The first runner-up may be simpler, but I find it as ugly as you find the winner. I assume others feel the same way, since it didn't win.
Adam Bishop
From: tarquin tarquin@planetunreal.com Reply-To: wikipedia-l@Wikipedia.org To: wikipedia-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] New logo and further process Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 10:02:46 +0100
Gutza wrote:
Richard Grevers wrote:
Yay - months of process and what do we get? The worst result - the logo that has the biggest technical problems in terms of reproduction in other media. Its greyscale version is incredibly unclear because it is far too busy. You just doubled or tripled the cost of Wikimedia letterhead, folks, so everyone who voted for it had better donate extra.
Plus it's horrible. No offence to anyone, the thing already won, so it's not a matter of offending the author anymore, but that logo stinks big time. If this is democracy in action, imagine running a country this way.
Gutza
(Before y'all start with me, yes, I had a few logos in the competition myself, and mine was obviously not chosen, but I would've been happy if we chose the first runner-up, which is not mine either. That would've been a logo, and a good one at that IMNSHO. The one we chose is neither good, and not even a real logo. It's a coloured puzzle ball for Chrissake!)
I am in complete agreement with you! It's horrible, it's too complex, and the first runner-up would be much better,
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Ok, I promised I'd shut up, but I just thought of something: I dare anyone to stand by the following phrase in public and not feel like a retard:
"For the logo of a serious encyclopedic project contributed by thousands of people world-wide and trying to compete world-famous encyclopedias worth thousands of dollars a copy, I, {your name here}, am against the concept of a stylized human silhouette and I support the concept of a ball made of coloured puzzle pieces".
You don't have to argue with me or something, if you support it, just reply to this message on this mailing list copying only that phrase and replacing your name in the placeholder. If anyone does that, I'll be convinced that logo is appropriate for this project.
Gutza
Adam Bishop wrote:
The first runner-up may be simpler, but I find it as ugly as you find the winner. I assume others feel the same way, since it didn't win.
Adam Bishop
From: tarquin tarquin@planetunreal.com Reply-To: wikipedia-l@Wikipedia.org To: wikipedia-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] New logo and further process Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 10:02:46 +0100
Gutza wrote:
Richard Grevers wrote:
Yay - months of process and what do we get? The worst result - the logo that has the biggest technical problems in terms of reproduction in other media. Its greyscale version is incredibly unclear because it is far too busy. You just doubled or tripled the cost of Wikimedia letterhead, folks, so everyone who voted for it had better donate extra.
Plus it's horrible. No offence to anyone, the thing already won, so it's not a matter of offending the author anymore, but that logo stinks big time. If this is democracy in action, imagine running a country this way.
Gutza
(Before y'all start with me, yes, I had a few logos in the competition myself, and mine was obviously not chosen, but I would've been happy if we chose the first runner-up, which is not mine either. That would've been a logo, and a good one at that IMNSHO. The one we chose is neither good, and not even a real logo. It's a coloured puzzle ball for Chrissake!)
I am in complete agreement with you! It's horrible, it's too complex, and the first runner-up would be much better,
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"For the logo of a serious encyclopedic project contributed by thousands of people world-wide and trying to compete world-famous encyclopedias worth thousands of dollars a copy, I, Gareth William Owen, being of sound mind and only slightly knackered body, am against the concept of a stylized human silhouette and I support the concept of a ball made of coloured puzzle pieces".
PS : When did we become serious?
At 04:36 PM 9/26/03 +0300, Gutza wrote:
Ok, I promised I'd shut up, but I just thought of something: I dare anyone to stand by the following phrase in public and not feel like a retard:
"For the logo of a serious encyclopedic project contributed by thousands of people world-wide and trying to compete world-famous encyclopedias worth thousands of dollars a copy, I, Vicki Rosenzweig, am against the concept of a stylized human silhouette and I support the concept of a ball made of coloured puzzle pieces".
Happy now?
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
At 04:36 PM 9/26/03 +0300, Gutza wrote:
Ok, I promised I'd shut up, but I just thought of something: I dare anyone to stand by the following phrase in public and not feel like a retard:
"For the logo of a serious encyclopedic project contributed by thousands of people world-wide and trying to compete world-famous encyclopedias worth thousands of dollars a copy, I, Vicki Rosenzweig, am against the concept of a stylized human silhouette and I support the concept of a ball made of coloured puzzle pieces".
Happy now?
Yes, thank you. As I said, I am now convinced that logo is appropriate for this project.
Gutza
Gutza wrote:
Yes, thank you. As I said, I am now convinced that logo is appropriate for this project.
I'm not.
And the whole voting process has been a complete fiasco. This "ratification" stuff is pure nonsense -- the WHOLE POINT of this design competition was to have a unified logo across all pedias!
