concrete use-case, but it's easy to find better ideas by looking at our wikis' history. A valid use-case is "As a user, I want to easily find an administrator to contact directly when I need one for an administrative action". Well, our wikis (and in particular Commons I think, but also e.g. zh.wiki) have used for years Toolserver tools like ActiveUsers (now broken) and more recently stewardry. Integrating in core (maybe even in Special:ListAdmins) such a feature, allowing users to immediately find an online/active sysop/whatever, would surely be (more) useful. Don't ignore the past disussions and the years of experience of the communities of people working daily on our projects, you won't find in individual minds any better resource than this collective wisdom. --Nemo 08:35, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Oppose
Many wikis have systems as patrolled revisions (and, consequently, autopatrolled rights to certain flags) which sensibly speed up RC patrolling activity without creating "class distinctions": the risk, in my opinion, is to give the impression that certain users are more equal than others or even that their vote/opinion/advice counts more than other users'. Let us remember that administrators act as administrators only when using one of their rights (i.e.: deletions, block, etc) or in other selected occasions, e.g. when (some wikis even give this function to "simple" users) a RfD has to be closed and the verdict must be applied. We can easily see that there is no point in marking as "admin" this kind of edits, as they are undoubtedly made by an admin. In any other case, a sysop is a user, nothing more, and his advice shall be regarded only as an experienced user's advice, which can be distinguished from an inexperienced user's quite easily, since usually inexperienced users don't give advice :) The only use I could actually see for this kind of badge is while RC patrolling: I need a block to be performed ASAP, so I look for the magic icon and it's done. Actually, many wikis have other systems to request blocks and speedy deletions, and anyway there are other ways to find a sysop in a few seconds. As for new users, one can usually recognize them by the way they contribute and comment. Even in this case, though, there would be no need to distinguish them during a talk: if they bring valid points to the discussion these points shall be taken into considerations, regardless of their origin, on the other hand, if their comment it does not reveal important aspects or carry relevant opinions (e.g. if a certain opinion has already been pointed out and it needs no further development) it can be "ignored" or counted simply as a "support", regardless, again, of its origin. The only true effect of this proposal would be to give the impression that the wiki Project runs on a system of peerage and to submerge administrators with questions which should be asked at the help desk or at the village pump (many new users think admins are some kind of omniscient forum moderator). By the way, local policies on bots often require them to be already recognizable as such, e.g. by including in their username the term "bot"; moreover, their edits are already marked with a "b". That's quite all, folks :) --Vodka Martini (talk) 16:27, 21 March 2013 (UTC)