On their day off, two wiki hackers recently made a neat little gadget for sharing the love: the WikiLove gadget. It lets you give out barnstars, kittens, brownies, cookies and more, with just a few clicks. No edit window, no messy wikicode.
The best feature is one that doesn't jump out as important at first: the option to automatically send an email to the recipient, letting them know about the WikiLove you've shared with them. Barnstars, in particular, are powerful symbols of appreciation in the Wikipedia community, and at first glance you might think that making it easier to give them out would cheapen them. But what I've found in using it over the last few weeks is just the opposite: the gift of a barnstar becomes more personal and powerful, because the automated email--more often than not--becomes the beginning of a conversation, the kind of thing that usually wouldn't happen in the public space of a talk page.
So go, spread the WikiLove!
a good weekend project -- sharing a little wikilove!
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