Preamble

The "Thank you" feature is a very cool feature allowing to maintain a more cordial atmosphere.

It's provided by this extension:

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Thanks

At the moment:

1. it works only if you are logged-in
2. it is only shown if you are logged-in

This task wants to re-discuss the point n. 2.

Description of the issue

Anonymous users might be attracted by a "Thank" button, but at the moment they don't see this feature. It is hidden, like it does not exist.

This is a missed opportunity for the Growth-Team to bring these users inside Wikipedia: some visitors may want to thank the work of others and, therefore, they may be interested in joining Wikipedia to do that and, because it seems they already value the work of others, there are lot of chances that they are interested in further contribute constructively once registered.

Also, we know that the "Thank" button is shown only in certain pages a little "niche", so if users reach these sections, they are also most likely curious and active and therefore they are even more potentially positive contributors to be invited to register.

Look this desktop page as anonymous user:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Free_software&diff=1094618226&oldid=1094618079

At the moment you don't know that the "Thank you" feature exists

Moreover, look at the Special:Thanks page as anonymous user:

At the moment you see an unfriendly red message. It does not try to make you want to continue with login or registration to then be able to thank.

Proposed solution

1. the Thank button should be shown to everybody (at least from diff pages) (→ instead of having Thank button hidden)
2. if you are not logged-in, it should invite you to login/register (→ instead of unfriendly red error messages etc.)
3. if you are logged-in but you do not have enough permissions to Thank, there should be a friendly warning message, a bit proactive to understand how to fix it, for example: "You cannot say Thank you now. Try doing some constructive contributions to unlock this feature." or something similar (→ instead of having Thank button hidden)
   • note: it is beyond the scope of this task to discuss the policies for deactivating or activating the "Thank" button on a wiki but, in general, it is not a mistake to just say that you should do "more constructive contributions" before being able to use that. Whatever manual or automagic approval quest to activate the Thank button on your wiki can stay out of this task for now.