[Wikipedia-l] New logo and further process

[Jimmy Wales]

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