[Wikipedia-l] Voting versus consensus

[Erik Moeller]

Gutza-
> Erik, a process works well if the result of that process is a good
> thing.

Indeed. Many people think it is. Many other people think it isn't. The  
majority seems to favor the new design over the old one. So that's a  
reasonable result -- we get rid of the textball and get a unified,  
international logo for all 'pedias.

> If you don't believe this was not a success,
> look at all those people who don't want to "ratify" this design.

Obviously, none of the submitted logos was popular enough to win landslide  
support. That has nothing whatsoever to do with the process used. It has  
something to do with the submissions.

I understand that you're disappointed that your logo didn't win. I liked  
it. But the simple fact is that many other people didn't. Many people  
didn't like the gray circle, the "lamp" symbol is not widely enough  
understood and generally carries different connotations, and so forth.  
That's why it was rated lower. The puzzle sphere uses symbolism that is  
very obvious, in your face. That will inevitably polarize opinions. But  
our contest lacked a more subtle submission which carried meaningful  
symbolism without being obtrusive (some people pointed out the sunflower- 
brackets logo as such a solution, but the truth is that the sunflower  
carries strong environmentalist connotations, which is why many people  
voted against it). Logo 5e, while technically attractive, looks like a  
tissue logo. Many people dislike ants. And so forth.

See, these are all arguments that relate to the actual submissions. They  
have nothing to do with the process.

> 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.

Where did I say it was?

> 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.

I don't think there is anything fundamental wrong with the process used,  
and no convincing argument has so far been made that there is.

> 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,

I've already dissected this argument several times, would you please just  
drop it?

> 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.

For some people, it does. For other people it doesn't. Taste is  
subjective. Obviously many people love the new logo -- see the comments.  
That's a good thing. Many other people strongly dislike it. Hopefully we  
can change this to "reluctantly accept".

> 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?

Possibly, the problem, however, is that the final refinement process is a  
consensus process, so one or two individuals can make even the smallest  
changes impossible. For example, JDG has already set a clear limit on the  
amount of pixels distance he would be willing to accept between the text  
and the sphere -- we will have to follow this limit if we do not want to  
violate consensus. That's why I see this final refinement mostly as  
experimental -- we don't know beforehand how many changes we can get  
through.

The number of variants - 5 per user - seems reasonable to me. I do think  
that some variants were unnecessary, but that was up to the artists to  
decide.

>  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.

Not really. We would go through exactly the same process if any of the 2  
variants would have won (try different color variants, arrangements etc.)  
And most people did not really vote on the concept in proposal #1 -- check  
out the many "1" votes which clearly commented on *this version*.

Again, I think the outcome of this contest reflects the quality and  
diversity of submissions. I do not think that any other process would have  
yielded a substantially more widely accepted result.

Regards,

Erik