subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting versus consensus

body:
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


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New logo and further process

body:
Tomasz-
> OK, we've seen voting in action twice - first with article count reform,
> now with a logo.

Yay!

> And both times with a horrible results.

Opinions differ on this. Please try to respect NPOV in your mails ;-)

Regards,

Erik


body:
Tomasz-
> Reverse it immediately and do it the way it's supposed to be done -

I changed the links that point to the logo on Meta.

Regards,

Erik


list: wikien-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Adam acting the ass again *sigh* (and he is only
	just	back)

body:
Even if your gratuitous allegation were true, some people have already
made up their minds that Adam is guilty.  Some people have already made
up their minds that facts should not interfere with their prejudiced
opinions about Lir.  All he did was cast his vote on a subject.  That's
no big deal!  Lir wasn't the one to go ballistic over this.  His
opponents were the ones who swarmed and made a big fuss over this.

Ec

Rick wrote:

> I don't think that's anyone's intent.  Adam isn't a scapegoat, he's a
> troll.
>
>
>
> RickK
>
> Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>     In the meantime please stop developing excuses to make Adam a
>     scapegoat.
>
>     Ec
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting versus consensus

body:
Gutza-
> Oh, no! Don't make this about me! I took all possible precautions in all
> my previous messages not to make it about you--as a matter of fact, not
> to make it about anyone. Also, I made it clear in my first message on
> this topic in the other thread this was not about my entry not winning.
> And finally, you're not talking about my submission in your message,

Oh. I must have confused you with Stygian. Sorry about that. You both seem
to be among the more professional designers. I did like the Fibonacci
spiral, but (ironically) thought it was too complex as well.

> Can you really not see that the ultimate refinement
> process, judging by what happened so far, would be to add centipedes,
> neon lights, ants, a search button, lens flare, a kidney and a supernova
> to the current proposal?

Sorry, I can't see that. Do you think that such proposals would find
consensus? I believe there's a general wide perception that Paullusmagnus'
logo, while good in concept, has too much and too narrowly placed
information. If that is so, then why should it not be possible to leverage
this widely shared perception into a positive change?

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Formalize the PM logo improvement process.

body:
Stevertigo-
> Id like to announce that "Beat Up on Erik Day" is now
> over.

You'll have to bring a lot heavier armory next time. I have Usenet
experience ;-)

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Gutza

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting versus consensus

body:
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


from_name: Paul Ebermann

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Fundraising

body:
"Jimmy Wales" skribis:
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
> > There has never been a community decision to keep this information
> > secret.
>
> What's secret?  There are no secrets here.  I just posted all the
> details of the current account balances at the bank and at PayPal a
> few days ago.

Seems that the finances are the most transparent
part up to now.

> Here's a link to the Florida state government website with information
> about the nonprofit filing:
> http://www.sunbiz.org/scripts/cordet.exe?a1=DETFIL&n1=N03000005323&n2=NAMFWD&n3=0000&n4=N&r1=&r2=&r3=&r4=WIKIMEDIAFOUNDATION&r5=
>

"REFRESH is not supported for this page.
 Please use your browsers' BACK arrow to return to the previous page."

And http://www.sunbiz.org/ says:

    Due to scheduled maintenance, the system will be unavailable
    from 5 p.m., Friday (9/19) to 8 a.m., Monday (9/22), and
    from 5 p.m., Friday (9/26) to 8 a.m., Monday (9/29).

OK, I'll try again on monday ...

Paul


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New logo and further process

body:
"Brion Vibber" skribis:

> On Fri, 2003-09-26 at 12:55, 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.
>
> And I thought we had it bad in California!
> http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/c/c6/Sample_ballot_for_CA_recall.png

And now imagine each one had one or more photos,
and you could elect which photo you like most.

Paul


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting versus consensus

body:
On Sat, Sep 27, 2003 at 02:32:29AM +0300, Gutza wrote:
> 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.

I fully agree with you. The result of this vote was disastrous,
the result of the previous vote was disastrous too. I hope that's the last
time we were deciding anything by vote.


from_name: Thomas Corell

references:
<8uaLLJqSpVB@erik_moeller>
	<oprv27kyu4zs1r4a@localhost>	<3F73FA71.7070108@moongate.ro>
	<20030926100636.GA24262@tavaiah>

body:
After reading all these Mails about the logos, I'm very happy and have
the feeling that the weekend will be fine.

- I din't voted (saved a lot of time downloading and choosing a logo)
and I don't have the feeling of missed something important
- I'm impressed of Eric - playing voting master, get these unlucky
results and still not exploded  - wow!
- I learned a lot about voting and started to like dicatorship

My propoal for this weekend: take a good sleep, write a fine wikipedia
article, take another sleep to think about democracy and accepting
decisions and take all a lot easier.

Happy Weekend
--
Smurf
I talk about Wikipedia not about [[Image:Logo]]
smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>On Fri, Sep 26, 2003 at 11:36:01AM +0300, Gutza wrote:
>
>
>>Richard Grevers wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Yay - months of process and what do we get? The worst result - the
>>>logo that has the biggest technical problems in terms of reproduction
>>>in other media. Its greyscale version is incredibly unclear because it
>>>is far too busy.
>>>You just doubled or tripled the cost of Wikimedia letterhead, folks,
>>>so everyone who voted for it had better donate extra.
>>>
>>>
>>Plus it's horrible. No offence to anyone, the thing already won, so it's
>>not a matter of offending the author anymore, but that logo stinks big
>>time. If this is democracy in action, imagine running a country this way.
>>
>>
>
>OK, we've seen voting in action twice - first with article count reform,
>now with a logo. And both times with a horrible results. If anyone wasn't
>convinced that voting is bad, he can definitely see it now. So can we stop
>making decisions this way now ?
>
>
Suggestions? If such a significant minority is so dissatisfied with the
results of voting, do you think Jimbo or some board picking a logo would
yield higher levels of satisfaction among wikipedians? In this
particular instance, I personally would've been happier with Jimbo
picking one because I know which one he prefers, but I'm 100% certain
that would've upset quite a lot of "betrayed wikipedians" "appalled by
the acts of dictatorship" etc. And they'd be right, as far as the
WikiWiki community goes.

So, what would you suggest?

Gutza


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting versus consensus

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>I understand that you're disappointed that your logo didn't win.
>
Oh, no! Don't make this about me! I took all possible precautions in all
my previous messages not to make it about you--as a matter of fact, not
to make it about anyone. Also, I made it clear in my first message on
this topic in the other thread this was not about my entry not winning.
And finally, you're not talking about my submission in your message,
mine was the Fibonacci spiral, which has never been mentioned today--I
hope that shows how much this is personal.

If I am disappointed at something apart from what our new logo looks
like, it's not that my logo didn't win, it's that even now I can't seem
to be able to discuss the issue with someone with a different
opinion--how you keep believing that actually worked during development
I can't really see. Can you really not see that the ultimate refinement
process, judging by what happened so far, would be to add centipedes,
neon lights, ants, a search button, lens flare, a kidney and a supernova
to the current proposal? Or if you see that, do you support it simply by
saying "For some people, it does [work this way]"?

Anyway, I'm talking about one thing, and I'm doing my best to discuss it
objectively, and you're talking about something else, and you take a
defensive attitude, while being subtly offensive on occasion. This is
leading nowhere, or if it leads somewhere we probably don't want to get
there. I will do my best to remain silent and accept the current decision.

Gutza


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting versus consensus

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>I believe there's a general wide perception that Paullusmagnus'
>logo, while good in concept, has too much and too narrowly placed
>information. If that is so, then why should it not be possible to leverage
>this widely shared perception into a positive change?
>
>
Because this cluttered version
http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/archive/b/b3/20030723122803!Paullusmagnus-logo_(small).png
didn't win; it had to be refined to this even more cluttered version
http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/7/75/Paullusmagnus-logo_%28small%29_reloaded.png
via collaborative design and consensus in order to win. That's why I
think more refinement via more collaborative design and more consensus
will only result in more clutter. I can only pray I'm wrong.

