[Foundation-l] Design for wikipedia's front page (and corporate)

Fri May 19 21:50:45 UTC 2006

On 5/19/06, Austin Hair <adhair at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/19/06, Delphine Ménard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The problem I see is that the monobook is the default design for every
> > single Mediawiki in the world. Which means that people have trouble
> > knowing whether they are on Wikipedia, on a mirror, or some strange
> > fake site, or on my grand-mother's wiki.
>
> Precisely.  If you decide to install the most popular wiki software
> package out there, you have to go out of your way to make it *not*
> look like Wikipedia—at least the default logo isn't the MediaWiki
> flower anymore (actually, it is, but at least it's defaced by annoying
> text that compels people to change it quickly).

On another note, "visual identity" won't come from copyrights on html
or css, or even trademarking visual components—if someone's aiming for
the same look, he's going to rip it off, and it's going to be in a
more subtle way—he'd like to think he's being creative, after all.
The issue is with passive users who just like how pretty their new
wiki looks.

Austin