Usability Yes. Social Features, Uh-Oh.

• No to reputation rating, unless we want to see its ravage when applied in the inclusionists-deletionists tensions.
• No to social networking, we don't need another myspace and the like even if some user page look like shrines dedicated to their respective ego.
• Yes, to anything that increase accessibility & usability.
• Missing point is the human factor. Even the best softwares & most didactic tutorials can't replace a more experienced editor assisting a new one in its edits. --KrebMarkt 11:23, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

It is nice to post conclusions.. what are the arguments for them. As they are non obvious and not universally shared.. there is already reputation rating.. how else would you call the "barnstars"? When you say that we do not need another "myspace" it should be clear that any of the social networks do not really work for our projects. They do not distinguish for one the different Wikimedia projects or its languages.

When we work on social networks, we can define roles that makes sense to us, to our practice. Consequently I think you should reassess your point of view. Thanks,

I think barnstars are an interesting lesson. They make people feel warm and fuzzy, but they amount to a personal message. And honestly, they have been devalued. I've seen people get barnstars for producing 3 Featured Articles, and then I've seen people get barnstars for reverting an article. I've seen great editors get barnstars from respected people, and I've seen cabals throw barnstars at each other every time they "win" a battle.

Anything we do to reward people and build that sense of social camaraderie... it needs to have some objective basis. It needs to have some kind of guideline. Otherwise the awards don't mean as much, and they can even become a way to further a battle between factions.

That's why it's a dangerous path to walk down.

I have the right to raise my skepticism on social networking knowing how much time some editors spent fine tuning their user pages.

For "Barnstar" there is no direct relationship between quality of your contributions and the numbers of barnstars you received. I had the very dubious honor to give a first barnstar to an editor who counted 2 FL, 5 GA & 13 DYK. Barstars are useful if people care of their fellow editors which is something that can't be decreed.

For reputation system based on editors rating, it won't work because it will be biased by ideological stance inclusionist/deletionist and personal feuds.

I will mitigate my previous post: Yes there will be benefit from "social networks" but i believe the benefit for effort ratio isn't worth the enthusiasm around it. Its usefulness won't be worth the hype around it.

Sorry i'm an unbeliever on the social network subject.