Gutza


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting versus consensus

body:
Stevertigo wrote:

>Gutza-- why dont you now put some energy into
>developing some variants of the PM logo--- its the
>winning concept, accept it, now please give it some of
>your touch that it might be more pleasing to the
>displeased.
>
>
You are right, I'm whining too much, and I hate to do it. The problem is
that I find the very concept to be tainted, it's not like you have to
work with puzzle pieces, you have to work with a ball made of puzzle
pieces. And there's not a lot you can do with that. Well, I did give it
a try this afternoon, and I'll probably give it a try tomorrow as well
if I find the time, but the results in this afternoon have been... well,
they made me write the e-mails I did, need I say more? :)

Gutza


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
>  All he did was cast his vote on a subject.  That's
> no big deal!  Lir wasn't the one to go ballistic over this.  His
> opponents were the ones who swarmed and made a big fuss over this.

I agree with Ec here.  I don't see what the big deal is about what
Adam did in this case.  He edited a wiki page that some people wished
would not be edited.  But the page was not protected, his edit was not
vandalism, and there's just no justification for an alleged 'rule'
that such a page can't be further edited.

It has been argued that by editing to add his own vote after the vote
was closed, Adam somehow distorted the history of the vote, violated
the integrity of the archive.  But it's a wiki page, and Adam has no
power to distort the history or violate the integrity of anything.
It's all in the history.

Was it discourteous to edit a page that some people wanted left in a
particular state?  Possibly.  But not nearly so discourteous as
freaking out about it.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Welcome back Adam

body:
Rick wrote:
> I'm newer than you, and I've still seen how Lir likes to confuse
> things with multiple names.  What do you mean, you don't know why
> he'd want to use two logins?  Because it's the way he makes things
> difficult for the rest of us.

To my knowledge, he hasn't used 2 logins since his reinstatement.  He
knew that he was reinstated, and I told him he could use whatever
account he liked, as long as he sticks to it, and he used PP while
waiting for the Lir account to be setup for him.  (It was banned, so
he couldn't just login and start using it.)

I don't have a problem with that.

Let's all stipulate this: Adam's history is terrible.  He used
multiple logins while banned, as a means of evading the ban.  There's
no excusing that, but there's no death penalty for it, either.

So let's relax a notch or two and try to welcome him on board in a
positive manner.

It might not work.  But let's give it a real try.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting versus consensus

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> What compromise can you make between a puzzle sphere and an abstract
> circle-type logo?  Combining ideas from both sounds good in theory
> but in practice is the kind of forced solution that never works.

That's right.  It's pretty hard to envision how anything like that
could be workable.  A logo is not an encyclopedia article, so the wiki
process itself isn't well suited to dealing with it.

> While my favorite didn't win (it didn't even make the list of finalists),
> I think the overall logo process worked pretty well.

I do agree with this.  I do point out, though, that there's a lot of
bickering which *might* lead to hard feelings if people aren't
careful.

I'm going to vote now to ratify the logo... not because the logo is my
favorite, but because I want to express support for the process.  That
is, I'm voting for the _principle_ that community votes should be
respected in almost all cases.

It's like, suppose we had an election for mayor, and then we had a
separate vote on "should the outcome of the vote be respected and
supported by all, even if our favorite candidate didn't win".

I'd vote 'yes' on the second in almost all circumstances, as long as
I felt the process wasn't radically rigged in some fashion.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting versus consensus

body:
Gutza wrote:
> 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'm sure Erik agrees with this.  One of the great things about the
logo competition is that it isn't a matter of grave policy import, and
so we can learn to improve the process in a safe way, with not too
much harm done if it doesn't go perfectly.

I'd say that one way to characterize the challenge is this:

Given irreconcilable alternatives such that there is no obvious
consensus or even majority choice, the formal process of making a
choice is sufficiently satisfactory that a very high percentage of
interested parties will agree that the outcome of the process should
be followed, even if their favorite atlernative doesn't win.

That's the way I feel about the current logo.  It wasn't my first
choice, but I support the idea of voting, I support the process, and I
think we should go with it.

I *do* note though that we have room for improvement if we aren't
seeing a very high percentage of the 'ratification' votes saying
"O.k., let's do it, even though my candidate didn't win."

I hope that anyone who wasn't thinking of the ratification process in
this light will go back and change their vote.

Perhaps in the future, we should focus our internal attitude
adjustments on a community commitment to respect and support community
choices.

--Jimbo


from_name: Richard Grevers

body:
On Fri, 26 Sep 2003 09:06:24 -0400, Adam Bishop <grenfell_ at hotmail.com>
gave utterance to the following:

> The first runner-up may be simpler, but I find it as ugly as you find
> the winner. I assume others feel the same way, since it didn't win.
>
Actually, I found both the winner and first runner up to be ugly, plus I
had other objections to them both - technical for the jigsaw, too similar
to existing logos for other organizations for the second.
I made these comments on the voting page.

And as for consensus, it only just nudged into the approval zone (over
3.0) with a vote representing about 5% of the Wikipedia community.
--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


body:
On 26 Sep 2003 17:42:55 +0100, Gareth Owen <wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk>
gave utterance to the following:

> Go out on the street and ask people what the logo of Encyclopedia
> Brittanica
> looks like?  Do they even have one?

A thistle - it goes well with their writing style - dry and prickly :-)
--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


body:
On 26 Sep 2003 16:18:00 +0200, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> gave
utterance to the following:

> tarquin-
>
>> And the whole voting process has been a complete fiasco.
>
> Thanks for your constructive feedback, Tarquin. I'll take it into account
> the next time I organize something like this.
>
There wasn't a problem with the voting process. The problem was the lack
of a qualification stage where each entrant was judged as to whether or
not it meets the brief. Thus the vote was uneven. It was likely that many
voters had no understanding that some logos had technical problems and
merely voted of symbolism or aesthetics. While others of us made a more
suitability-based judgement.
The winner doesn't, IMO, comply with the design brief, and without
significant revision to make it comply to the brief it should not have
made it to the voting starting line.
--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


body:
On 26 Sep 2003 18:44:00 +0200, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> gave
utterance to the following:

>
> The total points are irrelevant. The logos were ranked by the average
> score, it doesn't matter at all how many people voted on each logo
> because
> the score is the sum divided by the number of voters *for that variant*.
>
In that case, why isn't the number of votes for each logo identical - a
requirement for average voting to work. The winner received more votes
than many other logos, meaning that others received a number of "zero"
votes, effectively pulling down their averages. I voted "1" for the winner
because I understood that to be the lowest vote allowed.

--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l Digest, Vol 2, Issue 53

body:
On Fri, 26 Sep 2003 10:31:29 -0400, Jim Guide <jimg5 at optonline.net> gave
utterance to the following:

>
> Yes, we should shut those voices. They were outvoted, and not by a small
> margin. Sorry if this is a bit arrogant, but I just think that those who
> have major problems with Puzzle Sphere wouldn't know a good logo if it
> came
> up to them and winked while wiggling its hips. And for you graphic
> designers
> who also hate it, well, maybe you should get into a new line of work.
> Puzzle
> Sphere Rules! It looks so great on the Main Page-- just the right touch
> of
> graphic interest, perfect reflection of the colored tables.

Okay, I admit it, all the print design work I've ever done is utter crap,
and most printers don't know what they are talking about when they advise
on technical problems.

Thank goodness for Wikipedia skins. Cologne blue allows us to avoid puke
table colours and puke logos - if only it didn't make text too small to
read, I'd be happy.

--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


from_name: Jay Bowks

subject: Contrib's (was: [Wikipedia-l] Donating a PC

body:
Hi Jimbo,
has there been any talk of writing grant applications?
I've done some grant writing for the school districts
I work in and it proved quite productive... e.g. we
now can enjoy new computer labs as a result... is there
someone looking into grants for non profit projects?
w/ regards,
Jay B.
[[User:ILVI]]
ia.wikipedia.org
la.wikipedia.org

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at joey.bomis.com>
> [...] What would help more would be money to help us reach the $6000 goal
> for the Opteron/Xeon/IA64 server.  Even small contributions are very
> much appreciated!


body:
From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at joey.bomis.com>
> I neglected to vote in round 2, I'm
> sorry to report), lots of people *did* vote that way, right?  So,
> unless they are like me, they probably did so without feeling
> retarded.