The logo at 33k is innapropriate from a technical standpoint. (#2 is 3k. #3 is 23k I would have liked just about any of the other finalists -- we had plenty of *really great* work and I found it hard to pick my absolute favourite. But this dirty-looking ball of crud that takes too long to download -- no!
Thanks for your constructive feedback, Tarquin. I'll take it into account the next time I organize something like this.
In fact the whole thing was ridiculous from the start. The way how logos were submitted was ridiculous - in any size, in any format. The way they were presented even more (basically that already was a preselection). THe way the rules were changed some time during the whole process also weren't quite what you should expect from a fair contest.
The way the final voting was done was the most ridiculous thing at all, because there were'nt just 11 candidates (as they were supposed to be left from the first round), there were about 35, because each alternative was obviously a seperate candidate. So the "type 2" logos got round the bout 2500 points in total, the "type 1" logo candidates about 1000 points. Unfortunatly, type 2 had five "alternatives", type 1 just two. That's the reason, why that silly fish bowl now is the so called "winner". Because there were less alternative to spread the votes on, not because it got more votes. From a quick check also the "type 7" logo got more votes in toto than the so called winner. If there was just one alternative for each type of logo, things would have gone really differently.
Let's keep the old logo, let's keep the candidates, and let's try again in half a year in a better organized way.
Uli
Ulrich-
The way how logos were submitted was ridiculous - in any size, in any format.
Wrong. The international logo contest contained clear rules on both size and format. These rules were violated by some submissions, but it would have been unfair to just throw these logos out, as simple modifications like transparency, format etc. can be made (and have been made) later.
The way they were presented even more (basically that already was a preselection).
The logos were ranked by the number of votes from the first voting round. What alternative do you suggest?
THe way the rules were changed some time during the whole process
They weren't.
The way the final voting was done was the most ridiculous thing at all, because there were'nt just 11 candidates (as they were supposed to be left from the first round), there were about 35,
It was always made clear that you would be able to vote on all variants in the final vote.
So the "type 2" logos got round the bout 2500 points in total,
The total points are irrelevant. The logos were ranked by the average score, it doesn't matter at all how many people voted on each logo because the score is the sum divided by the number of voters *for that variant*.
Regards,
Erik
Wrong. The international logo contest contained clear rules on both size and format. These rules were violated by some submissions, but it would have been unfair to just throw these logos out,
Why? We are now exactly in the situtation that the winning logo does not scale very good to small sizes! If they all would have the same size from the beginning, they would be better comparable, and the logo pages could have been downloaded faster. (my next point:)
The way they were presented even more (basically that already was a preselection).
The logos were ranked by the number of votes from the first voting round.
I'm talking about the first round(!), where the logos were ranked according to the time they got in. That had two consequences:
1) I doubt that too many people did download page 100-125, because downloading page 1-25 already took a long time, 25-50 again a long time and so on. You get the point? If all logos were 150x150, they would have fit on a single page.
2) New logos were added at the end, while the first logos were already visible. I am not sure any more, if they also were already votable, which would make it worse. But, what really *does* matter: The Logos on the first pages had more time to sink into the brains of people.
The two three highest scoring logos are to be found on page 1-25, the third is also the example of the logo contest, to be found on the top page of the contest.
They weren't.
We first had 10 final candidates, we then had 11. First everyone could vote (in the first round), than only people with user pages (also in the first round). And so on.
The way the final voting was done was the most ridiculous thing at all, because there were'nt just 11 candidates (as they were supposed to be left from the first round), there were about 35,
It was always made clear that you would be able to vote on all variants in the final vote.
So the "type 2" logos got round the bout 2500 points in total,
The total points are irrelevant. The logos were ranked by the average score, it doesn't matter at all how many people voted on each logo because the score is the sum divided by the number of voters *for that variant*.
You are totally right here, please take my apologies. I confused our system with a system with a *limited* number of votes by voter, but here we could vote for *every* alternative (not just for eg. five of them.) Sorry again, this was my fault, I was to fast here.
Uli
Ulrich-
Why? We are now exactly in the situtation that the winning logo does not scale very good to small sizes!
That depends on what you mean by small size. The puzzle sphere was uploaded in 150x150, the required size for the logo is 135x135. It certainly scaled to that size. There was no requirement that the logo would scale to, say, 32x32 and, as has been pointed out, most brands do not properly scale to that size either, which is why favicons are usually abstractions. (An abstract version of the puzzle sphere would probably make a pretty nice favicon, but I do not like the current favicon proposals.)
Except for logo 11, all of the finalists were within the required dimensions and proportions, and I provided a scaled down version of logo 11 on that logo's discussion page. This shows that voters played the role of checking the requirements.
If they all would have the same size from the beginning, they would be better comparable, and the logo pages could have been downloaded faster.
