On 6/20/05, Aphaia aphaia@gmail.com wrote:
... Honestly I can't figure an organisation which department or internal team has their own logos and don't use the organisation logo itself. ...
I absolutely love the logo. It gives the people who discuss research topics or some sense of community, while keeping it very closely bound to Wikimedia. Indeed, if you read Peopleware by Tom DeMarco (a seminal book on people and team management), he describes an incredibly successful team at a major company (IBM?) that formed its own identity -- dressed alike, had a jargon, etc -- and was tolerated because they did awesome stuff.
With thousands of wikimedians, having a subset of them create a sense of group (or purpose) identity is well worth the trouble. Additionally, any designer will tell you that a consistent graphical language is important in building and maintaining a brand.
-ilya