Well, I missed the deadline, I guess
I wasn't paying as close attention as
I could have, but I'm feeling like a
"retard" (gosh I hate that word). And
I would have liked to cast in my vote...
Oh well...
Next time maybe?

Sigh,
Jay B.


body:
On 26 Sep 2003 22:28:00 +0200, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> gave
utterance to the following:

> Richard-
>> On 26 Sep 2003 18:44:00 +0200, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> gave
>> utterance to the following:
>
>>>
>>> The total points are irrelevant. The logos were ranked by the average
>>> score, it doesn't matter at all how many people voted on each logo
>>> because
>>> the score is the sum divided by the number of voters *for that
>>> variant*.
>
>> In that case, why isn't the number of votes for each logo identical - a
>> requirement for average voting to work.
>
> No. Read the above again. There are no zero votes -- not voting does not
> influence the average for that submission.
>
The calculation actually works in the opposite direction to tht expected,
but
your assertion is false. 549/180 != 548/179 Not voting for an entry
increases its average.
--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


body:
On 26 Sep 2003 22:27:00 +0200, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> gave
utterance to the following:

> Richard-
>> The winner doesn't, IMO, comply with the design brief,
>
> In which respect?
>
(this from memmory, I can't find the brief now)
The logo must be suitable for printing on letterheads, t-shirts,mugs, pens
etc.
Well unless you are going to print everything in four-colour process, you
have problems. And it simply doesn't scale down well enough for small
objects, plus there is too little contrast.
--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


body:
On Sat, 27 Sep 2003 09:20:44 +1200, Richard Grevers <lists at dramatic.co.nz>
gave utterance to the following:

> On 26 Sep 2003 22:28:00 +0200, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> gave
> utterance to the following:
>
>> Richard-
>>> On 26 Sep 2003 18:44:00 +0200, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> gave
>>> utterance to the following:
>>
>>>>
>>>> The total points are irrelevant. The logos were ranked by the average
>>>> score, it doesn't matter at all how many people voted on each logo
>>>> because
>>>> the score is the sum divided by the number of voters *for that
>>>> variant*.
>>
>>> In that case, why isn't the number of votes for each logo identical - a
>>> requirement for average voting to work.
>>
>> No. Read the above again. There are no zero votes -- not voting does not
>> influence the average for that submission.
>>
> The calculation actually works in the opposite direction to tht
> expected, but
> your assertion is false. 549/180 != 548/179 Not voting for an entry
> increases its average.

Actually, I just found my vote amone the invalids. Wikipedia was down
immediately after I voted so I wasn't able to check. For some reason ~~~~
didn't get decoded.

--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Voting Phase 3

body:
Tarquin

> I suggest the following:
>
> * we set out some basic design goals: image size,
> max filesize,
> possibility to go greyscale for t-shirts &
> letterheads.
> * we invite all 10 finalists to rework their logos,
> with help from the
> community, to fit these guidelines
> * after this process, we run the vote again, this
> time informing voters
> of how the logos meet these requirements

I support this.
Except I don't think we need to rework the 10 (11 :-))
finalists, as it is clear that several of the
finalists will not satisfy people, not for technical
reasons (filesize, scaling...) but for the concept
they represent.

I suggest that we limit ourselves to the top options.

__________________________________
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from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting versus consensus

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>What was missing was a good overview of the pros and cons of each logo.
>This has technical reasons -- with the pages already very big and over 130
>submissions, discussions had to be relegated to relatively hidden talk
>pages. I'm not very happy with this, because I believe in the principle of
>*informed* democracy.
>
Yes, I agree entirely with this.
I think the winner got so many votes because it incorporates words in
many languages, which probably appealed to people because it looks
"international".
But this excessive text is *exactly* what makes it a terrible logo - it
doesn't scale down and the filesize is TOO BIG for the web.

>
>
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting versus consensus

body:
Stevertigo wrote:

>--- Gutza <gutza at moongate.ro> wrote:
>That's why I
>
>
>>think more refinement via more collaborative design
>>and more consensus
>>will only result in more clutter. I can only pray
>>I'm wrong.
>>
>>
>
>
>Gutza-- why dont you now put some energy into
>developing some variants of the PM logo--- its the
>winning concept, accept it, now please give it some of
>your touch that it might be more pleasing to the
>displeased.
>
>
One of the variants is 93k, and IMO has no chance of scaling down.
What is wrong with people?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting Phase 3

body:
I suggest the following:

* we set out some basic design goals: image size, max filesize,
possibility to go greyscale for t-shirts & letterheads.
* we invite all 10 finalists to rework their logos, with help from the
community, to fit these guidelines
* after this process, we run the vote again, this time informing voters
of how the logos meet these requirements


body:
On Sat, 27 Sep 2003 00:28:39 +0300, Gutza <gutza at moongate.ro> gave
utterance to the following:

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> But seriously, although I voted the way you did (well, in the
>> preliminary vote, at least... I neglected to vote in round 2, I'm
>> sorry to report), lots of people *did* vote that way, right?  So,
>> unless they are like me, they probably did so without feeling
>> retarded.
>>
> I refrained from voting altogether because I'm one of the logo authors
> and didn't want to cheat -- I obviously wouldn't have been able to
> refrain from voting my own contributions, and that would've been biased.
>
It is standard practice for candidates to vote in an election, and I would
expect them to vote for themselves (except when they live in a different
constituency). Interestingly, no one has raised the issue of open ballots,
where the votes of previous voters are visible to and capable of
influencing those who vote later. My definition of a democratic process
includes the ballots being closed until the close of voting.
--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting versus consensus

body:
tarquin wrote:

> Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>> What was missing was a good overview of the pros and cons of each
>> logo.  This has technical reasons -- with the pages already very big
>> and over 130  submissions, discussions had to be relegated to
>> relatively hidden talk  pages. I'm not very happy with this, because
>> I believe in the principle of  *informed* democracy.
>
> Yes, I agree entirely with this.
> I think the winner got so many votes because it incorporates words in
> many languages, which probably appealed to people because it looks
> "international".
> But this excessive text is *exactly* what makes it a terrible logo -
> it doesn't scale down and the filesize is TOO BIG for the web.

After reading more about this subject than I care to, and not being
particularly enthusiastic about the results, I do want to make a suggestion.

1. Use the puzzle piece logo (with modifications) as the logo for Wikimedia.
    a. Get rid of the meaningless text from the surface of the globe.
    b. In each pussle piece include the 2-letter ISO639-1 code for some
language, oriented to conform with the position of that piece on the
globe.  These letters can be omitted from scaled down versions of the logo.
    c. The centre puzzle piece should preferably be blank to generically
represent all the non-Wikipedia projects.  The worst thing you could put
in the centre piece would be "en"

2. Each project could design its own logo, use the one it already has or
use a temporary generic logo while it is designing its own.
    a. A key required element of each logo would be a single puzzle
peice.  It would be up to the participants of that project to determine
how that puzzle piece would be worked into aesthetic conformity with the
existing design.
    b. The puzzle piece would either be blank or contain the 2-letter
code for that language.

3. The underlying concept is that Wikimedia brings together the diverse
puzzle pieces to form a single world.  Each project is one piece of that
puzzle.

Ec.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Something have gone wrong with the backup of the
	french wikipedia.

body:
On Sat, 2003-09-27 at 07:35, Luc Van Oostenryck wrote:
> Something have gone wrong with the backup of the french wikipedia.
> The backup contain only one page and it is the main page of the welsh wikipedia.

Something went wrong with the bit that deals with new wikis. I'm not
quite sure why, but when it created directories to hold the backups for
the new Scots & Manx Gaelic wikis, it didn't actually go _into_ those
directories. It stayed in the French backup directory (fr alphabetically
before gd and gv) and overwrote its backup. :P

I'm running those three again, new version should be done fairly soon.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] logos and wikimedia

body:
>
>For the statistics: add me to the people who think that the new logo is a
>catastrophe. Applying the concept of democracy to the sphere of arts is
>the worst thing one can do.
>

I think a little patience is called for here.  Just start over and call for
new designs.

