Topic on Talk:WikiLove

Should disabling the feature go both ways?

9
Eloquence (talkcontribs)

I would suggest that when the feature is disabled, I can't award or receive WikiLove. It seems fairly likely that the vast majority of editors who disable it don't want to receive WikiLove messages either. Thoughts?

Jorm (WMF) (talkcontribs)

I wonder if that wouldn't be a confusing user experience for some people - especially people who don't know that it can be disabled.

You get used to the idea that the heart button is there for "people", and then, actually, you start to recognize "people" by the heart button. And then suddenly some people don't have hearts? That might be weird.

Eloquence (talkcontribs)

Yeah, it would be weird -- but we could make it obvious by having the heart icon in a disabled state, and a tooltip saying "this editor has disabled WikiLove" or something to that effect. Which might be a useful cue, in any event.

Cbrown1023 (talkcontribs)

I think either options have merit. However, at its most basic level, WikiLove is just an easier way to post something nice to someone's talk page. By that logic, you really shouldn't let people say "no, I don't want people to post to my talk page with this" anymore than they could stop people from posting barnstars to their talk page before. Does that make sense? That would just be going with the status quo though, you might decide that it's a better situation all around if people were able to disable it if they chose to.

Amire80 (talkcontribs)

It should go both ways, but as separate preferences. In fact, it may be more important to have an option not to receive wikilove, because there are some users who declared their userpages "barnstar-free zones".

Eloquence (talkcontribs)

I can think of a couple of scenarios where a user might want to opt out separately from either sending or receiving:

  • A user only likes one WikiLove feature (e.g. "Make Your Own"), but dislikes most others and therefore doesn't want to receive WikiLove messages.
  • A user dislikes the WikiLove submission interface, but doesn't mind receiving the appreciation from others.

I'm not sure either of those are common enough to justify two separate checkboxes. Are there others?

Jorm (WMF) (talkcontribs)

I would prefer to have as few preferences as possible.

It seems to me that being able to give wikilove and yet not receive (or vice versa) is akin to having one's cake and eating it, too.

😂 (talkcontribs)

Fewer preferences is always a good thing.

SilkTork (talkcontribs)

I just disabled it. But that was because it was crowding my already large number of tabs. I am very much in favour of sending positive messages to people, and enjoy receiving positive messages. That someone disables the tab doesn't at all imply they are against either sending or receiving messages of support! While tab crowding may be one reason for disabling, another may be because the editor prefers to communicate via personal messages than by templates. We are all individuals, and our motives and pleasures are subtle and varied. SilkTork 08:42, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

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