A Short History of Nearly Everything The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States The Secret Life of Bees Holy Blood, Holy Grail Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People Middlesex : A Novel The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference How To Win Friends And Influence People

Logo history

From Meta, a wiki about Wikimedia

Test logo

In the early days of Wikipedia, founder Jimbo Wales uploaded an American flag as an example logo. Needless to say, it was never intended to be the permanent logo. (see OldWikiPediaLogo.)

Nupedia logo

This was the logo originally used by Nupedia and used by Wikipedia until winter 2001.

Cunctator logo

This Wikipedia logo was designed by "The Cunctator" and won the first Wikipedia logo contest, which took place from November to December 2001. The leading submissions of that early contest (which is separate from the much larger international logo contest held in 2003) can be viewed here.

Paullusmagnus logo

This was created during the International logo contest. After the two-stage international logo vote this logo won with considerable support -- see International logo vote/Results. The English Wikipedia switched to it on Sept 26.

Due to strong feelings by some Wikipedians who considered this logo inferior to the old one, the designer, User:Paullusmagnus, put this picture on his user page in a bit of self-deprecating humor:

Nohat logos

This "silver ball" was created after the International logo vote/Ratification as an improvement of the Paullusmangus logo. The English Wikipedia switched to this on Oct 12 after it achieved an appearent consensus of 21 prefering it to the PM logo and only 3 not prefering it (vote page on Oct 12). However by Oct 17 the vote had changed to 23 prefering it and 12 thinking it worse (vote page on Oct 17). Arguably, the result is still somewhat biased -- the people who were strongly opposed to the winning logo were highly involved in the final optimization process, while the people who were strongly opposed to the new variant quickly headed to Meta to vote it down as soon as it went public. In any case, most people think it is clear that there is wide support for the new variant. There are some naysayers who continue to call for another vote, while there are many who have expressed a desire for finalizing the decision ASAP.

There was some controversy (See Logo feedback and Talk:Logo feedback) over switching the English Wikipedia to this logo due to several reasons.

• The first was lack of publicity for the poll over this (although it was linked to on many Main Pages, announced on the mailing list and on w:Wikipedia:Announcements (The announcements page asked for comments on Oct 1 and votes were requested on Oct 13).
• The comment page quickly formalized in a "Better than original logo / About the same / Worse" poll, which had the problems that it was hard to vote for the original logo (until Oct 15 there was no voting section for the original logo), and it was not announced on the English main page or announcements page that this was a logo vote until after the English wikipedia switched.
• The decision to modify the logo was made during the logo ratification process.
• Some people were strongly opposed to the winning Pallusmangus logo and decided that the logo should be modified.
• The number of people participating in the logo variant process was probably around 20 or so (at least until the logo was switched at which point it increased to around 40) compared to the 188 valid ballots in the orginal logo contest.

After a few days on the Main Page, User:Nohat uploaded a new, internationalized variant. The logo in use was quickly replaced with that variant without much discussion, as the previous logo was not available in internationalized form and the differences were considered minor. This is the logo that is now in use (in different translations) on most Wikipedias:

Wikimedia, MediaWiki logo

The second and third place logos (International logo vote/Results) were appointed as the logos for Wikimedia and MediaWiki by logo contest organizer Erik Möller on October 15.

Wikimedia logo:

MediaWiki logo:

A Short History of Nearly Everything		The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States		The Secret Life of Bees		Holy Blood, Holy Grail
Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People		Middlesex : A Novel		The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable		The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
How To Win Friends And Influence People