Fred


from_name: Stevertigo

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting versus consensus

body:
--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:

> I think the winner got so many votes because it
> incorporates words in
> many languages, which probably appealed to people
> because it looks
> "international".

I disagree-- I think it won because it was strong on
concept, regardless of the clutter (which, believe me,
i objected to). Maybe your energy would be better
spent at m:final logo variants to make something more
betterer, and more appealingful.

~S~

__________________________________
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http://shopping.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting Phase 3

body:
--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:

> * we set out some basic design goals: image size,
> max filesize,
> possibility to go greyscale for t-shirts &
> letterheads.
> * we invite all 10 finalists to rework their logos,
> with help from the
> community, to fit these guidelines
> * after this process, we run the vote again, this
> time informing voters
> of how the logos meet these requirements

I actually like the idea of having a pool and cutting
the bottom half or tope third down (with each
round)...
So 137 becomes 45, which becomes 19, and then 6 then
2, etc.... (dont bother checking my math)

Its a little late to stomp yer feet now Tarq.. maybe
next time.
~S~

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting versus consensus

body:
--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
>
>
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> >Gutza wrote:
> >
> >
> >>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'm sure Erik agrees with this.
> >
> So do I.
> Passions ran high I'm afraid. :(
>
> >I hope that anyone who wasn't thinking of the
> ratification process in
> >this light will go back and change their vote.
> >
> I still don't understand why this ratification came
> about --
> *given* that the goal was to have a single logo for
> all pedias, *why*
> give pedis the choice of opting out? Please could
> someone explain the
> reasoning behind this.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

__________________________________
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting Phase 3

body:
tarquin wrote:

> I suggest the following:
>
> * we set out some basic design goals: image size, max filesize,
> possibility to go greyscale for t-shirts & letterheads.

That should have been the first discussion before we had any specific
submissions.

> * we invite all 10 finalists to rework their logos, with help from the
> community, to fit these guidelines

Each finalist should be somehow reduced to one design.  Two variants for
one of our candidates differed only between the use of bright blue or
strumpf blue, a meaningless difference.  In other cases these may
require separate decision making processes.

> * after this process, we run the vote again, this time informing
> voters of how the logos meet these requirements

There should be no hurry.  There can be as many rounds as it takes.
 Winning would require an absolute majority of votes cast.  After each
round the logo with the fewest votes would be dropped.  More could be
dropped if they have fewer than 10% of the votes received by the highest
vote getter.  This latter provision could even be workable over the
entire range of 137.  Transferable ballots would improve the efficiency
especially in the early stages, but only with a very limited number of
transfers.  Going beyond third choice is likely to create confusion.
 The first round when there is a very large number of candidates will
result in significant reduction in the number of candidates.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Rapid ratification

body:
--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:

> I still don't understand why this ratification came
> about --
> *given* that the goal was to have a single logo for
> all pedias, *why*
> give pedis the choice of opting out? Please could
> someone explain the
> reasoning behind this.

I think it was probably important to have some way of
finalizing the vote-- after all the numbercrunching --
(which wont be convincing to the passionate second
placers).
As for allowing certain wikis to opt out-- I think
this was unncessary as well, though I have to think
that the fact that many Wikipedians nowadays dont
speak any English... A single vote on Meta (English)
might represent ten votes on a foreign wiki-- which
allows for a good representative system, although not
formalized.

I think its hasty, myself-- considering we have a
"touch up process proceeding... and ongoing, in fact--
thats why i removed the word 'permanent' from the
front page blurb (in addition to making better line
returns ;)

~S~

__________________________________
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The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] logos and wikimedia

body:
--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:

> I think a little patience is called for here.  Just
> start over and call for
> new designs.
>
> Fred

I disagree with this notion that the voting process
was "ruined' or that "starting over" will accomplish
something.
The arguments against the current logo fall into only
two camps-- its terrible ( a meaningless, subjective
complaint ).. And "its too cluttered" ( which can be
fixed at [[m:final logo variants]].)

I agree that next time will be better, but I dislike
the 20/20 hindsight of people who say it was wrong
from the start. Where were you two months ago, with
your better ideas?
The only thing *wrong* with the process now-- is the
perception that the ratification of the logo (as it
exists now ) is an urgent one-- as if we want the logo
to be ready for the press release, which absolutely
must be ready when the ticker (arbitrarily set:
sizeX="article") ticks at 300K.

Dont rush the cooks while their cooking, unless you
want the chef's surprise.
~S~

__________________________________
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The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Ec's modifications

body:
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> After reading more about this subject than I care
> to, and not being
> particularly enthusiastic about the results, I do
> want to make a suggestion.
>
> 1. Use the puzzle piece logo (with modifications) as
> the logo for Wikimedia.
>     a. Get rid of the meaningless text from the
> surface of the globe.
>     b. In each pussle piece include the 2-letter
> ISO639-1 code for some
> language, oriented to conform with the position of
> that piece on the
> globe.  These letters can be omitted from scaled
> down versions of the logo.
>     c. The centre puzzle piece should preferably be
> blank to generically
> represent all the non-Wikipedia projects.  The worst
> thing you could put
> in the centre piece would be "en"
>
> 2. Each project could design its own logo, use the
> one it already has or
> use a temporary generic logo while it is designing
> its own.
>     a. A key required element of each logo would be
> a single puzzle
> peice.  It would be up to the participants of that
> project to determine
> how that puzzle piece would be worked into aesthetic
> conformity with the
> existing design.
>     b. The puzzle piece would either be blank or
> contain the 2-letter
> code for that language.
>
> 3. The underlying concept is that Wikimedia brings
> together the diverse
> puzzle pieces to form a single world.  Each project
> is one piece of that
> puzzle.
>
> Ec.

These are mostly great ideas--(quite original too ;)--
you should add them to [[m:talk:final logo variants]].

~S~

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from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Welcome back Adam

body:
--- Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Dan,
>
> I'm newer than you, and I've still seen how Lir
> likes to confuse things with multiple names.  What
> do you mean, you don't know why he'd want to use two
> logins?  Because it's the way he makes things
> difficult for the rest of us.
>
> RickK

[I think] some people are still arguing that PP is not
Adam. I'm not. I guess I shouldn't try to be NPOV on
the mailing list.
LDan

__________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Welcome back Adam

body:
> You must have overlooked (easy to do in this crowded
> list!) the post
> where I said that Adam admitted to me that he was
> Pizza Puzzle.
>
> But I think now he's using Lir, and that's that.  He
> was just using
> Pizza Puzzle as an interim measure until the Lir
> account was
> unblocked.
>
> --Jimbo

Oops :)
LDan

__________________________________
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The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
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from_name: Till Westermayer

body:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .

>Yes, we should shut those voices. They were outvoted, and not by a
>small margin. Sorry if this is a bit arrogant, but I just think
>that those who have major problems with Puzzle Sphere wouldn't
>know a good logo if it came up to them and winked while wiggling
>its hips. And for you graphic designers who also hate it, well,
>maybe you should get into a new line of work. Puzzle Sphere Rules!
>It looks so great on the Main Page-- just the right touch of
>graphic interest, perfect reflection of the colored tables.

It looks okay on the English mainpage (hope we don't change that, other
colors would be a horrible contrast), but I'm not so sure about other
'pedias with different main pages. And the individual ratification
process is indeed a bit problematic.
 __ .
 / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
. .
  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
  . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
  . . . . .


body:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .

Hi Richard,

>And as for consensus, it only just nudged into the approval zone
>(over 3.0) with a vote representing about 5% of the Wikipedia
> community.

That's the exact point I'm unhappy with: an approval of 3.1 (or what it
was) out of the 1-5 range (why not 0..4?) isn't exactly a sign of being
populare. That this is the *best* rating a logo got is problematic in
itself. Where is the 4.5 variant everybody sees right for Wikipedia?
 __ .
 / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
. .
  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
  . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
  . . . . .


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting versus consensus

body:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .

Hi Gutza,

>Because this cluttered version
>http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/archive/b/b3/20030723122803!Paull
>usmagnus-logo_(small).png didn't win; it had to be refined to this
>even more cluttered version http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/7/75/
>Paullusmagnus-logo_%28small%29_reloaded.png via collaborative
>design and consensus in order to win. That's why I think more
>refinement via more collaborative design and more consensus will
>only result in more clutter. I can only pray I'm wrong.

