[Foundation-l] What is on the back of the logo?

[Tzu-Chiang Liou]

Just my 2 cents, since we had experienced similar discussion last year  
in Wikimania 2007.

First of all, for the Chinese character, though it did look like the  
word "ancestor" in Chinese but the shape is in fact a little bit  
different.

The character on logo is 10 stroke (1) but the character for ancestor  
is 9 stroke (2). The meaning of (1) is good or beautiful (it seems  
also the name of a county in ancient China) while (2) is ancestor.

(1) http://www.chinese-tools.com/jdd/public/char/9000/8534.gif
(2) http://www.chinese-tools.com/jdd/public/char/9000/8043.gif

And (1) is rarely used today compares to (2), either from personal  
experience or according to google (191,000 vs 61,600,000).

Though most of us thought it might be a beautiful mistake that the  
original designer used the wrong character on logo, we could not  
confirm that since it seems no one knows who was the designer. So we  
stick on the original design.

What I want to say is that, just like Guillaume Paumier mentioned,  
there'll be no official answer for this question. I also think there's  
no such thing as the correct version, just like the articles on  
wikipedia, the logo came from the community and should follow the same  
spirit, which means it should be "editable" or "evolutionary".

On the other hand, consider the fact that most people are familiar  
with the original logo, I think it has done pretty well for it's  
purpose. A 3D version is good but it should do more than just  
identification? then we might need to discuss about the primary reason  
about why we need a 3D version?

For instance, the wiki-ball in Wikimania 2007 was served as souvenir,  
it made us easier to design the "dark side" of the ball (the point was  
entertaining :P). However, if we want to make an "official" 3D design  
of the logo, perhaps we could do it the community way (the whole vote,  
discuss or even committee things)? just an idea.

BTW, if I remember correctly, the logo was not exactly round but a  
little but ellipse. :P

Best Regards,

Tzu-Chiang

-- 
Tzu-Chiang Liou
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/tcliou
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Email: tcliou@ {gmail.com|iis.sinica.edu.tw}

Quoting Simetrical <Simetrical+wikilist at gmail.com>:

> On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 12:37 PM, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>> No. The letters on the globe roughly equate to "w" or "wi"
>
> The Hebrew letter is a resh ("R" sound), and the Greek one is a
> capital omega with smooth breathing (in ancient Greek a long "O"
> sound, today a long "I" sound).  Doing a little research, the Cyrillic
> is a "Y" sound.  The Japanese is the modern katakana representation of
> "wi".  The Chinese character I have no idea how to look up, but
> apparently it means "ancestor".  I don't recognize the writing system
> that the one below it represents.  The rest are at an angle and I
> can't even make out their shapes properly.
>
> But anyway, the letters certainly don't all represent "w" sounds.  The
> Hebrew should be a vav or double-vav, if that were the case.  The
> closest equivalents in both Greek and Cyrillic (neither of which has a
> "W" sound, I'm pretty sure) apparently both look exactly like a
> capital B, admittedly, at least to judge by their Wikipedias' names,
> so their current versions might be the most suitable if that were the
> goal.  But I don't think that the goal was specifically to make them
> "W" sounds.
>
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