On Wed, 2007-06-27 at 00:20 +0200, Jon Harald Søby
wrote:
I think it is great that we have Klingon
character there. Statistically
speaking, no-one* will know what kind of character it actually is, and it
will be an interesting easteregg when people discover it. Something that
makes people smile. I can't see any bad implications whatsoever coming from
it; how can it posibly hurt us?
* How many percent of the world's population have ever heard of Klingon? And
of those who have heard of it, how many have ever seen anything written in
Klingon with the Klingon alphabet? And of these, how many would recognize
the one Klingon character in the logo without knowing what it is beforehand?
The plural of anecdote is not data and all that, but I for one never
knew there were any Klingon characters in the logo. That said, I've
never really studied the logo at length or anything—I usually just
mentally process it as "globe with bunch of characters from various
scripts"—nor do I know the first thing about Klingon.
An additional anecdatum:
I am a bit of a "Trekkie", at least to the point where I know there's
such a thing as Klingon (probably more of Trekkie than just that). And
I've been around Wikipedia/Wikimedia long enough to remember the
conflicts over the Klingon Wikipedia.
I never knew there was a Klingon character in the logo. And I *still*
can't figure out for sure which one it is.
I also agree that it may not actively hurt us to have the character in
the logo, and it's much more important to fix any issues with the "real"
characters in the logo.
But, I wonder if it wouldn't be better to try to include more characters
from natural languages. Couldn't someone whose native script is not
included see it as a subtle form of bias against their script? Of
course, we can't include *all* scripts, but to include an invented
script instead...
Just wondering.
-Rich