Maybe the low-size version of the final logo could be a stylized jigsaw
puzzle piece. (Even if I don't believe that would be seen as a
refinement of the design ...).
 __ .
 / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
. .
  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
  . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
  . . . . .


subject: [Wikipedia-l] logos and wikimedia

body:
>--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
>> I think a little patience is called for here.  Just
>> start over and call for
>> new designs.
>>
>> Fred
>
>I disagree with this notion that the voting process
>was "ruined' or that "starting over" will accomplish
>something.

You didn't have a good design in the competition. Just be patient and one
will turn up.

>The arguments against the current logo fall into only
>two camps-- its terrible ( a meaningless, subjective
>complaint ).

Heh, if taste were only subjective....

. And "its too cluttered" ( which can be
>fixed at [[m:final logo variants]].)

Yes, and that can be improved but perhaps not fixed.
>
>I agree that next time will be better, but I dislike
>the 20/20 hindsight of people who say it was wrong
>from the start. Where were you two months ago, with
>your better ideas?

Well, I was minding my own business, finding a logo for
Internet-Encyclopedia, see:

http://en2.wikipedia.org/upload/e/e7/Owl.jpg

My better idea is that if you are patient, and wait til the right thing
comes along you will end up with something very nice.

Fred

>The only thing *wrong* with the process now-- is the
>perception that the ratification of the logo (as it
>exists now ) is an urgent one-- as if we want the logo
>to be ready for the press release, which absolutely
>must be ready when the ticker (arbitrarily set:
>sizeX="article") ticks at 300K.
>
>Dont rush the cooks while their cooking, unless you
>want the chef's surprise.
>~S~
>
>
>
>
>
>__________________________________
>Do you Yahoo!?
>The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
>http://shopping.yahoo.com
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Adam Bishop

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting versus consensus

body:
Why not just leave the puzzle pieces blank entirely? I think the point would
still come across that way.

Adam Bishop

>From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
>Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
>To: wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
>Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Voting versus consensus
>Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2003 11:41:15 -0700
>
>tarquin wrote:
>
>>Erik Moeller wrote:
>>
>>>What was missing was a good overview of the pros and cons of each logo.
>>>This has technical reasons -- with the pages already very big and over
>>>130  submissions, discussions had to be relegated to relatively hidden
>>>talk  pages. I'm not very happy with this, because I believe in the
>>>principle of  *informed* democracy.
>>
>>Yes, I agree entirely with this.
>>I think the winner got so many votes because it incorporates words in many
>>languages, which probably appealed to people because it looks
>>"international".
>>But this excessive text is *exactly* what makes it a terrible logo - it
>>doesn't scale down and the filesize is TOO BIG for the web.
>
>After reading more about this subject than I care to, and not being
>particularly enthusiastic about the results, I do want to make a
>suggestion.
>
>1. Use the puzzle piece logo (with modifications) as the logo for
>Wikimedia.
>    a. Get rid of the meaningless text from the surface of the globe.
>    b. In each pussle piece include the 2-letter ISO639-1 code for some
>language, oriented to conform with the position of that piece on the globe.
>  These letters can be omitted from scaled down versions of the logo.
>    c. The centre puzzle piece should preferably be blank to generically
>represent all the non-Wikipedia projects.  The worst thing you could put in
>the centre piece would be "en"
>
>2. Each project could design its own logo, use the one it already has or
>use a temporary generic logo while it is designing its own.
>    a. A key required element of each logo would be a single puzzle peice.
>It would be up to the participants of that project to determine how that
>puzzle piece would be worked into aesthetic conformity with the existing
>design.
>    b. The puzzle piece would either be blank or contain the 2-letter code
>for that language.
>
>3. The underlying concept is that Wikimedia brings together the diverse
>puzzle pieces to form a single world.  Each project is one piece of that
>puzzle.
>
>Ec.
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

_________________________________________________________________
Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail


from_name: Geoffrey Thomas

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Gutza's puzzle piece design

body:
Till Westermayer ("till we *)") writes in part:
... > But the puzzle piece could become
> a Wikipedia mascot (especially if the PM logo will end as the final
> ratified logo).

Microsoft Office uses four (or more) colored puzzle pieces for
its logo. Aren't there any problems with that?

=====
Geoffrey

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


from_name: Rick

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Adam acting the ass again *sigh* (and he is only just
	back)

body:
It seems to me that Adam made the big deal of it by accusing JTDirl of abusing his sysop powers over the situation.

RickK

Jimmy Wales <jwales at joey.bomis.com> wrote:
Was it discourteous to edit a page that some people wanted left in a
particular state? Possibly. But not nearly so discourteous as
freaking out about it.

--Jimbo

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
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from_name: Luc Van Oostenryck

body:
Something have gone wrong with the backup of the french wikipedia.
The backup contain only one page and it is the main page of the welsh wikipedia.

-- Looxix


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Just introducing myself...

body:
Brian Corr wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> While being home I've gotten sucked into being a Wikiholic --
> including trying to deal with vandalism out of general annoyance and
> stubbornness -- so much so that I wonder if I'll ever finish the
> article on Urban renewal that I'm working on....
>
> Anyway, this seems like an interesting and excellent online community,
> and hopefully I can be a useful part of it.

Welcome.  I'm certain that you will find work on Urban renewal a lot
more rewarding than fighting about vandals on the mailing list.

Ec


from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Re: [roy_q_royce@hotmail.com: --A Request RE
	aWIKIArticle--]

body:
Firstly I'd like to apologise for the tone of my initial message. I'll
endevour to treat Roy's views with a bit more respect this time around.

"Roy Royce" <roy_q_royce at hotmail.com> wrote in
message news:BAY9-F548BalNhW1vg600005270 at hotmail.com...
> First, let me thank Mr. Wales for his reasonable reply.
>
> But I find it sad that some people are willing to dismiss a simple
> fact without even trying to check the cited source.
>
> Here are the relevant quotes from Wheeler's book, _Spacetime Physics,
> page 148 (1963 edition):
>
> "Commentary: The equivalence of energy and mass is such an important
> consequence that Einstein very early, after his relativistic derivation
> of this result, sought and found an alternative line of reasoning that
> leads to the same conclusion."
> "[A. Einstein, Annalen der Physik, 20, 627 (1906)]"
>
> "However, to secure a derivation free of all direct reference to
> relative principles, he [Einstein] based the conclusion p = E on
> the following elementary argument." [etc., etc.]
>
> The fact that E=mc^2 does not support SR is not merely "my fact."

I never said anything about that one, remember? I snipped it. I didn't want
to get into a technical discussion on this mailing list, where most readers
are not familiar with relativity. Save it for the talk page of the article.

> Also, posting to the Newsgroups per se does not make one a crank.

Indeed.

> I challenge anyone here to find where I lost any argument to anyone
> in the Newsgroups.

Who said anything about losing arguments? I've never known a crackpot to
lose an argument, by their own concession.

> I hate to say this, but Mr. Tim Starling is either a liar or an
> easily-fooled person because I have never - by any stretch of anyone's
> imagination - except Starling's - suggested "a direct test of some
> aspect of relativity which is hugely expensive or perhaps even
> technically impossible."

Two very important questions:

1. What would be my motivation to lie?
2. Who am I being fooled by?

> And I have never ignored "the huge body of
> slightly less direct tests of the same theory," and I have not then
> "obliquely suggested some sort of conspiracy theory to explain why
> no-one is spending millions of dollars on his simple test." And it
> is complete balderdash to say of me that "Everywhere he goes, he
> feels persecuted by co-conspiring mainstream physicists, who are
> out to suppress the 'truth' he has discovered."
>
> Mr. Starling, I demand either an apology or some proof of the above
> serious accusations.

I apologise. I was making generalisations. As a matter of curiosity, what is
your estimate for the cost of this experiment?

