[Foundation-l] Swedish Wikipedians removes Wikimedia logos

[Lennart Guldbrandsson]

Hello,

After a long and tiring discussion on the Swedish Wikipedia Village Pump (
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bybrunnen#Wikimedialoggor_i_artiklar),
the logos of the Wikimedia Foundation projects have been deemed "unfree"
(since they are copyrighted) and have since been removed from the article
namespace, for example in links to the sister project, such as the template
linking to Commons: http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mall:Commons, but also the
article about Wikipedia itself has no logo (
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).

I have been in contact with Mike Godwin, and got the response that the
"unfree" logos can be used, as I had suspected. But a growing number of
Swedish Wikipedians felt that the Wikimedia Foundation shouldn't follow any
other rules than other organisations whose logos are copyrighted. The
argument was that we shouldn't use images that any third-party user cannot
use in the same fashion.

The changes were implemented, although there was not a clear consensus to do
so. I myself was opposed to this, citing from several emails from Mike
Godwin. My viewpoint is that if we cannot even use our own logos in our own
articles, something is very wrong. I also argued that we will not gain
anything by removing these logos - as this is a non-issue for most ordinary
users of Wikipedia.

Anyways, I just wanted to hear if anybody else have had encountered this
topic and how the matter was resolved. Is Swedish Wikipedia the first
language version to not include the Wikimedia Foundation's logos? Do any of
you find this discussion strange? Or are Swedish Wikipedia just ahead of the
curve?

Best wishes,

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Guldbrandsson, chair of Wikimedia Sverige and press contact for
Swedish Wikipedia // ordförande för Wikimedia Sverige och presskontakt för
svenskspråkiga Wikipedia