While that would certainly have helped, it is highly doubtful that, with over 130 submissions and many more variants, all logos would have fit on a single loadable page even if they were all of the same dimensions.
When you enforce limits very strictly, you will create other problems -- artists may be scared away by what they perceive as a dictatorial process, or they may not even understand what is going on (many of the submitters were newbies). I don't think enforcing logo sizes would have made a substantial enough impact to justify that. And, frankly, it would have been a lot of work.
I'm talking about the first round(!), where the logos were ranked according to the time they got in.
I don't see the alternative. As noted above, enforcing logo sizes would not have made a relevant impact here -- there are simply too many logos for that. Random ranking has the same (mostly theoretical) problems.
- I doubt that too many people did download page 100-125, because
downloading page 1-25 already took a long time, 25-50 again a long time and so on. You get the point?
Yes, but I doubt that it is true. Among the finalists, logo 4 was number 126 on the original list. Logo 5 was number 129. Logo 6 was number 97. Logo 11 was number 124. So we clearly have plenty of late logos among the finalists. And their ranking in the first round correlates fairly well with their ranking in the second round.
But I do believe that approval voting is more susceptible to this problem than average voting, where the number of voters does not matter much. In a future contest, it might make more sense to have only one voting round, although I shudder at the size of the ballot page that would result.
- New logos were added at the end, while the first logos were already
visible. I am not sure any more, if they also were already votable, which would make it worse. But, what really *does* matter: The Logos on the first pages had more time to sink into the brains of people.
What does "sinking in" mean? There is no evidence that I would rate a logo higher if I've already seen it two months ago. Logo #1 got 3 votes total. Logo #136, which in my opinion is much worse because it is completely unusable, got 7 votes.
The two three highest scoring logos are to be found on page 1-25,
That proves absolutely nothing. It is quite obvious that many people with a high motivation to produce a great logo will be among the first wave of submitters. And indeed, if you look at the amount of work that has been invested by Neolux, Anthere and Paullusmagnus in their logos, the number of variants etc., it is much higher than that of most logos which came later.
the third is also the example of the logo contest, to be found on the top page of the contest.
Huh? What do you mean with example? Which page?
They weren't.
We first had 10 final candidates, we then had 11.
That was the unfortunate result of unexpected logo swapping, as explained on the logo page.
First everyone could vote (in the first round), than only people with user pages (also in the first round).
All votes were counted in the first round, regardless of userpage or not; what was necessary was a sig-type vote [[User:Foo]] or even [[de:Benutzer:Foo]], but it didn't matter whether it pointed to an existing user page or not. That rule was changed for the second stage. There was no change of rules in mid process.
And so on.
And so on what?
Regards,
Erik
On Fri, 2003-09-26 at 12:55, Erik Moeller wrote:
In a future contest, it might make more sense to have only one voting round, although I shudder at the size of the ballot page that would result.
And I thought we had it bad in California! http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/c/c6/Sample_ballot_for_CA_recall.png
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Brion Vibber wrote:
On Fri, 2003-09-26 at 12:55, Erik Moeller wrote:
In a future contest, it might make more sense to have only one voting round, although I shudder at the size of the ballot page that would result.
And I thought we had it bad in California! http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/c/c6/Sample_ballot_for_CA_recall.png
You only have 135 candidates; this had 137. :-P
Also our candidates had multiple personalities. Nobody is demanding separ ate voting for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Terminator.
Ec
"Brion Vibber" skribis:
On Fri, 2003-09-26 at 12:55, Erik Moeller wrote:
In a future contest, it might make more sense to have only one voting round, although I shudder at the size of the ballot page that would result.
And I thought we had it bad in California! http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/c/c6/Sample_ballot_for_CA_recall.png
And now imagine each one had one or more photos, and you could elect which photo you like most.
Paul
I'm happy with the result of the logo competition, and I endorse Erik's idea that we revisit it a couple of years from now. I'm not happy with the idea of per-langauage ratification, but it's certainly better than any of the International Wikipedias feeling that we've shoved something down their throats. (I do agree with those who say that the whole point of the process, though, was to have a uniform logo everywhere!)
Erik Moeller wrote:
In a future contest, it might make more sense to have only one voting round, although I shudder at the size of the ballot page that would result.
Possibly a good compromise would be to have people volunteer first for a design committee, a committee which has (or simply _is_) a separate (public!) mailing list to hash out the issues. Only people who have participated there are eligible to be voting members of the design committee, and they vote to reduce the huge pile of submissions down to a manageable number of finalists.
That committee would also be charged with the responsibility of making a professional judgment as to the simple technical merits of proposals. Some that don't meet the design brief would surely not pass muster at this stage. The committee, if generally dissatisfied with the proposals, could report a failure to find a suitable set of alternatives, or... well, you see what I mean.
