[Wikipedia-l] Voting versus consensus

[Gutza]

Erik Moeller wrote:

>While my favorite didn't win (it didn't even make the list of finalists),  
>I think the overall logo process worked pretty well. We managed to get  
>from over 130 submissions down to 11 and now to 1 in about 2 months, with  
>hundreds of voters from all across the world, with two different voting  
>systems, open discussion throughout the whole process, and all that  
>without any additional software support whatsoever, and without  
>significant cheating.
>  
>

Erik, a process works well if the result of that process is a good 
thing. I mean, I could easily get from over 130 submissions down to 1 in 
about 2 milliseconds by picking a random one. But what we wanted, or at 
least what I think we wanted, was to pick the best logo, not just to 
pick a logo from 130 proposals. Best looking, most usable, most 
representative. Best. Logo. And we failed. It's not the best. And it's 
not a logo. Sorry, the process not only didn't go well, it failed 
miserably IMHO. But it is not your fault. It's nobody's fault. If I were 
asked to blame someone, I couldn't even think of blaming Paullusmagnus. 
It's just how it happened. If you don't believe this was not a success, 
look at all those people who don't want to "ratify" this design. I find 
that process superfluous after all this voting, but its results, or at 
least its current status clearly shows the current decision is not even 
remotely consensual. And don't say "47 to 54 is not *so* 
representative", think about it, those 47 want to toss this whole 
lengthy process out the window and get back to the old logo and the old 
state of affairs. That's sad, it's not only they *don't like* this logo, 
it's that they all *dislike* it so much that they'd rather stick to the 
old one and dump all the other proposals, all the designers' work, the 
discussions, the voting process, everything to the trash can.

Instead of pointing fingers at people, design flaws and technical 
problems like many of us did in a previous thread (me included), I think 
we'd better analyze the process and at least learn from this for the future.

My personal opinion is that the winning logo was voted for mostly 
because it's the one in which most people found something of their own 
contributions: the proposal was on the first page, it was made early, so 
many people made many suggestions, and Paullusmagnus humored them all. 
While that may sound as close as it gets to the WikiWiki-like style of 
collaborative design, logo design doesn't really work like decorating 
the Christmas tree.

Think I'm making this up? Take a look at the first concept design: 
http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/archive/b/b3/20030723122803!Paullusmagnus-logo_(small).png
Now take a look at the current version: 
http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/7/75/Paullusmagnus-logo_%28small%29_reloaded.png
Is that Christmas tree decorating or what?

Another problem I find is the number of choices in the second voting 
round for some versions. Take a look at versions 2a...2e in the list of 
finalists: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_logo_vote/Finalists
Really, do take a look. Can you imagine the winning logo going through 
as "major" changes as the differences between 2b, 2d and 2e in this 
final refinement process? Of course you can, there are insignifiant 
changes between those variants. I sure can, I actually hope for even 
more drastical changes in the winning proposal. Some of you might think 
"oh well, even if we do a normalised average on the variants of proposal 
#2, it still wouldn't win". Probably true (didn't do the math), but 
people voted for the *concept* in proposal 1 and for the *finalized 
logo* in proposal 2. I can't reach any other conclusion from the fact 
that we need a refinement process for logo #1 but we had no less than 
three almost identical variants of proposal #2.

I'd be happy if I could end this message with the 10 Commandments of 
Logo Voting or something. Unfortunately I can't--even if I could 
summarize the problems for my previous paragraphs in a couple of dont's, 
I certainly couldn't suggest any rules to counter the previous problem I 
described. Hopefully we'll end up learning something heuristically from 
this, at least the ones among us who contest the fitness of the winning 
logo.

So, Erik, since I started this message by addressing you, let me end it 
the same way: I do not hold you or anyone else responsible for what I 
see as a failure in choosing this logo. I don't think cheating was 
considerable and I certainly do not believe the final result was in any 
way affected by cheating. So please don't take this personal, and don't 
be defensive about the logistics of the voting process. That worked 
well, and I'm sure it was hard to prevent cheating, constantly keeping 
an eye on things, etc. Well done! I'm talking about the more human 
aspects of the voting, and that you couldn't control.

Obviously just my 2c,
Gutza