[Foundation-l] The Chinese New Year Wikipedia Logo

[Łukasz Garczewski]

On 2/16/07, THD <theodoranian at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> 2 days later, it will be the Chinese New Year, and some Chinese Wikipedian
> has made the Chinese New Year celebration Wikipedia logo. During the Chinese
> New Year period (Feb. 18 to 23), I think Chinese Wikipedians are proposing a
> celebration of new year on Chinese Wikipedia. You can take a look of this
> logo, http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Wiki_pig.png

[cut]

> Please comment.

I am strongly opposed to altering the logos of Wikimedia projects for
whatever reason or occasion. Here's why:

== Unified look ==

Obviously we will not change the logos on all the projects or even on
all the language versions of one project (say Wikipedia) for any given
occasion. If we allowed alternative logos, some would be altered, some
not. A mess.

Furthermore, the quality of altered logos and the way they fit in with
other logos in the Wikimedia family may differ greatly. I am not sure
we want that.

== Country-specific POV ==

Notice, that alternative logos will further the misconception that
pl.wikipedia.org is "The Polish Wikipedia" and zh.wikipedia.org is
"The Chinese Wikipedia". They are not -- they are the "Polish-language
Wikipedia" and "Chinese-language Wikipedia" respectively.

That a holiday is observed by 100% of Wikipedians contributing to a
given language version, say Swahili, doesn't mean that Wikipedia in
Swahili should change because of that. It should still be
international and neutral in nature.

== Further POV changes ==

Introducing alternative logos for holidays and such will encourage
people to propose logo changes for other reasons, like national

I had to explain again and again why we cannot and will not have a
black ribbon on the logo when John Paul II died. I do NOT want to go
through that again.

== Community vs no community ==

www.google.com is a great site, but there is no community behind it.
It displays custom logos to say 'Look! We're alive too! The logo has
changed! We celebrate Christmas/New Year." Most major portals do that
for the same reason -- to look more human.

We DO NOT need that. We are a living, thriving community. And the
community doesn't have to be reminded that it's [insert your favourite
holiday], does it?

Nothing holds any of the communities back from celebrating on meta
pages, user talk pages (Christmas wishes, new year wishes, etc.) and
so forth. That's enough for me as a member of those communities.
Anything more is unnecessary.

== Conclusion ==

Alternative logos are not really necessary, they further POV on many
levels and could damage our visual identity (if done incorrectly).
Please, lets not introduce them. Please.

-- 
Łukasz 'TOR' Garczewski