It easier to see why a two-step process (committee->public vote) would make sense if we think about it for technical issues. Having an open random public vote on whether to buy 1 big server or 2 small ones, or whether to get an Athlon or an Opteron, or whether to use SCSI or EIDE drives, would be silly. If we were to have public voting on technical matters, it'd only make sense to have experts refine the choices first.
How to qualify experts for committees? I think the wiki way would work fine -- we just let people volunteer as they see fit. I have definite opinions on what sorts of logos that I like, but I know that I'm not really qualified to judge the artistic or technical merit of these things. Someone said that the choice made will be expensive for letterhead -- oh, that's interesting, I would never have realized that on my own. So I'd know better than to join a design committee.
But with a set of proposals that had been vetted by a committee of self-described experts, I'm sure I could express a preference.
--Jimbo
Jimmy-
I'm happy with the result of the logo competition, and I endorse Erik's idea that we revisit it a couple of years from now. I'm not happy with the idea of per-langauage ratification, but it's certainly better than any of the International Wikipedias feeling that we've shoved something down their throats. (I do agree with those who say that the whole point of the process, though, was to have a uniform logo everywhere!)
As I said, this was primarily done to accommodate those Wikipedias who already have a nonstandard logo and might feel they are treated unfairly because they consider their current logo superior to the new one (e.g. "fat white dove on green gradient = better than puzzle sphere"). But I'm all for stamping on national idiosyncrasies and building a world government instead (really!).
Possibly a good compromise would be to have people volunteer first for a design committee
That's an interesting idea, especially considering that the people who would complain would then largely be identical to the recipients of the complaints, so it might cut down on the whining ;-). It would also help to reduce the workload of individuals. I'm not sure it will work without *some* benevolent dictator making the basic rules, though.
Regards,
Erik
On 26 Sep 2003 18:44:00 +0200, Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de gave utterance to the following:
The total points are irrelevant. The logos were ranked by the average score, it doesn't matter at all how many people voted on each logo because the score is the sum divided by the number of voters *for that variant*.
In that case, why isn't the number of votes for each logo identical - a requirement for average voting to work. The winner received more votes than many other logos, meaning that others received a number of "zero" votes, effectively pulling down their averages. I voted "1" for the winner because I understood that to be the lowest vote allowed.
Richard-
On 26 Sep 2003 18:44:00 +0200, Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de gave utterance to the following:
The total points are irrelevant. The logos were ranked by the average score, it doesn't matter at all how many people voted on each logo because the score is the sum divided by the number of voters *for that variant*.
In that case, why isn't the number of votes for each logo identical - a requirement for average voting to work.
No. Read the above again. There are no zero votes -- not voting does not influence the average for that submission.
Regards,
Erik
On 26 Sep 2003 22:28:00 +0200, Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de gave utterance to the following:
Richard-
On 26 Sep 2003 18:44:00 +0200, Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de gave utterance to the following:
The total points are irrelevant. The logos were ranked by the average score, it doesn't matter at all how many people voted on each logo because the score is the sum divided by the number of voters *for that variant*.
In that case, why isn't the number of votes for each logo identical - a requirement for average voting to work.
No. Read the above again. There are no zero votes -- not voting does not influence the average for that submission.
The calculation actually works in the opposite direction to tht expected, but your assertion is false. 549/180 != 548/179 Not voting for an entry increases its average.
On Sat, 27 Sep 2003 09:20:44 +1200, Richard Grevers lists@dramatic.co.nz gave utterance to the following:
On 26 Sep 2003 22:28:00 +0200, Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de gave utterance to the following:
Richard-
On 26 Sep 2003 18:44:00 +0200, Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de gave utterance to the following:
The total points are irrelevant. The logos were ranked by the average score, it doesn't matter at all how many people voted on each logo because the score is the sum divided by the number of voters *for that variant*.
In that case, why isn't the number of votes for each logo identical - a requirement for average voting to work.
No. Read the above again. There are no zero votes -- not voting does not influence the average for that submission.
The calculation actually works in the opposite direction to tht expected, but your assertion is false. 549/180 != 548/179 Not voting for an entry increases its average.
Actually, I just found my vote amone the invalids. Wikipedia was down immediately after I voted so I wasn't able to check. For some reason ~~~~ didn't get decoded.
Richard-
The calculation actually works in the opposite direction to tht expected, but your assertion is false. 549/180 != 548/179 Not voting for an entry increases its average.
Nonsense. Not voting on an entry has no impact whatsoever on its average. A logo with only 1 voter who assigns a score of 1 has the lowest score even if all other logos are voted on by 10000 people. The numbers 548 and 549 above are arbitrary. New voters can increase or decrease the average by assigning a value on a scale from 1 to 5.
E.g.
