Guillaume-
For example, imagine you want to select a color.
Your black/white/gray example is perfectly applicable to our process. There has been the possibility of discussion during the entire logo submission process (for more than a month); discussions continued during voting, and even now after the submission deadline has been closed you can still submit variants and try to convince the artist to put these variants up for final voting. So I fail to see how and when we could or should have been trying harder to find compromise solutions. Many logos have been modified based on viewer feedback, especially NcWiki, Stygian's logo and Paullusmagnus' puzzle sphere. Some people have created vector variants of existing logos, others have changed the colors, and others have added their favorite mascot (*cough*).
There have been some complaints (not by me) about Olie's attempts to get Miwiki integrated into virtually every logo. Are you saying these users should just shut up? What exactly are you asking for here? I think you should be glad that we have a formalized process in place to handle these variants, because otherwise we would now be knee deep in a flamewar about whether Olie should be allowed to do this or not.
I agree consensus become harder as we get bigger. But instead of switch decision process to a standard vote method, we can perhaps just create some rules to make consensus easier to achieve.
I fail to see how it will ever be possible to achieve "consensus" on which logo to pick from a selection of more than 130. Feel free to prove me wrong -- just leave a message on the user talk page of everyone who voted and tell them your arguments why you think a particular logo or compromise should be used.
Realistically, when you stop using voting for decisions like this, you will end up with a cabal that makes decisions for the majority of users. The funny thing is: I think the people who complain about voting would not complain about such a cabal -- because they know that the only alternative is voting, which they despise.
If I enter the debate it's just because I worried to see Oliezekat spend all his time to try to found alternative proposition (he really worked hard) and to be bother just because he didn't strictly respect the saintly rules.
I did not "bother" Olie about anything. Which "saintly rules" do you think should be relaxed? Should Olie be allowed to submit his Miwiki variants for final voting even if the artists do not agree? What exactly do you want? If you just want to express your solidarity with the Miwiki campaign, well, maybe there are other places to do that.
Next time, a non-American organizer!?
I'm not an American, but perhaps it's a problem that I speak understandable English. In that case, maybe we should try to get Brion to organize the next contest in Esperanto. Or how about Volapük? I hear it's all the rage with the kids these days.
Regards,
Erik