Usually, no response means nobody cares, not "it got lost in the tubes, please post again until people tell you to stop." Mark (who added the subtitle for that very logo in PS for about a gazillion languages) On 13/06/07, quiddity <blanketfort(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- Refije dirije lanmè yo paske nou posede pwòp bato.

Honestly Japanese community doesn't take the strange letter as Japanese, but "something trying to be similar" and asked at least once Nohat to change it with the correct genuine one(s) based on consensus but rejected he had no interest to make a such change by request (he said he had no enough time to handle it). It is already a FAQ "what represents the funny character?" on VP and community consensus is it is not a Japanese letter, but some just weird figures, there are also some figures which can never be letter used on this globe, ever. I know Japanese community is not happy with those two letters, and some takes it a sign WMF has no interest toward Japanese projects and its culture. Personal I have no strong opinion on that issue, though I admit it is hardly to be considered a thoughtful design, rather a typical misrepresenting other cultures of Westerners (personally I love this kind, since it makes me ... smile at least). Just for your information. On 6/15/07, Peter Halasz <email(a)pengo.org> wrote: -- KIZU Naoko Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org * habent enim emolumentum in labore suo *

On 6/15/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue(a)gmail.com> wrote: Honestly now you prove you are not of literacy in Japanese ... (not a criticism, but a fact) . It is "Wa" + (little) "i" in fact and this combination has never happened in the Japanese orthography, at least since the invention of kata-kana in the early Heian era (9th C). -- KIZU Naoko Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org * habent enim emolumentum in labore suo *

Come on Mark, do you really want to teach Japanese people how they should read their syllabary? :-) You are ja-3 and I am ja-1, so I don't think I have anything to teach you; probably you disregarded a few facts. The top left strike of this sign starts right at the horizontal strike level and is straight. If it's supposed to be a "ku", I have never seen such a poor font as it makes it completely indistinguishable from a classical wa in italic type. To be a "ku", it should have the top left strike curved and start above the corner of the horizontal one. Each font decides its balance between those: in general, the higher it starts, the less curved it is. Some very thick fonts make it start at the horizontal line level, but they make it very curved. Without this, it would be too difficult to distinguish a ku from a wa... See reference 3 (sorry, it's the first website using lots of different fonts and styles that has popped into my mind :-) ) for some examples using italics or not, bold or not, or play with notepad and some unicode fonts. If I am wrong, I would gladly welcome any serious example (ie. not handwritten or made as a play on word) that breaks this rule to improve my personal knowledge of the Japanese language. Actually, I am pretty sure the author wanted to put a 'u', so as to make "Wi"(kipedia, like we have 'W' in latin script). And "u" is just a strike added on top of "wa". Actually, I only had a quick look to the logo in the past and did not notice the typo; I had, it seems, automatically corrected it and have always thought about it as "wi". Anyway, being a bad ku or an italic wa with a normal small i, it is just crap. But no matter the respect I have for Japanese people, I have to agree with Alison that it might be a little expensive to correct a typo if we consider the fact that the Foundation try to not protect every name of Wikipedia everywhere because of cost... Personally, I don't pay much attention to this logo so maybe I don't realize really well if it is worth it for Japanese or not. I don't know the real cost either. Dewa mata ne, Jerome (Eden2004) References: 1: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikipedia-logo.png 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana#Table_of_katakana 3: http://jump.shueisha.co.jp/home.html (11th box in the center left stack: wan piisu in italic type; under the main banner: PWJ topikkusu written in italic bold type; same place, more on the right: chekku written in italic type) 2007/6/15, Mark Williamson <node.ue(a)gmail.com>om>:

It's not that I don't want to see it repeated. It's that after getting no response to something he posted to 3 different lists, he decided it would work better if he just posted it again. Mark On 14/06/07, Peter Halasz <email(a)pengo.org> wrote: -- Refije dirije lanmè yo paske nou posede pwòp bato.

Additional detail: Most languages use the original image as a base, with the obvious accent errors. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Nohat-Wiki-logo-2.png however a handful of languages use the newer image, which has the accent errors removed. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikipedia-logo.png See the list at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia So we're inconsistent too. Quiddity

Sandy (our Comm. Manager) is in touch with David to see which changes can be made to the glyphs. Not that the whole hubbub isn't a bit silly; the logo is meant to represent multilingualism as a concept, not any particular language. On 6/25/07, quiddity <blanketfort(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- Toward Peace, Love & Progress: Erik DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

quiddity wrote: Well, is *anyone* happy about the Klingon letter at the top of the Wikipedia logo? We don't (thankfully) even have a project in that language anymore, and I think it falls short of the mark of multilingualism. Dominic

The Cunctator wrote: And since we have also been addressing the notability of what more out-of-universe evidence can there be than the inclusion of Klingon? Ec

On 6/26/07, Samuel Klein <meta.sj(a)gmail.com> wrote: I'm not unhappy about it either; it's a nice little joke for the few people who will notice independently, and hey, we did say *all* languages... I'm more unhappy about the two completely blank pieces on the bottom, which I hadn't even really noticed before the current discussion! Sigh. Just something else to solve when/if a 3-D version is developed, I suppose. Have there been any projects to brainstorm about what all the other characters on the other side of the globe might be? Incidentally: There is a version of the logo on meta w/ English text that has the accent error described removed: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/9/91/Nohat-logo-XI-big-text.png Is there some reason we're not using that on the actual site, instead of the old one? I guess as Alison points out the accented one is the trademarked one, though if both versions are getting used on community sites they should both be trademarked... not sure how trademarking of versions of logos works, we'd need a competent US trademarks lawyer to opine. phoebe

On 6/26/07, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: not officially, that I've stumbled upon, but see http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?s=2144ea4c40276381c754e9f667… specifically this image http://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?s=2144ea4c40276381c754e9f667… and http://hdiss.net/bpeters/PuzzleBall_A.wmv appears to be by User:Metaeducation, I'll ask him what happened with it.

On 27/06/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: People will complain the last piece is missing ;-) - d.

On Wed, 2007-06-27 at 00:20 +0200, Jon Harald Søby wrote: 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. -- Slowking Man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Slowking_Man)

On 6/27/07, Rich Holton <richholton(a)gmail.com> wrote: The one in the far top right, it looks sort of like a distorted "F". We have space for eighteen characters, though not all of them will be easily visible. It would be good to represent as many broad categories of writing systems as possible. This article (there are also versions in half a dozen other languages) gives what seems to me to be a pretty good list of script types from which we could pick examples (though I'm not a linguist): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_writing_systems -- Stephen Bain stephen.bain(a)gmail.com