3 + 4 + 2 + 1 / 4 = 2.5 3 + 4 + 2 + 1 + 5 / 5 = 3 - new voter increased total
Whereas not voting on the logo does not affect the average at all.
Regards,
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
tarquin-
And the whole voting process has been a complete fiasco.
Thanks for your constructive feedback, Tarquin. I'll take it into account the next time I organize something like this.
The whole point of this process was to choose a logo to represent Wikipedia in all languages. There was a VERY lengthy debate about how to have a fair voting system. To then have this "ratification process" so wikipedias can opt out -- it's like building something only to knock it down!
On 26 Sep 2003 16:18:00 +0200, Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de gave utterance to the following:
tarquin-
And the whole voting process has been a complete fiasco.
Thanks for your constructive feedback, Tarquin. I'll take it into account the next time I organize something like this.
There wasn't a problem with the voting process. The problem was the lack of a qualification stage where each entrant was judged as to whether or not it meets the brief. Thus the vote was uneven. It was likely that many voters had no understanding that some logos had technical problems and merely voted of symbolism or aesthetics. While others of us made a more suitability-based judgement. The winner doesn't, IMO, comply with the design brief, and without significant revision to make it comply to the brief it should not have made it to the voting starting line.
On 26 Sep 2003 22:27:00 +0200, Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de gave utterance to the following:
Richard-
The winner doesn't, IMO, comply with the design brief,
In which respect?
(this from memmory, I can't find the brief now) The logo must be suitable for printing on letterheads, t-shirts,mugs, pens etc. Well unless you are going to print everything in four-colour process, you have problems. And it simply doesn't scale down well enough for small objects, plus there is too little contrast.
tarquin wrote:
Gutza wrote:
Yes, thank you. As I said, I am now convinced that logo is appropriate for this project.
I'm not.
And the whole voting process has been a complete fiasco. This "ratification" stuff is pure nonsense -- the WHOLE POINT of this design competition was to have a unified logo across all pedias!
The logo at 33k is innapropriate from a technical standpoint. (#2 is 3k. #3 is 23k I would have liked just about any of the other finalists -- we had plenty of *really great* work and I found it hard to pick my absolute favourite. But this dirty-looking ball of crud that takes too long to download -- no!
Ok, but what can you do? The voting has been fair (give or take, but the overall result can't be contested). That's what people want, what can you do? Really, what *can* you do?
Gutza
Gutza wrote:
Ok, but what can you do? The voting has been fair (give or take, but the overall result can't be contested). That's what people want, what can you do? Really, what *can* you do?
Well since we can "ratify", I'm voting to ratify a different finalist.
The current winner should be disqualified on technical grounds -- it simply does not meet the design brief of the competition.
tarquin wrote:
Gutza wrote:
Ok, but what can you do? The voting has been fair (give or take, but the overall result can't be contested). That's what people want, what can you do? Really, what *can* you do?
Well since we can "ratify", I'm voting to ratify a different finalist.
The current winner should be disqualified on technical grounds -- it simply does not meet the design brief of the competition.
I agree. Indeed, the current winner should have been disqualified when people first raised their objections to it. There doesn't seem to have been made any effort to ensure that the submussions met the requirements, as if they were merely suggestions. 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. I think that in an organization that prides itself on consensus, some effort should be made to address the dissenters' concerns.
Part of the problem perhaps is that no one has been able to clearly articulate exactly why the current winner will make a bad logo. Here's my attempt:
(1) A logo should be simple. It should be possible to grok it entirely in moments. It should be unambiguous. A logo should not be a diagram. The current winner fails all these tests.
(2) The purpose of this logo selection is not just to select an image for /upload/wiki.png. It is to selet an identity for the entire Wikipedia project. It may be used on letterhead, clothes, hats, pens, mousepads, etc. It will be used in tiny places, so it should look good (not just "acceptable") in small sizes. The advice for logo designers I once read is "if it's not simple enough to work as cufflinks, it's not simple enough". The current winner will not look good at small sizes. (It barely looks good at the current size).
(3) It will be used in conjunction with other visual elements. It should be able to blend in aesthetically with a wide diversity of other elements and not stand out or clash. It should be able to be used in grayscale environments and black-and-white environments.
(4) *** This is the biggest one: a logo should NOT contain words that are not part of the name or the slogan of the organization it represents! I recognize that Wikipedia is mostly about text, but the way that has been symbolized in the current winning logo, fails. The best way to symbolize text is with 1, 2 or maybe 3 graphemes or as lines on a page, but not a whole mess of them, reduced to point of illegibility.
My biggest objection to the current winner is all those words. I imagine myself encountering it for the first time, and asking myself: What do they mean? What is their significance? Why can't I read them all? Is there some essential aspect of the Wikipedia embedded in these words that I can't understand? I must be missing something! Why should I be interested in this project if I can't even understand the logo?
