Abstract Wikipedia/Updates/2021-02-25

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Abstract Wikipedia Updates

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Wikimedia Community voting.

The logo concept submission phase has come to a close, and we received 79 submissions and variants. I am deeply impressed with the submissions, and am looking forward to the vote.

Some of the submissions have a number of variants, and in order to avoid the decoy effect, we would like to remove concepts that are too similar to each other. For Wikidata, we made the decision inside the team about which variants to choose, and we also dropped a number of the proposals. Here, I would like us to make the decision together, but in order to ensure that things move on, we’ll take a look at the status of the discussion on Monday and then the team will finalize the exact candidates.

We also plan to have short notes on each submission (3-4 sentences), so we are asking the submitters (but also everyone else who wants to join in) to write short notes for each of the candidates. A short explanation can do wonders for making a logo more interesting (my second favorite example is the seemingly simple FedEx logo).

Here is a partial gallery of the 25 main submissions up to February 23, without their additional variants exposed in discussions:

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This time can also be an opportunity to remove submissions from the pool, or to flag other concerns and make them explicit in the notes, so that voters are aware. This would include similarities to other, existing logos, and we should decide whether we still want to keep the candidate or drop it.

In summary, here are the next steps: until Monday, let’s agree on the set of logo concepts to vote on, and decide on the notes to accompany them.

The Wikidata winning logo as it was proposed, but before its refinement.

We will then start sending out messages inviting people to start voting on Monday 1 March, in the afternoon at Pacific time (at end of that day at universel time). Everyone eligible can vote for as many different candidates as they like. And we'll keep it open for two weeks, until Monday 15 March.

The logo with the most votes will then be submitted to the legal department in order to scrutinize it, and to the design department to refine it.

To give an example of how far the refinement could go: this was the winner of the Wikidata logo voting, and it was refined by using a different ratio on the bar and changing the wordmark considerably. We will take similar freedoms with the logo concept this time around too.

I am very excited to see what will be in the corner of our new Website, on t-shirts, stickers, and badges. And thank you all for joining us in this exciting process!