[Foundation-l] What is on the back of the logo?

[Stephen Bain]

On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 7:29 PM, Andrew Gray <andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk> wrote:
>
> So, thirty more to play with. I would like on principle for us to
> include a dead system or two - even if we don't work in them, it's a
> nice nod to include cuneiform or demotic Egyptian. I would have said
> 'Mayan', but that's far too complex for us!  (Another dead system
> which we might want to consider: Ogham, since it has a very nice "ui-"
> character, Uilleann.)

I think it would be excellent to include some scripts that are no
longer in use. The logo combines the ideas that knowledge is diverse,
by use of different writing systems, and that accumulating knowledge
is an ongoing process, through use of the unfinished puzzle. I feel
that historically important scripts that are no longer in use fit
neatly into both of these concepts. To get self-important for a
minute, the logo's also about showing Wikipedia's place as perhaps the
latest evolution in the long tradition of accumulating and relaying
knowledge, and including, say, something cuneiform would speak volumes
in this direction.

Priority probably should be given to incorporating scripts that
represent as many of the extant language editions of Wikipedia as
possible. This task is simplified to a great degree by the fact that
many scripts cover multiple languages: the Latin alphabet, most
obviously, but also the Cyrillic, Arabic, Devanagari and Georgian
alphabets and Chinese-derived scripts. Throw in Greek, Ge'ez, Khmer,
Armenian and Sinhala and you've pretty much covered all the
Wikipedias. Add important variants of these and you've still only
covered the front of the globe. There'll be heaps of room for
important historical languages.

-- 
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com