I have a feeling, but I am not certain, that there would be a lot less objection to the winner if all the text was removed from it. I still think it would be ugly, but it would at least be a workable logo in that state.
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. I put them at my personal web site because I'm not sure how well deep linking would work on the meta wiki. What makes these logos successful is they are all simple, memorable, and can work in a variety of environments
I understand that it may be frustrating to those who put in a lot of effort on the vote and process to have the final result disputed, and I really am sorry for those people, but such is the way of the wiki...
- David [[User:Nohat]]
David Friedland david@nohat.net writes:
tarquin wrote:
Gutza wrote:
Ok, but what can you do? The voting has been fair (give or take, but the overall result can't be contested). That's what people want, what can you do? Really, what *can* you do?
Well since we can "ratify", I'm voting to ratify a different finalist. The current winner should be disqualified on technical grounds -- it simply does not meet the design brief of the competition.
I agree. Indeed, the current winner should have been disqualified when people first raised their objections to it.
FTJ. Perhaps we should skip the endless recounts and objections over the method, and just ask Jeb Bush to refer the whole matter to the Supreme Court
I would like to thank you guys (you will note, this present bunch of pissing and moaning is by a group entirely composed of guys) and your ability to squabble to excrutiating lengths about what are, in the long run, complete irrelevancies for providing me with endless amusement.
Calm down. It's just a logo. Go out on the street and ask people what the logo of Encyclopedia Brittanica looks like? Do they even have one?
Sometimes this list feels like the lost "B Arc" of the Golgafrinchams. Don't you people have telephones to sanitise?
At 05:42 PM 9/26/03 +0100, Gareth wrote:
I would like to thank you guys (you will note, this present bunch of pissing and moaning is by a group entirely composed of guys)
So, what are Anthere and I, chopped liver?
Vicki Rosenzweig vr@redbird.org writes:
At 05:42 PM 9/26/03 +0100, Gareth wrote:
I would like to thank you guys (you will note, this present bunch of pissing and moaning is by a group entirely composed of guys)
So, what are Anthere and I, chopped liver?
I didn't number you amongst the moaning. You were contributing, but you weren't moaning. In fact, you seemed quite content with the status quo.
Gareth Owen wrote:
FTJ. Perhaps we should skip the endless recounts and objections over the method, and just ask Jeb Bush to refer the whole matter to the Supreme Court
I would like to thank you guys (you will note, this present bunch of pissing and moaning is by a group entirely composed of guys) and your ability to squabble to excrutiating lengths about what are, in the long run, complete irrelevancies for providing me with endless amusement.
Calm down. It's just a logo. Go out on the street and ask people what the logo of Encyclopedia Brittanica looks like? Do they even have one?
Sometimes this list feels like the lost "B Arc" of the Golgafrinchams. Don't you people have telephones to sanitise?
I do care about the logo and submitted a series of calm, considered reasons why I think adopting the winner of the logo vote would be a bad idea.
If you don't care about the logo, why are you bothering to argue about it? Your response seems the most hysterical of any so far. If I don't care about an issue being discussed on the lists, I just don't read those posts. You should do the same.
David Friedland david@nohat.net writes:
If you don't care about the logo, why are you bothering to argue about it? Your response seems the most hysterical of any so far.
Then allow me to be pithy.
There was a vote. Your choice lost. Deal with it. And do it without insinuating that Erik somehow rigged the election.
If I don't care about an issue being discussed on the lists,
I don't care about the logo, but I do care about flagrant attempts to subvert democracy ("Let's not ratify") or the continuing unfounded implications that something underhand went on during the voting process and the inherent slur on Erik's character.
(Remember, if you don't like the logo, you can always fork)
Gareth Owen wrote:
David Friedland david=nvvn158Aj1ReoWH0uzbU5w@public.gmane.org writes:
If you don't care about the logo, why are you bothering to argue about it? Your response seems the most hysterical of any so far.
Then allow me to be pithy.
There was a vote. Your choice lost. Deal with it. And do it without insinuating that Erik somehow rigged the election.
If I don't care about an issue being discussed on the lists,
I don't care about the logo, but I do care about flagrant attempts to subvert democracy ("Let's not ratify") or the continuing unfounded implications that something underhand went on during the voting process and the inherent slur on Erik's character.
(Remember, if you don't like the logo, you can always fork)
First, I don't know where you get the idea that I was insinunating any funny-business about how the election was executed. I happen to respect Erik a lot, as he has always responded to my concerns rationally and calmly. I don't think anything underhand went on during the voting process.
My suggestion that the results of the election not necessarily be abided are a result of the fact that until now, no one has argued that elections are binding and not subject to appeal. Until there is firm policy set about how decisions on wikipedia are to be made final, it seems all decision-making processes are subject to discussion and dissent before, during, and after.
