[Foundation-l] Change default skins? (WAS: Wikimedia Brand Survey Analysis)

[Titoxd@Wikimedia]

Not really replying to David, but there's a ton of messages in this thread,
and there isn't really one that fits as a "best email to reply to".
It has been mentioned in this thread that most of our projects are
considered part of Wikipedia in the general public's eyes. However, I showed
a Wikinews article to a friend the other day, and she said, "Wow, I thought
it was Wikipedia because it looks the same as Wikipedia." 
I kept thinking about that for a while, and I realized that we could
probably visually distance the projects away from Wikipedia by changing the
default skins for those projects. I immediately thought about this skin in
Wikinews [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:WikinewsSkin-1024.png] that
apparently never got finished. There are dozens of skin layouts available at
the Gallery of user styles
[http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gallery_of_user_styles] which could help
Wikimedia sister projects obtain their respective visual identities.
Of course, that begs the question of whether we would want to do such a
thing, but if we wanted to, we could probably make a contest to design a new
skin. That would encourage techies to look at the other projects, and feel a
certain degree of satisfaction when they look at code they made being used
on Wiktionary's Main Page.
Comments?
Titoxd.   

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of David Gerard
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2007 1:34 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Brand Survey Analysis

On 06/07/07, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:

> Or maybe I'm just jaded because I spent an hour last night talking to a
> friend who wanted to know how he could get his online community of
> historical reenactors joined up with "Wiki"; he meant Wikipedia, and he
just
> assumed that we had a good way to incorporate specific communities of
> interest. This is a sysadmin with his own install of Mediawiki, so not
> entirely clueless. But I suspect, as others have pointed out in this
thread,
> that community distinctions elide most of the public once they've gotten
the
> idea of 'wiki' anything.


I predict this will get better when corporate intranet wikis gain
greater popularity. (Preferably MediaWiki, 'cos even though other
engines are less work for the sysadmin, MediaWiki is nicest for the
users. And looks like Wikipedia.) People become familiar with what
they use at work.


- d.

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