Hi all,
The two largest Wiktionary projects (English and French) have two
completely different logos. [1], [2]
The reason for this, from what I understand, is that a vote was taken
place about the logo fr.wiktionary currently has, on meta [3]; which
the English Wiktionary community chose not to be bound by, because
they, as a community, disagreed with the outcome.
I understand that there are complaints that new logo has elements too
closely resembling Scrabble pieces, or are otherwise too cartooned to
some. The "new" logo does maintain some visual identity as a project
logo, while the "classic" logo isn't really a logo at all, and
diverges wildly from project to project. Of the top ten Wiktionary
projects, four of them use the new version, while 6 of them use some
variation of the classic version:
fr: new
en: classic
tr: new
vi: new
ru: classic (a variation which little resembles the original)
io: classic (English version)
el: new
zh: classic (divergent variation)
pl: classic (divergent variation)
fi: classic (English version)
As a whole, I seem to remember that Wiktionary is the second most
visited site of the Foundation's websites, and I really do think it
should be appropriate that the site should reflect a common visual
identity, one that the classic logo does a poor job of creating. The
new logo, however, met with rather heavy resistance in, at the very
least, the English Wiktionary community.
I do, rather strongly, believe that the Wiktionary identity needs to
be squared away, having some poll in general inclusive of, yet binding
of all Wiktionary projects, and then if that fails, starting the
process again, and succeeding to foment an individual logo like the
recent successful Wikibooks logo revamp.
Cary
[1] <http://en.wiktionary.org>
[2] <http://fr.wiktionary.org>
[3] <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary/logo>
On 3/25/09 10:51 PM, Michael Snow wrote:
> Cary Bass wrote:
>> While the English Wiktionary community may or may not be satisfied
>> with the logo as-is, in the interest of maintaining a visual identity,
>> one logo has to be used across projects
> My impression is that the current split is a natural result of the fact
> that nobody has yet put forward a satisfactory solution. The "classic"
> logo is not a logo at all, but has the inertia of long use.
Just as background -- I created the current logo over the course of
about 5 minutes as a placeholder, figuring it would be replaced with a
more permanent logo within a few weeks.
It's been about 6 years. :)
-- brion
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Dominic wrote:
> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>>> When I read what is proposed, the impression is given that a
>>> process will start with a compulsory outcome. I understand the
>>> rationale for one shared logo and favicon. The problem is that
>>> it is people outside of Wiktionary that want to improve the
>>> Wiktionary "brand" and the last time it was very much these
>>> outsiders that made the selection.
>>>
>>
>
>
> Exactly. Despite the fact that fr.wikt and a few others eventually
> adopted the logo, the logo debacle was not en.wikt's making. It
> wasn't a refusal to accept the the outcome of the proposal, it was
> a reluctance to be dictated to by people who weren't a part of the
> community. I'm afraid this will be interpreted the same way, if
> we're proposing to just slap a sitenotice on all the Wiktionaries
> telling them to discuss a new logo. There needs to be community
> impetus for the change, so that the meta discussion evolves out of
> actual community desire for a new logo. We should start at places
> like en.wikt's [[Wiktionary:Beer parlour]], fr.wikt's
> [[Wiktionnaire:Wikidémie]], and es.wikt's [[Wikcionario:Café]], not
> foundation-l.
I have to respectfully disagree that a proposal that will affect all
these projects has to originate in thirty different places. Since
there is no central Wiktionary community, the Meta project, and
Foundation-l as well as Wiktionary-l (which was cross-posted) is the
place to get the discussion going.
While the English Wiktionary community may or may not be satisfied
with the logo as-is, in the interest of maintaining a visual identity,
one logo has to be used across projects, whether or not the English
Wiktionary wants it or not. The discussion has to get started, no
matter where it is, and meta and the two mailing lists are, in fact,
the appropriate place to start the discussion. I do expect (and have
asked) that links to that discussion are made from those projects (and
in the Central Notice as well)
I would find it sad if the English Wiktionary were to choose not to
involve itself in a process that will ultimately affect its
appearance; however, I don't anticipate this will actually be the case.
Cary
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Nathan wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Cary Bass <cary(a)wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
>
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>>
>> I'd like to propose the following page:
>>
>> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary/logo/refresh> be
>> opened for arguments and vote on it start in a weeks time.
>>
>> I'd also like considerable help in advertising it throughout the
>> projects and managing the page, as well.
>>
>> Cary
>>
>
> Goes to the question of who determines the logo to be used, doesn't
> it? If the meta vote approves the new logo, but a vote on en.wikt
> does not, which is binding? Can meta participants vote to change
> any logo?
>
> Nathan
Of course Meta participants can vote; Wiktionary isn't solely "owned"
by the people who most actively use it. It's a Wikimedia project,
first and foremost. I generally expect most people who use Meta to
respectfully give weight to the Wiktionarians, however, and not just
"vote" on impulse. Most of us do that.
And to ensure that we have Wiktionarian participation, this is where
"advertising" comes in. It should be promoted on the Village Pumps
and mailing lists, as well as on IRC. I don't think there's much more
we can do. If people don't pay attention to any of those, then I
can't see how much interest they actually have in their community.
(of course, one could also put it up in the Sitenotice).
Cary
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After a few weeks of bug fixes, we've caught up with MediaWiki
development code review and I'm pushing out an update to the live sites.
This fixes a lot of little bugs, and hopefully doesn't cause introduce
too many new ones. :)
* Change logs: http://ur1.ca/2rah (r47458 to r48811)
As usual in addition to lots of offline and individual testing among our
staff and volunteer developers, we've done a shakedown on
http://test.wikipedia.org/ -- and as usual we can fully expect a few
more issues to have cropped up that weren't already found.
Don't be alarmed if you do find a problem; just let us know at
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/ or on the tech IRC channels
(#wikimedia-tech on Freenode).
We should be resuming our weekly update schedule soon -- I won't be
doing a mega-crosspost like this every week! -- and will continue to
improve our pre-update staging and shakedown testing to keep disruption
to a minimum and awesome improvements to a maximum.
I'd also like to announce that we've started a blog for Wikimedia tech
activity & MediaWiki development, in part because I want to make sure
community members can easily follow what we're working on and give
feedback before we push things out:
* http://techblog.wikimedia.org/
I'd very much like to make sure that we've got regular contacts among
the various project communities who can help coordinate with us on
features, bugs, and general thoughts which might affect some projects
distinctly from others.
-- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)
CTO, Wikimedia Foundation
San Francisco