IMO, this logo looks great. It is considerably better than the one used last year (which was, no offense, quite horrible). Just one question: You say that the character 袓 is exchanged with 豬, which means pig. What does 袓 mean?

On 2/16/07, THD theodoranian@gmail.com wrote:

Hi,

2 days later, it will be the Chinese New Year, and some Chinese Wikipedian has made the Chinese New Year celebration Wikipedia logo. During the Chinese New Year period (Feb. 18 to 23), I think Chinese Wikipedians are proposing a celebration of new year on Chinese Wikipedia. You can take a look of this logo, http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Wiki_pig.png

There are 2 changes:

1. The logo is using red color which means happiness and celebration in

Chinese community. 2. The logo is changing the original Chinese character 袓 to 豬，the later one 豬 means pig. This year is the year of pig.

Please comment.

THD _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

On 2/16/07, THD theodoranian@gmail.com wrote:

Hi,

2 days later, it will be the Chinese New Year, and some Chinese Wikipedian has made the Chinese New Year celebration Wikipedia logo. During the Chinese New Year period (Feb. 18 to 23), I think Chinese Wikipedians are proposing a celebration of new year on Chinese Wikipedia. You can take a look of this logo, http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Wiki_pig.png

[cut]

Please comment.

I am strongly opposed to altering the logos of Wikimedia projects for whatever reason or occasion. Here's why:

== Unified look ==

Obviously we will not change the logos on all the projects or even on all the language versions of one project (say Wikipedia) for any given occasion. If we allowed alternative logos, some would be altered, some not. A mess.

Furthermore, the quality of altered logos and the way they fit in with other logos in the Wikimedia family may differ greatly. I am not sure we want that.

== Country-specific POV ==

Notice, that alternative logos will further the misconception that pl.wikipedia.org is "The Polish Wikipedia" and zh.wikipedia.org is "The Chinese Wikipedia". They are not -- they are the "Polish-language Wikipedia" and "Chinese-language Wikipedia" respectively.

That a holiday is observed by 100% of Wikipedians contributing to a given language version, say Swahili, doesn't mean that Wikipedia in Swahili should change because of that. It should still be international and neutral in nature.

== Further POV changes ==

Introducing alternative logos for holidays and such will encourage people to propose logo changes for other reasons, like national

I had to explain again and again why we cannot and will not have a black ribbon on the logo when John Paul II died. I do NOT want to go through that again.

== Community vs no community ==

www.google.com is a great site, but there is no community behind it. It displays custom logos to say 'Look! We're alive too! The logo has changed! We celebrate Christmas/New Year." Most major portals do that for the same reason -- to look more human.

We DO NOT need that. We are a living, thriving community. And the community doesn't have to be reminded that it's [insert your favourite holiday], does it?

Nothing holds any of the communities back from celebrating on meta pages, user talk pages (Christmas wishes, new year wishes, etc.) and so forth. That's enough for me as a member of those communities. Anything more is unnecessary.

== Conclusion ==

Alternative logos are not really necessary, they further POV on many levels and could damage our visual identity (if done incorrectly). Please, lets not introduce them. Please.