David-
I agree. Indeed, the current winner should have been disqualified when people first raised their objections to it.
And when people raise objections to the runner-up, and to the runner-up to that logo and so forth? It is completely delusional to believe that it will be possible to reach consensus on something as subjective as a logo. No matter what modifications are made, there will always be people who do not like a concept. Some will always find it too simple, too complex, too colorful, too bland, too busy, too cliche, too bright, too dark ..
The "clutter" concern is a reasonable one and I share it. We are now working on improving the logo to address this concern. It would be helpful if you would join these discussions.
There doesn't seem to have been made any effort to ensure that the submussions met the requirements, as if they were merely suggestions.
They were, for the most part. Voters were encouraged to take format and size requirements into account, but if a logo is an absolutely brilliant concept, it would be unfair to discard it because it contains some Latin text, has the wrong output format, is too large etc. -- these things can be worked on.
I also think that the fact that currently there are 73 votes on the English Wikipedia ratification, and 41% are against is a strong sign that there are a lot of others who agree with me and tarquin.
Many people agree that the puzzle sphere in its current form is not optimal. I do, too. So let's work on making it better.
I think that in an organization that prides itself on consensus, some effort should be made to address the dissenters' concerns.
That's exactly what's happening on Meta right now.
I have gone to the effort of collecting some famous and successful logos from around the web and put them at http://www.nohat.net/logos.html.
This would have been useful when we started the contest.
Regards,
Erik