> Now that I have proved the validity of the E=mc^2 fact, I should be
> taken seriously when I note the one-way light speed facts that not only
> has no one ever made such a measurement using two clocks, but such a
> measurement (sans man's interference by definition or convention) is
> physically impossible.
>
> The fact that no one has ever used two clocks to measure the one-way
> speed of light is a part of scientific history.
>
> The fact that this has long been technically feasible is also a part
> of scientific history.
>
> The only fact that is personally mine is the obvious conclusion that
> such an experiment cannot be performed.
>
> If any of you still insist that it is possible, then the burden of
> proof is on you to show how it can be done without first forcing your
> pre-chosen (and baseless) result (by using some definition of clock
> synchronization).
>
> In other words, can anyone out there in WIKI-land tell us the step-by-
> step process for using two clocks to measure light's one-way speed sans
> any interference from man?
>
> If not, then my final fact has been validated by you all.
>
> (And that fact tells us that there can be no light postulate because
> where there is no experiment, there can be no prediction (or postulate)).
>
> (Bear in mind that Einstein's light postulate pertained only to the
> one-way speed of light. He did not have to postulate re the round-trip
> case because it had already been essentially closed by the round-trip
> Michelson-Morley experiment.)

I think you misunderstand the function of this mailing list. This kind of
discussion should be continued on the article talk page. Most readers of
this list are not interested in a technical discussion, debating an idea on
its merits.

-- Tim Starling.


from_name: Brian Corr

subject: [WikiEN-l] Just introducing myself...

body:
Hello all,

While being home I've gotten sucked into being a Wikiholic -- including
trying to deal with vandalism out of general annoyance and stubbornness --
so much so that I wonder if I'll ever finish the article on Urban renewal
that I'm working on....

Anyway, this seems like an interesting and excellent online community, and
hopefully I can be a useful part of it.

Cheers, Brian


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] The puzzle pieces,
	Microsoft has been there and done that with the MS Office logo...

body:
Dear fellow Wikipedians,
without meaning to insult anyone's
sensibilities, about the vote on
the new logo with the puzzle
pieces. It reminds me a lot of
the Microsoft Office logo.
the last thing we need is
Microsoft breathing hard
because someone is using
their idea in another software
logo. ay ay ay!!!

I don't mean to insult the creator
of the logo, it is just that Microsoft
has been there and is still doing
that... It is a pretty logo, and the
ideas for improving it are nice too,
but it still is the familiar logo of
Microsoft Office when I see it.
So I voted for other choices on
the first round, I'm sorry I missed
the second vote...

Sincerely,
Jay B.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Rapid ratification

body:
From: "Stevertigo" <utilitymuffinresearch2 at yahoo.com>
> I think it was probably important to have some way of
> finalizing the vote-- after all the numbercrunching --
> (which wont be convincing to the passionate second
> placers).
> As for allowing certain wikis to opt out-- I think
> this was unncessary as well, though I have to think
> that the fact that many Wikipedians nowadays dont
> speak any English... A single vote on Meta (English)
> might represent ten votes on a foreign wiki-- which
> allows for a good representative system, although not
> formalized.

I know a lot of the contributors in the
other language wikis weren't interested
in the vote process, being more concerned
with the edits and new additions of articles.
The blue globe with the indistinct lines of
writing has been serving the Interlingua and
Latin Wikis quite well. And we've had some
compliments on it. If the issue becomes a
discussion on those wikis I get the feeling it is
just going to create needless debates. Worst
case scenario the various wikis will continue
to use their own logos... and thinking about
this it is alltogether fine in my opinion if the
French wikipedia uses the dove in its logo,
and the Italian wiki uses it's tricolor banner as
an addition to the blue globe with text on it.

But I'm definitely puzzled about the new logo
which in my mind resembles the Microsoft
Office idea far too much.

Sincerely,
Jay B.


body:
Geoffrey Thomas wrote:

>Till Westermayer ("till we *)") writes in part:
>... > But the puzzle piece could become
>
>>a Wikipedia mascot (especially if the PM logo will end as the final
>>ratified logo).
>>
>
>Microsoft Office uses four (or more) colored puzzle pieces for
>its logo. Aren't there any problems with that?
>
It took a while to even understand this objection.  MS's 4-piece
minipuzzle is so different from the puzzle sphere that it takes a great
deal of imagination to find meaningful similarity.  No doubt they have a
trademark in that particular design, and could protest if anyone tried
to use anything similar enough to be mistaken for it by reorganbizing
the colours or the orientation of the puzzle piece interlocks.

That the trademark would extend to all uses of puzzle pieces in any
context is just too far-fetched.  There is absolutely nothing in the
design to remind people of Microsoft.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] On "Required elements" and the "underlying concept"

body:
> >  [...]   a. A key required element of each logo would be
> > a single puzzle
> > peice. [...]
> >     b. The puzzle piece would either be blank or
> > contain the 2-letter
> > code for that language.
> > 3. The underlying concept is that Wikimedia brings
> > together the diverse
> > puzzle pieces to form a single world.  Each project
> > is one piece of that
> > puzzle.

But the concept isn't a new idea,
in fact it has been the Microsoft
Office logo for years. One piece
fitting into the next like an office
suite. It's an old idea that has around.
It would be better not to force other
project wikis to have to abide by any
required elements of this sort. The
freedom of Wikipedia is too precious
to throw out simply because of a passing
vote by a minority of it's editing users.

Wikipedia is a very fresh idea and I
would venture, without insulting or
meaning to hurt anyone's feelings
about it that this puzzle logo is like
an old moldy piece of cheese, we
need to find new cheese. ;-)

Sincerely,
Jay B.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting versus consensus

references:
<Law11-F46HAlTWRk48o00007faa@hotmail.com>	<oprv6bwmj9zs1r4a@localhost>
	<006e01c3853d$24676140$60bdfdd0@impressario>

body:
Jay Bowks wrote:

>From: "Richard Grevers" <lists at dramatic.co.nz>
>
>>The point that a jigsaw puzzle is a closed, finite system, unlike
>>Wikipedia which I see as an open, infinite system, or the point that a
>>jigsaw is worked on, enjoys a brief moment of "perfection" and is then
>>destroyed?
>>Those are the conceptual reasons I think the puzzle globe is bad -
>>negative symbolism.
>>
See [[Georges Perec]]'s novel, "[[La Vie mode d'emploi]]

>I definitely agree. It would be
>better to change the concept
>into something alive, like a
>"tree" with branches, and leaves,
>at least it would be something
>alive, except so many other
>logos already use this "knowledge
>tree" concept that it has been
>overworked. Like the puzzle
>concept, which is in use by
>Microsoft Office suite, it's old
>and moldy cheese and we need
>to find new cheese.
>
Lebanon uses a whole tree on its flag, and Canada uses a single leaf.
 By your reasoning either of them could shut us down for a breach of
their trademarks. :-)

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting versus consensus

body:
From: "Richard Grevers" <lists at dramatic.co.nz>
> The point that a jigsaw puzzle is a closed, finite system, unlike
> Wikipedia which I see as an open, infinite system, or the point that a
> jigsaw is worked on, enjoys a brief moment of "perfection" and is then
> destroyed?
> Those are the conceptual reasons I think the puzzle globe is bad -
> negative symbolism.

I definitely agree. It would be
better to change the concept
into something alive, like a
"tree" with branches, and leaves,
at least it would be something
alive, except so many other
logos already use this "knowledge
tree" concept that it has been
overworked. Like the puzzle
concept, which is in use by
Microsoft Office suite, it's old
and moldy cheese and we need
to find new cheese.

Sincerely,
Jay B.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] How about a "yearly" logo (was: logos and wikimedia

body:
From: "Fred Bauder" <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
> I think a little patience is called for here.  Just start over and call
for
> new designs.

The whole idea of this logo having
such a finality and importance, like
some sort of manifesto, goes somewhat
contrary to the openness of Wikipedia,
I feel, because the concept of a free
encyclopedia offers such constant change
and tremendous growth. It would be better
to not be pinned to this vote. It may be
the case that a '''yearly logo''' would be
advisable. This way there's always
change and growth and a '''gallery''' of
old logos can be on display. And if
the one chose for that year is not
a favorite of some, well the consolation
is that it would only be there for 12
months... The only drawback is this
whole voting thing...

Sincerely,
Jay B.


