On Sun, 6 May 2007, Florence Devouard wrote:
I would like to see some policy saying that the logo can be used for any reason as long as it falls within the functioning of wikipedia, but as I am not the copyright holder... :) Also some guidance on wikipedia logo derivatives would be great, I kinda lean towards no derivatives for style consistency reasons, but that's just my opinion.
Judson [[:en:User:Cohesion]]
A community logo has been created specifically for that reason: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikimedia_Community_Logo.svg
The community logo and the derivatives created so far are not particularly compelling. I'm not sure that relying heavily on the meta-colors, which may not have been particularly carefully chosen in the first place, is a great idea. Perhaps we should have a community logo contest for something to represent the combined communities?
This is independent of the question of how the community can or should use the project logos. Many of the derivatives of Wikimedia logos made so far, for fun or celebration or illustration, have been lovely; I hope we continue to inspire the kind of creativity associated with the Google logo.
The natural course of action for them was to use one of the official Wikimedia projects' logos or the Wikimedia Foundation logo. Since those logos are copyrighted and are trademarks of WMF, their use would imply official endorsement by WMF. Hence, this practice is generally frowned upon by WMF.
The use of logos other than the foundation logo should not indicate endorsement by the foundation, any more than the mention of the names of those projects should. One does use logos and names to indicate affiliation; to the extent that community groups are in fact part of the community and affiliated with it, this would seem appropriate. How could this be a bad thing?
And yes, please, avoid creating derivatives of the Wikipedia logo (or any other wikimedia project logo).
What is the concern here? It would be useful to have a transparent and speedy process for approving elegant or inspiring derivatives, for holidays, new formats or media, and other special events.
SJ