Usability Yes. Social Features, Uh-Oh.

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.