Perhaps an analogy to the 2000 US Presidential election is apt. Nevertheless, a final decision was made by the Supreme Court, an organization specified by the Constitution to be supreme judge of the law of the land. Wikipedia has no constitution, and you are no supreme court. I therefore don't accept your declaration that the results are final and not subject to appeal.
Furthermore, I find your characterizations of my objections to the outcome of the vote as "pissing" and "moaning" offensive. Frankly, I don't see how they can be characterized as anything but carefully considered logical argument. The only who who seems to be arguing from a mainly emotional standpoint is you.
Finally, it seems that even Erik agrees the results of the election are not final, and that the winner is subject to modification. I have heeded his request and am making suggestions on meta for how the puzzle sphere might be improved so as not to be unacceptable to so many people.
- David
On 26 Sep 2003 17:42:55 +0100, Gareth Owen wiki@gwowen.freeserve.co.uk gave utterance to the following:
Go out on the street and ask people what the logo of Encyclopedia Brittanica looks like? Do they even have one?
A thistle - it goes well with their writing style - dry and prickly :-)
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
David Friedland david@nohat.net writes:
What makes these logos successful is they are all simple, memorable, and can work in a variety of environments
Frankly, bollocks. By and large, these aren't succesful logos, they're the logos of succesful things (I exclude the DNC, for obvious reasons). Thats a Very Big Difference.
What the hell is memorable about Encarta's three blue ellipses? Or Britannica's thistle which is i) Too detailed and therefore hard to scale (c.f. O'Reilly Camel) ii) Symbolic of thorns and difficulty iii) Already the symbol of something else, namely Scotland.
Grolier's "simple logo" is the word "Grolier". Memorable, but only usuable in exactly the same environments as the word "Wikipedia." (c.f. Microsoft, Sourceforge)
The X Window logo is simple and memorable, but the X Consortium aren't exactly setting the business world on fire with their success, are they?
Atari are bankrupt; "Coca-Cola" is monolingual and written in an ugly script (as is Walt Disney); These are both brands whose success is founded firmly on the product: New Coke had the same script, but for some reasong people didn't buy it.
The UN logo is illegible if small (and they're going the way of the X consortium) I don't even know what the USPS logo is supposed to be, and only recognise it as Lance Armstrong's shirt design; Planned Parenthood looks like Dogbert's Brown Ring Of Quality The Mozilla logo is unused outside its development community. MIT logo is ugly, Stanford's make them look like a forestry service.
The Playboy bunny is nice, though. As is the Nike swoosh (which you omitted). But neither of those firms prospered because they had a nice logo. They prospered because guys like expensive training shoes and pictures of naked women.
And not necesarily in that order.
If you don't think some of these logos are "successful logos", fine. But where are the products/companies/organizations with large multi-colored logos with lots of word plastered all over them?
Most of your objections were petty, uninformed, and/or irrelevant. However:
I included the other encyclopedias' logos not necessarily because I thought they were good, but because they are our competition. I'm sure Britannica's logo is the way it is because it has been that way for a long time. Grolier's logo isn't just the word Grolier, but it has a swashed R and is in a particular font. Technially, that makes it a logotype, but the idea of usage is the same.
Coca-cola's logo is written in a variety of scripts, but even though it is monolingual it is BusinessWeek's #1 global brand. See http://bwnt.businessweek.com/brand/2003/index.asp
As for Atari, Infogrames recently purchased the Atari brand and changed their name to Atari. See http://www.atari.com/. They probably did that because the Atari brand name and logo are still well known long after the demise of the original company. Truly a sign of a successful logo. See also http://images.google.com/images?q=atari+shirt&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&...
The USPS logo is a stylized eagle, the traditional symbol of both the U.S. and the postal service.
And I wanted to include the Nike swoosh, but on Nike's web site the logo was only embedded in flash animations.
Finally, Eric has indicated that this conversation should take place at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_talk:Paullusmagnus-logo_(small).png
so this will be my last post to the list on this issue.
- David
Gareth Owen wrote:
David Friedland david=nvvn158Aj1ReoWH0uzbU5w@public.gmane.org writes:
What makes these logos successful is they are all simple, memorable, and can work in a variety of environments
Frankly, bollocks. By and large, these aren't succesful logos, they're the logos of succesful things (I exclude the DNC, for obvious reasons). Thats a Very Big Difference.
What the hell is memorable about Encarta's three blue ellipses? Or Britannica's thistle which is i) Too detailed and therefore hard to scale (c.f. O'Reilly Camel) ii) Symbolic of thorns and difficulty iii) Already the symbol of something else, namely Scotland.
Grolier's "simple logo" is the word "Grolier". Memorable, but only usuable in exactly the same environments as the word "Wikipedia." (c.f. Microsoft, Sourceforge)
The X Window logo is simple and memorable, but the X Consortium aren't exactly setting the business world on fire with their success, are they?