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

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

> To vote on the logo, I had to register with Meta. Then I was told that
> my vote is invalid unless I have a valid user page on Meta with a link
> to my Wikipedia page. ...
>
>
>
> Is there a property ownership or literacy requirement too? Perhaps a
> quiz on Wikipedia history?
>
>
>
> Gimme a friggin' break! I spend enough time erasing this thread from
> my email already.
>
All the more reason for a person's single registration to be valid
across all projects.

Ec


body:
On Sat, 2003-09-27 at 17:42, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> All the more reason for a person's single registration to be valid
> across all projects.

Are you going to code it up and sort out the existing name conflicts?

If not, do you know someone with the ability, interest, and free time to
do this?

Thanks.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .

Hi tarquin,

>A design commitee would be a good idea for the future, to handle
>skins & logos.

>I nominate Gutza!
>I *REALLY* like this logo:
>http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/8/81/Wikipedia-sketch-tillwe_Gutz
>a01.png

>I think it's really neat!

I like it too, but I don't think it would be a good logo (too much
depth, too much realism, too much 3d). But the puzzle piece could become
a Wikipedia mascot (especially if the PM logo will end as the final
ratified logo).
 __ .
 / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
. .
  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
  . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
  . . . . .


body:
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Are you going to code it up and sort out the
> existing name conflicts?
>
> If not, do you know someone with the ability,
> interest, and free time to
> do this?
> Thanks.

I was just about to add it to your "to do" list. ;)

~S~

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


body:
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> That the trademark would extend to all uses of
> puzzle pieces in any
> context is just too far-fetched.  There is
> absolutely nothing in the
> design to remind people of Microsoft.
>
> Ec

Not to mention, a suit by them might make for good
'bad publicity'. But IANAL.

(I do occasionaly watch the TV Judge shows though;)
~S~

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


body:
A design commitee would be a good idea for the future, to handle skins &
logos.

I nominate Gutza!
I *REALLY* like this logo:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/8/81/Wikipedia-sketch-tillwe_Gutza01.png

I think it's really neat!


subject: [Wikipedia-l] design team & voting for concepts

body:
Another suggestion for future consideration: instead of voting for
images, how about voting for *concepts*.
eg:

would you like: puzzle pieces / something abstract / stylized W / books
/ planet earth or globe / etc

this would give a design team a *rough* idea of what people like -- they
could then try to come up with ideas based upon the results of such a vote.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting versus consensus

references:
<8uaLoPYhpVB@erik_moeller> <3F74CC8D.30308@moongate.ro>
	<20030927134329.GG1378@joey.bomis.com>

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Gutza wrote:
>
>
>>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'm sure Erik agrees with this.
>
So do I.
Passions ran high I'm afraid. :(

>I hope that anyone who wasn't thinking of the ratification process in
>this light will go back and change their vote.
>
I still don't understand why this ratification came about --
*given* that the goal was to have a single logo for all pedias, *why*
give pedis the choice of opting out? Please could someone explain the
reasoning behind this.


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] logos and wikimedia

body:
Hello,

I had too much work during the last months so I missed the logo voting.
But viewing the winning logo (and all the other candidates) one question
keeps nagging on/at me:

Did anybody care how www.wikimedia.org looks now? Wikipedia, Wikiquote,
Wiktionary, Wikibooks - all have now a totally different style logo. What
about a corporate identity? All these projects belong together in some way
- and this should show.

If there happens to be a revision of the voting process, I'd suggest
"making clean table" and create new or modify the existing logos so that
it is recognizable that all of our "Wiki"-projects are sister projects.

my 2cents,
elian

For the statistics: add me to the people who think that the new logo is a
catastrophe. Applying the concept of democracy to the sphere of arts is
the worst thing one can do.


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting versus consensus

body:
On 9/27/03 1:31 PM, "tarquin" <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:

>>
> I still don't understand why this ratification came about --
> *given* that the goal was to have a single logo for all pedias, *why*
> give pedis the choice of opting out? Please could someone explain the
> reasoning behind this.
>
The ratification process only makes sense if it's something like the
ratification of Constitutional amendments--that is, if enough groups ratify
the logo (say, 2/3), then all must accept it.

Opting out makes no sense, since one of the major goals of this process was
international unification.


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

body:
To vote on the logo, I had to register with Meta. Then I was told that my
vote is invalid unless I have a valid user page on Meta with a link to my
Wikipedia page. ...

Is there a property ownership or literacy requirement too? Perhaps a quiz on
Wikipedia history?

Gimme a friggin' break! I spend enough time erasing this thread from my email
already.

Danny
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from_name: Rob Lanphier

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Logo results as tallied pairwise (Condorcet)

body:
As both a check on the election results, and as a demonstration of
pairwise voting, I decided to do the following:

     * Download the ballots cast in this contest
     * Run them through a program I wrote to parse them into a format
I'm used to working with (with candidate translation list I manually
created).
     * Tally the votes using the Condorcet calculator

In using this technique, the winner of this election remains the same
(1a). However, it's still interesting to see the nature of the pairwise
matchups. In particular, the race for second place was really close
(option 2c beat option 10 by five votes).  It was even closer before I
noticed I missed the international ballots (without those ballots, 10
beat 2c by a vote).

You can see the complete results here:
http://www.electorama.com/2003/wplogo-pairwise/

Rob


body:
In a message dated 9/27/2003 7:46:28 PM Eastern Standard Time,
saintonge at telus.net writes:
All the more reason for a person's single registration to be valid
across all projects.

Ec
Agreed.

Danny
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body:
Stevertigo wrote:

>--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>>That the trademark would extend to all uses of
>>puzzle pieces in any
>>context is just too far-fetched.  There is
>>absolutely nothing in the
>>design to remind people of Microsoft.
>>
>
>Not to mention, a suit by them might make for good
>'bad publicity'. But IANAL.
>
Like the two guys in England that lost a defamation case to McDonald's.

>(I do occasionaly watch the TV Judge shows though;)
>
Hmm!  I've yet to see Judge Judy deal with IP issues. :-)


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Sat, 2003-09-27 at 07:35, Luc Van Oostenryck wrote:
>
>>Something have gone wrong with the backup of the french wikipedia.
>>The backup contain only one page and it is the main page of the welsh wikipedia.
>
>
> Something went wrong with the bit that deals with new wikis. I'm not
> quite sure why, but when it created directories to hold the backups for
> the new Scots & Manx Gaelic wikis, it didn't actually go _into_ those
> directories. It stayed in the French backup directory (fr alphabetically
> before gd and gv) and overwrote its backup. :P
>
> I'm running those three again, new version should be done fairly soon.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

OK thanks.

-- Looxix


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting versus consensus

body:
Jay Bowks wrote:

>My point, Ray, is that the tree
>logo is also "overworked" but
>at least it's a living concept.
>Your point supports what I'm
>trying to say. The tree idea is
>just as "overworked" as the
>puzzle concept.
>
>And that we seriously need
>new cheese.
>
Hmm!  Wikimedia as a block of Swiss cheese!  ... with each project
suggested by one of the holes in the block of cheese ... that's an
interesting logo idea, :-)

Ray


body:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .

Hi Geoffrey,

>Till Westermayer ("till we *)") writes in part:
... >> But the puzzle piece could become
>> a Wikipedia mascot (especially if the PM logo will end as the
>> final ratified logo).

>Microsoft Office uses four (or more) colored puzzle pieces for
>its logo. Aren't there any problems with that?

Matthew Meyer pointed out the actual Microsoft logo at

http://www.microsoft.com/products/shared/images/bnr_office.gif

and there you'll see they use four symmetrically coloured puzzle pieces
for their MS Office logo. I don't think that should hinder us to use one
puzzle piece, more than four (and in a not symetrically configuration)
etc. YMMV.
 __ .
 / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
. .
  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
  . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
  . . . . .


from_name: Jay Bowks

body:
From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net>
> That the trademark would extend to all uses of puzzle pieces in any
> context is just too far-fetched.  There is absolutely nothing in the
> design to remind people of Microsoft.

Well, it's not so much as a trademark
thing, in my mind, it's just that when
I saw the puzzle sphere and some of
the suggestions about using some
of the puzzle pieces, it reminded me
of the Microsoft usage of one piece
of their suite being for each of the
puzzle pieces. So there is definitely
"something" to remind "someone"
about this usage of software pieces
and pieces of the puzzle. Maybe I'm
weird or something but that's the
first thing I thought of, I'm sure that
I wouldn't be alone in thinking this
way.

