Talk:Wikipedia mascot

For all WikiMedia projects?

Should this Mascot be shared by: Wikipedia, Wiktionary, (Prodject Sourcebourg/Wikisource/Wikilibrary or what ever that will be called)?

Yes.

1. Fonzy
2. Sorsis
3. Alemart_the_Redeemer

No.

1. Maveric149 they are different projects with different goals - Wikisaurus would be great mascot for Wiktionary
2. Jeandré, 2004-08-29t12:31z I think different languages should also be free to choose different (or no) logos and mascots.

Artists.

If you're looking to have a mascot designed, I highly recommend www.mascotartist.com - and let me throw in my vote for a Kiwi - it's Wiki with scrambled letters :)

---

I'd love to submit designs of cartoon characters for each of the mascot proposals, does anyone really want their idea drawn first or should I just randomly pick? user:zanimum

Decided when?

So, has the centipede won yet?

Hopefully it will be decide never. -- user:zanimum

Deleting unsupported proposals.

Can we delete weird proposals with little to no support? (dove, egg, frog, man, ant farm -> leaf-cutter ant, naked mole-rat, wiking, wikoid, woman all have 0 or 1 votes) I was going to retract my man idea for lack of support but thought if necessary we can clean up all of the unpopular suggestions. --Geoffrey 00:27 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Leaf-cutter ant has 9. For now just delete the zero vote ones. We can get rid of the 1 vote ones later. --Maveric149

Speech bubbles.

I have a suggestion for the design of a logo regardless of which mascot wins. Several web sites have used a picture of Tux with speech bubbles containing various flags to symbolize a number of languages for Linux internationalization and localization projects. I can't currently find one larger than thumbnail size. However, we could add speech bubbles surrounding the mascot to represent each of the languages for which there is currently a Wikipedia. -- Dale Gulledge 13:07 25 Jul 2003 (EST)

Looking for a second.

Add your suggestion here.

Received.

I have a suggestion for a mascot, but I just created an account and don't have anyone to second it. The coyote is curious (will investigate human activity when it roams into residential areas); controversial (many farmers hate it but others like it and argue that it is not a significant danger to large animals or people); growing (the range of coyote territory has expanded greatly in recent years and continues to expand); cooperative (it raises pups and hunts with other coyotes to bring down animals it couldn't kill alone); ambitious in its search for food and in tackling animals much larger than itself; and social in the way it vocalizes to communicate with other coyotes and travels in packs. (You could also say it's infectious, but it doesn't get rabies as often as domestic dogs.) Calliope 16:39 30 Jul 2003 (EST)

Yes - please add your suggestion. --Maveric149

No mascots.

Is there any way I can vote against the whole idea of a mascot? I don't think it's appropriate for an encyclopedia to have a mascot... Can someone explain why we would need a mascot at all? Are we trying to appeal to children, or do I miss something? For instance, would Encyclopaedia Britannica have to gain anything if they had a mascot? Would Wikipedia appeal to you more with or without a mascot? -- Gutza 23:26 30 Jul 2003 (UTC)

There is a "no mascot" option. The reasons for having one are already described in the intro. You would know both of these things if you read the page. --Maveric149 01:21 31 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Encyclopædia Britannica has a thistle logo. -- Jeandré, 2004-08-29t12:31z

Ok, I missed the "No mascot" option in the clutter, sorry for your trouble. But I don't agree with the "reasons" for having one -- as a matter of fact, I don't think those are reasons at all.

"It could be used in the logo, printed on T-shirts or kept as a housepet" is the only thing there somewhat resembling a reason, but:

• What if the chosen logo doesn't contain a pet? Can you guarantee that everyone will vote the logo containing a mascot? Can you guarantee that everyone will vote the logo containing the same mascot as the one agreed upon?
• You could print whatever you wanted on T-shirts, you don't need a mascot for that
• "You could" is generally not considered a reason: "Hitler invaded Poland because he could" -- that's not true, Hitler invaded Poland because this and that and because he wanted to -- well, my question was oriented towards that kind of attitude: do we want a mascot? And if so, why do we want it? What's our purpose? The fact that we could print it and we could choose a logo containing it is not a purpose.

In any case, thanks for pointing out the "no mascot" option, and I appreciate your refraining from using the proper acronym in your message's summary. ;) -- Gutza 11:53 31 Jul 2003 (UTC)

wikipedia me parece excelente nombre para el proyecto. es un nombre corto y original. de acuerdo a los lineamientos suyos creo que encaja perfectamente un mono o chimpacé. que animal no es mas curioso, social y caotico que ese. pero asociarlo con una maquina de escribir es peyorativo.

propongo un mono (o monos) que busca cosas dentro de una caja, o ordenando cosas.

I really don't understand why we need a mascot - and all proposals are REALLY UGLY! -- Wolfram 04:12, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

--- I dont believe Wikipedia should have a mascot. The logo is just fine, it represents the project´s idea, a mascot would never do such thing in a serious way. Good ideas (such as wikipedia) should do marketing with some more good ideas and knowledge. Let the zoologists spend time learning more about this kingdom and not in useless discussions. -Patricio M. Crichigno

Miwiki, la tite bêbete qui monte, qui monte !!!