Atari are bankrupt; "Coca-Cola" is monolingual and written in an ugly script (as is Walt Disney); These are both brands whose success is founded firmly on the product: New Coke had the same script, but for some reasong people didn't buy it.
The UN logo is illegible if small (and they're going the way of the X consortium) I don't even know what the USPS logo is supposed to be, and only recognise it as Lance Armstrong's shirt design; Planned Parenthood looks like Dogbert's Brown Ring Of Quality The Mozilla logo is unused outside its development community. MIT logo is ugly, Stanford's make them look like a forestry service.
The Playboy bunny is nice, though. As is the Nike swoosh (which you omitted). But neither of those firms prospered because they had a nice logo. They prospered because guys like expensive training shoes and pictures of naked women.
And not necesarily in that order.
Gutza wrote:
Ok, I promised I'd shut up, but I just thought of something: I dare anyone to stand by the following phrase in public and not feel like a retard:
"For the logo of a serious encyclopedic project contributed by thousands of people world-wide and trying to compete world-famous encyclopedias worth thousands of dollars a copy, I, {your name here}, am against the concept of a stylized human silhouette and I support the concept of a ball made of coloured puzzle pieces".
Well, I spend my days vacillating between feeling 'like a retard' as you so elegantly (?) put it, and feeling like a diabolical genius, so I have a hard time with the assignment no matter what, depending on the time of day. ;-)
But seriously, although I voted the way you did (well, in the preliminary vote, at least... I neglected to vote in round 2, I'm sorry to report), lots of people *did* vote that way, right? So, unless they are like me, they probably did so without feeling retarded.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
But seriously, although I voted the way you did (well, in the preliminary vote, at least... I neglected to vote in round 2, I'm sorry to report), lots of people *did* vote that way, right? So, unless they are like me, they probably did so without feeling retarded.
I refrained from voting altogether because I'm one of the logo authors and didn't want to cheat -- I obviously wouldn't have been able to refrain from voting my own contributions, and that would've been biased.
To answer the point you're raising, of course all the people who voted with the winning proposal did so in good faith, and they certainly didn't feel retarded while doing so (as they well shouldn't). But that they did by looking at some images, and maybe finding the winning logo as visually appealing or something. In the message you're commenting on I was trying to emphasize the *concept* in itself, I was hoping at least some people would realize that logo isn't what it should be when they realized how inappropriate its concept is for this project. I failed.
Gutza
On Sat, 27 Sep 2003 00:28:39 +0300, Gutza gutza@moongate.ro gave utterance to the following:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
But seriously, although I voted the way you did (well, in the preliminary vote, at least... I neglected to vote in round 2, I'm sorry to report), lots of people *did* vote that way, right? So, unless they are like me, they probably did so without feeling retarded.
I refrained from voting altogether because I'm one of the logo authors and didn't want to cheat -- I obviously wouldn't have been able to refrain from voting my own contributions, and that would've been biased.
It is standard practice for candidates to vote in an election, and I would expect them to vote for themselves (except when they live in a different constituency). Interestingly, no one has raised the issue of open ballots, where the votes of previous voters are visible to and capable of influencing those who vote later. My definition of a democratic process includes the ballots being closed until the close of voting.
From: "Jimmy Wales" jwales@joey.bomis.com
I neglected to vote in round 2, I'm sorry to report), lots of people *did* vote that way, right? So, unless they are like me, they probably did so without feeling retarded.
Well, I missed the deadline, I guess I wasn't paying as close attention as I could have, but I'm feeling like a "retard" (gosh I hate that word). And I would have liked to cast in my vote... Oh well... Next time maybe?
Sigh, Jay B.
On Fri, 26 Sep 2003 09:06:24 -0400, Adam Bishop grenfell_@hotmail.com gave utterance to the following:
The first runner-up may be simpler, but I find it as ugly as you find the winner. I assume others feel the same way, since it didn't win.
Actually, I found both the winner and first runner up to be ugly, plus I had other objections to them both - technical for the jigsaw, too similar to existing logos for other organizations for the second. I made these comments on the voting page.
And as for consensus, it only just nudged into the approval zone (over 3.0) with a vote representing about 5% of the Wikipedia community.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .
Hi Richard,
And as for consensus, it only just nudged into the approval zone (over 3.0) with a vote representing about 5% of the Wikipedia community.
That's the exact point I'm unhappy with: an approval of 3.1 (or what it was) out of the 1-5 range (why not 0..4?) isn't exactly a sign of being populare. That this is the *best* rating a logo got is problematic in itself. Where is the 4.5 variant everybody sees right for Wikipedia? __ . / / / / ... Till Westermayer - till we *) . . . mailto:till@tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072 . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179 . . . . .
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