There are far too many questions
in my mind about this logo to give my
support to the concept.

Sincerely,
Jay B.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting versus consensus

body:
From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net>
> Jay Bowks wrote:
> >into something alive, like a
> >"tree" with branches, and leaves,
> >at least it would be something
> >alive, except so many other
> >logos already use this "knowledge
> >tree" concept that it has been
> >overworked.
> Lebanon uses a whole tree on its flag, and Canada uses a single leaf.
>  By your reasoning either of them could shut us down for a breach of
> their trademarks. :-)

My point, Ray, is that the tree
logo is also "overworked" but
at least it's a living concept.
Your point supports what I'm
trying to say. The tree idea is
just as "overworked" as the
puzzle concept.

And that we seriously need
new cheese.

Sincerely,
Jay B.


list: textbook-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Textbook-l] kuro5hin.org: 'Proposal for a collaborative learning
	system'

body:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/9/27/143215/356

This article is in the moderation queue now, it seems to be doing well
and will likely post fairly soon so people who aren't signed in can see
it.

Might be a good place to plug Wikibooks; I posted a link in reply to a
mention of Wikipedia.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Jake Nelson

body:
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


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Wikitech-l] Templates / duplication of information and meta data

body:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikitech-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikitech-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Jurriaan
> Schulman

> I agree with Andrew wholeheartedly. Moreover, my greatest concerns are

> not so much the wasted time (hand editing) and wasted disk space but
> rather the search capabilities. I think that it is important as
> wikipedia grows that a sophisticated search engine is available. My
> opinion is just that meta date makes searching easier. I am open to
> other suggestions though. Who knows, maybe we will have smarter
> algorithms in the future which can interpret and analyse text like
> humans, that would solve a lot of the discussed problems
> :-)

In the end, I think advanced searching will address many of the concerns
you bring up, rather than using formally tracked/rigid metadata.  But it
would be quite an interesting area for research.  As Magnus said, making
it machine friendly seems to necessarily make it human unfriendly.  So
is it there a good equilibrium point in the middle?


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Voting versus consensus (Eclecticology)

body:
this one absolutely not meant to be constructive :-)
Just wanted to say that I appreciated very much Ec
list of suggestions made yesterday. I hope it
enlighten the artists :-)

__________________________________
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The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


from_name: Modemac

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Minor Aesthetic Quibble wif da Logo

body:
I lump myself in with the majority that says, "Heck, I'll go with
whatever logo you folks decide upon."  I think the current logo looks
quite nice, and I like it.  HOWEVER...I think it would be somewhat
more aesthetically pleasing if you added a little bit of white space
between the bottom of the circle and the word WIKIPEDIA.

That's all.

--
                       First Online Church of "Bob"
                         http://www.modemac.com/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Welcome back Adam (Daniel Ehrenberg)

body:
 Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2003 13:32:32 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Welcome back Adam
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> <20030927203232.1685.qmail at web41804.mail.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> --- Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Dan,
> >
> > I'm newer than you, and I've still seen how Lir
> > likes to confuse things with multiple names.  What
> > do you mean, you don't know why he'd want to use
> two
> > logins?  Because it's the way he makes things
> > difficult for the rest of us.
> >
> > RickK
>
> [I think] some people are still arguing that PP is
> not
> Adam. I'm not. I guess I shouldn't try to be NPOV on
> the mailing list.
> LDan

Dan, could you drop that matter please ?
It does not matter whether Adam log in as PP or Lir or
The Pope. She was given the right to edit again, and
that is all there is to say about it. Could she do it
without you people going on forever chatting about
her, and watching any of her move ? She is not an
insect to look under a  magnifying glass ! Let her
breathe !

please !

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l Digest, Vol 2, Issue 53

body:
On 27 Sep 2003 14:39:00 +0200, Till Westermayer <till at tillwe.de> gave
utterance to the following:

> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .
>
>> Yes, we should shut those voices. They were outvoted, and not by a
>> small margin. Sorry if this is a bit arrogant, but I just think
>> that those who have major problems with Puzzle Sphere wouldn't
>> know a good logo if it came up to them and winked while wiggling
>> its hips. And for you graphic designers who also hate it, well,
>> maybe you should get into a new line of work. Puzzle Sphere Rules!
>> It looks so great on the Main Page-- just the right touch of
>> graphic interest, perfect reflection of the colored tables.
>
> It looks okay on the English mainpage (hope we don't change that, other
> colors would be a horrible contrast), but I'm not so sure about other
> 'pedias with different main pages. And the individual ratification
> process is indeed a bit problematic.

Which raises a point - as we develop more alternate skins, we may well
need variants of the logo to match them. Either that or the logo needs to
be more monochromatic.

I definitely understood that the logo was to be unified across all
'pedias. Also, someone mentioned that Wikimedia Foundation did not have a
logo, but for the foundation to have a logo anything other than the united
wikipedias one would be ridiculous.
--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting versus consensus

body:
On Sat, 27 Sep 2003 15:00:44 -0400, Adam Bishop <grenfell_ at hotmail.com>
gave utterance to the following:

>
> Why not just leave the puzzle pieces blank entirely? I think the point
> would still come across that way.
>
The point that a jigsaw puzzle is a closed, finite system, unlike
Wikipedia which I see as an open, infinite system, or the point that a
jigsaw is worked on, enjoys a brief moment of "perfection" and is then
destroyed?
Those are the conceptual reasons I think the puzzle globe is bad -
negative symbolism.

--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


from_name: Thomas Corell

subject: [Wikitech-l] CVS: LanguageDe.php

body:
Fixed a linebreak in one of the translations. V.1.35 is commited to CVS.

Greetings Smurf

--
Smurf
Logo, who cares about a logo, write Wikipedia in nice friendly letters
and there you are!
smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


from_name: sannse

subject: [Wikitech-l] Disambiguation bot

body:
I just wanted to draw the attention of you technical bods to:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump#Disambiguation_bot

>From a editors point of view I really like this idea, but is it OK on the
technical side?

Regards

sannse


from_name: Geoffrey Thomas

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Is a press release now a good idea?

body:
Walter Vermeir writes:
> I think it is now not a good time for a general press relase.
>
> - search does not work
> - wikipedia is very slow
...
> - no need for more publictiy Look at the stats, every month more and more
> users.

True - only ask for more users when the servers are at the bottom, not the
top, of their capacity.

[[en:User:Geoffrey]] Thomas

__________________________________
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The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Logo

body:
Bj?rn-
> The story becomes even more complicated by the fact that Erik didn't
> mention before phase 2 was over that there would be a "ratification"
> vote.

International logo vote
(Revision as of 00:44, 28 Aug 2003)

Second sentence:
'Individual Wikipedias will get an opportunity to hold their own vote on
whether they will use the "official" logo'

In other words, this has been announced on [[international logo vote]]
since the first revision. Because an additional in-between step "vote on
ratification" for each 'pedia would make no sense, and to avoid having to
visit a dozen Wikipedias to count the vote, this has been implemented as a
single ratification step on Meta.

Why is this step useful? Currently, the French Wikipedia, the Italian
Wikipedia, the Polish Wikipedia etc. have substantially different logos
from the original English one. In the second stage of the vote, the votes
for the "old logo" were lumped together into one set to avoid a situation
where a logo would win whose original designer is not available. But it
could be considered unfair to these Wikipedias to impose upon them the new
logo because people might have downrated the original one based on the
appearance of the most frequently used English logo, not taking into
account the potentially superior appearance of the significant logo-
modifications used by some of the non-English Wikipedias. This argument,
at least theoretically, can of course also be made the other way around --
some people might have voted logo-set 0 down on the basis that they want
to get rid of the French, Italian etc. variations, for whatever reason.

As you can see, many different sensibilities have to be taken into account
when dealing with such an international project. In particular, we have
never really made a decision on how autonomous or not the individual
projects will be. Fortunately, it looks like all 'pedias will ratify the
new logo.

Regards,

Erik