[Wikipedia-l] all this logo voting stuff ...

[Jake Nelson]

Arrrgh. This is just... bad. The current situation, not the logo (which was
in the top 5 in my ranking of things- for concept, not execution). To reply
to a few comments:

1a: The point was a unified, international logo.
1b: The Wikipedias should be free to choose, freedom from tyranny of the
majority, etc.

There -must- be a single logo across the pedias, or a set of logos that are
identical except in some small, decided at creation, way (a color choice,
something like that). Individual ratification irks me.

2: The Wikimedia logo should be the combination of individual Wikipedias'
logos.

No, I really don't think so. Wikimedia is not just Wikipedia. Wikipedia is
ONE project of Wikimedia. the 'pedia is the largest, and probably will
always be, but that's not at all certain. Firstly, we already have
Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks. These have tremendous potential. Secondly,
what now exists does not even begin describe the totality of what can exist-
and I'll wager not of what WILL exist, either. Matthew Mayer's example on
[[meta:Final logo variants]] of a Wikimedia logo made up of all the project
logos is much better thought out.

3: We should start over completely.

I -really- don't see that as a better alternative. I liked finalist #2 quite
a lot better, but I think some variant of it will make a great Wikimedia
logo. I don't think any of them that scored lower than the current logo in
the vote need be considered again (no offense to those who created them) if
we were to re-decide... but I think we should work with the puzzle sphere
concept. I'll post something to the variants page in the next 24 hours.

4: It's too much like the Office logo.

This is a valid criticism. Office doesn't just used the 4-piece-square.
Office 97 had 6, as I recall, with each directly corresponding to a program.
Later, they've used 4 for it as a whole... haven't seen as much of the
individual pieces lately, but I saw some use of it on MS's site not that
long ago. That said... I think that's just an argument (more on associations
and unoriginality than liability) against the individual pieces or
squares-of-pieces variants I see: I think the puzzle /sphere/ is safe. Plus,
I like it better.

5: This isn't new! None of these are original enough! New cheese!

There is no new cheese. Logo concepts are a heavily mined field. Every
company looks for a new and interesting one that people don't strongly
associate with something negative or another company/product. There are a
great many people who have worked for years for lots of money trying to come
up with original logos, and they almost always could still be said to too
closely resemble something else. Most of the real variety comes in animals
(if you're TRYING to use one that hasn't used before, that is- so many
overused animals, too.) or plays upon the product/company's name or starting
letter(s) thereof. (Logo #42 in stage 1, the dotted W, was actually very
good- its implementation was just horrible, and people voted based on that.)
And besides, even if it were very new (and I haven't seen a puzzle SPHERE
before- it's pretty original, really), if you're /looking/ for similarity,
you'll always find it.

Almost forgot...
6: New logo every year!

No. Whatever we adopt here should remain for at least 2 years, IMHO. A
thought might be ongoing development. IE, a meta page, [[New logo
submissions]] or something. People can add new ones anytime. People can vote
on whether they feel it could potentially become better than the current
logo. I have a feeling we'd eventually have one or two dozen people watching
the page who do most of this voting. Continuing to pull systems out of thin
air, if it's got more no votes than yes (submitter can vote, so that'd mean
two nos and no yes, at minimum), it gets dumped. Logos are continually
adjusted based on rough consensus on their talk page (possibly with votes on
individual items, ie, 'What color should the thingy on the left be?')...
though bad memories of images designed by committee come to mind,
Wikipedians (hell, even the trolls and nutter fringe-theorists) tend to be
of a higher caliber than the sort I recall having created those.

Anyway, I could say how I would have done logo selection differently, and
next time there's a big vote, I will. BEFORE it begins. It's done. Let's use
what we've got. Technical issues with it can be dealt with.

-- Jake