On Tue, 2011-09-13 at 12:15 +0100, Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 13 September 2011 09:22, Fae faenwp@gmail.com wrote:
Are there any views for or against using an image of "Wikimedia in Scotland" rather than just the WM-UK logo? My concern is that some will resist joining in a "UK" branded programme but would rush to support a country specific initiative. If it gets better results, we could follow a similar pattern for Wales and avoid appearing to push "UK" in every document (or teeshirt).
Before signing the chapters agreement with the WMF, we were careful to amend it to include permission for us to call ourselves "Wikimedia Scotland" (etc.) in order to leave our options open for this kind of thing. You could, therefore, use a Wikimedia Scotland logo (with some small print making clear that both Wikimedia Scotland and Wikimedia UK are trading names of Wiki UK Ltd. on anything more important that a t-shirt).
The downside of that is that it harms brand recognition, since neither brand is getting used as much as a single brand would be. The only question really is whether the benefit from appeasing Scottish nationalists outweighs the harm from splitting our brand. I don't know enough about Scottish nationalism to know, but I can believe that it would be.
A simple illustration of the view from this side of the border was expressed in today's freebie paper, the Metro. Surprisingly, it's near-identical to one I personally used over ten years ago when living in Belgium:
"Scottish first, European second, and British last". That, as I'd hope people south of the border understand, is because to much of the rest of the world Britain = England.
All three of the major UK political parties are looking seriously to, at a minimum, devolve their Scottish presence and give it far more autonomy. Further to that, a recent survey found that over 30% of the population expect to see a truly independent Scotland in their lifetime.
Scottish national identity, and political awareness, has come a long, long way since I was a student chucking past-their-sell-by-date duck eggs at the Iron Lady.
Brian McNeil.