Roooooooôôô, le concept de la tchite schroumi a pris la tête du podium :o. Un argument pour la remettre discretement sur l'accueil du wikipedia francophone, non ?? ;op Oliezekat 18:45, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

When is this poll going to be closed?

It has no end date. -Hapsiainen 13:30, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)

For a brandless project, mascots are unnecessary

Why? Why? Why?

What will a mascot bring us, that we don't already have?

Mascots are for brands. There is no "brand" for Wikipedia.

When your product has competitors, then a brand becomes necessary. It allows people to distinguish between your product and another. Sure, we have Britannica, Encarta, and the rest of the Internet competing against us. But are different, we're unique. Our "product" either sells itself, instantly winning a viewer over, or looses them for the rest of eternity on the still radical concept of Wikipedia.

Wikipedia doesn't have one personality. We can be used as a place to find out about the non-sequitur world around us (exploding whales and Let's trim our hair in accordance to the socialist lifestyle come to mind) yet other times we can be one of the best sources for information on a scholarly topic (pretty much any featured article). Compare that to the personality of Coke (for sharing good times together with family) or Pepsi (for the young and the young at heart), and you can see we're in a whole different ballpark.

Even if we eventually find a brand personality, it will change before we have the chance to notice. Just look at the poll on the top of the page. It mentions Project Sourceberg (now Wikisource) and Wikilibrary (now Wikibooks). It was created, what, maybe two years ago?

The concept of a mascot just doesn't fly. Wikijunior Magazine, in the process of development on Wikibooks, is to include spot illustration of a character called "Kiki". Despite extreme relevance when explaining abstract concepts to 8-year-old, I've met barely anything but criticism. Where are those critics here, on a concept that would affect the whole character of Wikipedia?

And as people have said many times before, "all proposals are REALLY UGLY!" Suppose we even hired a professional cartoonist. People who love the style of Spirited Away may be repulsed by Carl Banks' Donald Duck comics, and never join the community. People who love Jim Unger's Herman may hate a mascot that looks like it's from Ren and Stimpy. You're never going to find one style everyone likes, and will continue to like for the next 50 years.

To top that off, our leading candidate is a pest, disliked by a good 95% + of the world.

I'm not saying we should never have a mascot, let's just wait. Give it up until at least our 10th birthday, please. -- user:zanimum

Lemmings

I propose Lemmings. Why? Humourous, absurdist. Imagine all those people trying to figure out exactly why Wikipedia's mascot is the Lemming. Do they think they're waltzing merrily toward a cliff? As an inside joke, it refers to the plunge we all take into Wikipediholism. What's more, they're a social animal! Who's with me. →Iñgólemo← ^talk 02:42, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Of course, to be really absurdist, our mascot can always be influenza. (Why would they choose that? Is Wikipedia a virus? King Billy: Of course it is! Open source destroys innovation!). By the way, Microsoft's 'shared source' FAQ (or something like it), refers to open source as 'virile software', so making our mascot a virus satirises this notion. →Iñgólemo← ^talk 02:42, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Did you here that lemmings DO NOT actually commit suicide? Its an urban myth. Disney actually was disappointed that they would run off the cliff for the film, so they clanged pots and pans to make the run. --65.172.213.123 16:50, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Isn't the puzzle peice globe enough?

Never-ending-vote or ...

is there any object to put {{historical}} and leave whole the vote as exists? Some seem to consider it as historical but others particularly relative newbies seem to consider it as on-going and thus confused. To prevent further confusion, it would be better for now to display it as closed or frozen without conclusion rather than pseudo-active page. --Aphaia 09:50, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, let's please close it. If there are any objections to doing so, speak before 00:00 UTC 22 March 2006. -- user:zanimum

Suggestion: ferret

How about a ferret? They are deuced cute, they render well in black-and-white, they're popular, I know of no other project which uses a ferret as a mascot, and a ferret would be appropriate since we ferret out information and good articles. 129.21.121.235 07:47, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Read above, please. -- Zanimum 15:58, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I see that this page has been frozen

So was there any decision on the matter, or was the idea just sort of dropped? Whose authority would it be to make this sort of decision, anyway?... --AceMyth 17:32, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Look at it this way... we're never going to come to a conclusive decision, and mascots serve little to no purpose except for marketing, but we don't need to make Wikipedia more famous than it is, in my opinion. -- Zanimum 17:35, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Octopus photograph

{{editprotected}} I know this is protected because of its historicity, and hence it doesn't really matter, I suppose, but can someone add a width specifier to that monstrously huge octopus photograph? It makes my head hurt! (and is probably a waste of bandwidth to boot, if you want a less subjective reason) Thanks if you do it! --Tiny plastic Grey Knight 20:41, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I've commented out this image, as it was deleted as "no source",^[1] and was not the same as the one on Commons. Thanks, Korg 15:05, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Korg! --Tiny plastic Grey Knight 22:37, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Great call, thanks Korg! -- Zanimum 18:55, 14 June 2008 (UTC)