Problem: Nowadays it is common for parseltongues to like, comment, rate and share content. These forms of interaction are essential for motivating people to contribute content on the Internet. But apart from the "thank you" function, there are no features in the Wikimedia projects that enable contemporary social interaction and feedback about content.
Who would benefit: People who feel motivated by likes, comments and sharing functions to contribute content.
Proposed solution: Which functions might be possible and useful would have to be discussed. The following functions could e.g. be considered:
A share button with which articles and multimedia files can be shared via email, messenger or in social media etc.
A like button for articles and multimedia files
A comment function for multimedia files that can be used to give personal comments on the content (in addition to the discussion page, which is used to improve the content).
Isn't this the purpose of user talk pages? :) In addition, Wikimedia projects are not social media sites, so I am not a big fan of adding functions that turn Wikimedia sites more social media site-like. Share buttons (provided by social networking sites) are also a privacy concern (read nightmare) to me. H78c67c (talk) 02:29, 25 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Your claim that "These forms of interaction are essential for motivating people to contribute content on the Internet" might be true for some web sites, such as Instagram. However, Wikipedia has had huge amounts of contribution from a huge number of people without the features you listed, so clearly they are not needed for motivating people to keep contributing to Wikipedia. For me personally, these features would just add noise. Silver hr (talk) 00:45, 1 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose I don't think that wikimedia should turn into a social network. This creates the wrong incentive for users and I think this will impact user experience negatively as a whole. Martinkunev (talk) 20:30, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose We already have issues with people seeing Wikipedia as a social media site by adding needless personal commentary, not to mention vandalism. Neutral A "Share" button may be handy, but mostly as a shortcut to copy to clipboard for use as a reference. Jaguar83 (talk) 23:35, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I support the "Like" button in principle, but not as something comparable to social media. Thanks and barnstars are good, but are pretty hard to miss and overall I think quite rare to receive. An anonymous, easy-to-find, and quick equivalent, I think, would see much more engagement and create a much friendlier community for editors. Likes on the articles themselves seem pretty pointless to me, though. I oppose big social media "Share" buttons as they tend to compromise user privacy and I oppose the comments on articles and files - take a look at Wikia's comments for how they tend to turn out. // Lollipoplollipoplollipop :: talk03:28, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Wikis is a different target audience and social website influence should be reduced, not increased. The WikiLove stuff implementation is bad enough. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK ▎enWiki22:35, 10 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support I sure would like to see a more 'user friendly' way of communicating with people who remove our additions and edits - this system is so NOT 'user-friendly'! One (myself included) gives up instead of even trying to provide proper supporting explanations for edits which stem from sources which are not from the normal beaten path (I shall give you an example: I belong to the descendants of several royal bloodlines. The wives in one branch of my family have catalogued events in what is called 'The Great Book of the Family' which contains centuries of events, details, dates of births, marriages, burials and more - it is extremely accurate and even answers that which we do not know about in many sources today. . . When I tried to make an edit on a biography profile of one of my royal ancestors using this rare hand-written historical record, my edit was removed and the arguments which I was given did not hold a pail of water while the person relied on misinformation which is repeated time and time again today and is simply not correct.. . . So, how do you handle something like this ...really. . .). Aside this, the 'sidebar' system does NOT work and the discussion forums suck - we need something BETTER than this! We need a BETTER means to communicate where those who remove our work can receive an E-mail from us (more discreetly) and this would contribute to reduce the level of stupidity I see in here where some 'monitors' (for lack of a better word) resort to threats when this is off-the-charts and highly unjustified as well as DAMAGING to the person complaining as oppositions are oft made with such venom it is damaging to many of those who try to work sensibly in here. FAR TOO MANY IN HERE ARE ON A POWER TRIP which has no place here... I see this happen with people who do NOT have the proper background nor education necessary to make such decisions while they arbitrarily go and make changes 'at will' and remove very valuable information. Aside this, I even noted some SLANDEROUS comments in the profile of a scientist who is a relative of mine (Personal 'opinion' in biographies here has no place either...) and while I pointed out this slanderous comment, NO ONE GOT BACK TO ME to tell me it would be removed! Wikipedia is peddling misinformation and slanderous comments which can be damaging to living human beings while there is NO JUSTIFICATION NOR MERIT FOR THIS! Some in here ought to be sued for such garbage posted with the highest wanton disregard. It is hard to 'navigate' and manage things in here and I oft decide instead to keep my material to publish in my own books later. . . The platforms in here need to IMPROVE. . . There also needs to a EASILY-ACCESSIBLE COURSE on HOW TO WORK WITHIN WIKIPEDIA - WITH explanations for ALL the codes, shortcuts, processes, etc., etc. - and this should be done using videos as well. . . —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RoyalSnowbird (talk) 09:16, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral I agree with the not a social network messages, and don't agree with the proposed solution, but I like the problem statement. This is what eg WikiLove aims to solve. Some people are motivated more by appreciation for their work. We use good articles / featured articles / barnstars for this mostly. But exploring more ways to make editors feel appreciated is certainly worth looking into, but I'm not sure likes/comments/sharing is quite the answer. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:22, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose any sort of embedding of social media buttons, which are just free advertisement for the companies along with the ability for them to collect information from us. — Bilorv (talk) 23:02, 12 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support I do find that sometimes wiki articles are too one-sided, or too oriented to a country that the creator is from, or fails to address criticism to the subject. What I do like about social media is that you get brutally honest opinions, which would be useful to improve wiki. Something like a plugin to corresponding topic in social media would be interesting. Sentiment analysis would be another side benefit. Wolfmartyn (talk) 14:51, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose It will destroy Wikipedia as it would be lots of POV-pushing and meatpuppetry as there would be "wars" for who got more likes. Popular edits that are not neutral can get lot of likes while unpopular edits that are neutral will get nothing, disenfranchising people that tried to edit in a neutral way. Especially in highly polarizing article, this could reward bad behaviors but punish good behaviors. SunDawn (talk) 03:40, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Such social features can be abused too easily and would in turn not bring much positive impact on encouraging editors. The issues with each individual function are:
using sockpuppets to manipulate "like" count to discourage an editor
spam or off-topic/personal attack messages in comments section (present in talk pages, but since talk pages are usually less visible to readers the impact is smaller)
Neutral The thanks are enough in my opinion. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 19:55, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
Strong oppose I don't think that wikimedia should turn into a social network. This creates the wrong incentive for users and I think this will impact user experience negatively as a whole. Martinkunev (talk) 20:30, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
Oppose as per my comment. Silver hr (talk) 21:36, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
Strong support --Ciao • Bestoernesto • ✉ 04:41, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
Support share button; 
Comment @Libcub: You can already share those articles by using their URLs. This share button wouldn't improve Wikipedia either way. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 12:29, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
Weak support I think the share button may be helpful, but that's about it. This isn't a social media site. Thanks, EDG 543 (message me) 15:11, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
