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Contents |
Prehistoric (non)logo
On January 15, 2001, Wikipedia's first day of independent existence, Jimbo Wales used the American flag as a temporary (placeholder) logo for Wikipedia. It wasn't intended to be permanent. See meta:OldWikiPediaLogo for the old logo discussion.
The original official logo
Wikipedia's first true logo was an image that was originally submitted as a Nupedia logo. Jimbo thought it would be a much better logo than the flag, and it remained for the next eight months, until the end of 2001. It continued to be used after this time on Special Pages, such as search results.
The logo included a quote from Euclid and his Modern Rivals by Lewis Carroll (Preface, page X)
- In one respect this book is an experiment, and may chance to prove a failure: I mean that I have not thought it necessary to maintain throughout the gravity of style which scientific writers usually affect, and which has somehow come to be regarded as an ‘inseparable accident’ of scientific teaching. I never could quite see the reasonableness of this immemorial law: subjects there are, no doubt, which are in their essence too serious to admit of any lightness of treatment – but I cannot recognise Geometry as one of them. Nevertheless it will, I trust, be found that I have permitted myself a glimpse of the comic side of things only at fitting seasons, when the tired reader might well crave a moment’s breathing-space, and not on any occasion where it could endanger the continuity of the line of argument.
But due to the fisheye effect, only part of the text can be read.
The pre-current logo
In November 2001, Wikipedians began suggesting new logos. A short list of 24 leading candidates was chosen in the first Wikipedia logo contest, which took place from November to December 2001. The winner was the last logo (#24), contributed by The Cunctator.
The logo included the following quote:
- Man is distinguished, not only by his reason, but by this singular passion from other animals, which is a lust of the mind, that by a perseverance of delight in the continual and indefatigable generation of knowledge, exceeds the short vehemence of any carnal pleasure.
Taken from Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan, Part I, Chapter VI:
- Desire to know why, and how, curiosity; such as is in no living creature but man: so that man is distinguished, not only by his reason, but also by this singular passion from other animals; in whom the appetite of food, and other pleasures of sense, by predominance, take away the care of knowing causes; which is a lust of the mind, that by a perseverance of delight in the continual and indefatigable generation of knowledge, exceedeth the short vehemence of any carnal pleasure.
International adaptations
Because of its English text, this logo was not ideal for the Wikipedias in other languages. Some wikis chose a similar design with text in their own languages (e.g. the Spanish Wikipedia). Others used the English logo but added the color of a national flag (most of the Nordic language projects, Danish, for example) or a translation of "The Free Encyclopedia" (e.g. German). Still other designed a completely different logo (e.g. the French Wikipedia).
Puzzle ball logo (2003 on)
The international contest
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An International logo contest was conducted to find a new logo that was suitable for all languages. After a two-stage vote, a design by Paul Stansifer (AKA Paullusmagnus) won with considerable support. The English Wikipedia switched to it on September 26, 2003.
Stansifer's logo depicted a globe constructed of bevelled puzzle pieces, of multiple colors. Covered by text with links, the logo was to symbolize the continuous construction and development of the project.
The variants
A ratification vote was held soon after, to confirm community consensus. As a result, twelve direct adaptations of the design were created by members of the community.
One of David Friedland's (Nohat) modifications, occasionally referred to as the "silver ball" was soon chosen. The revision of Stansifer's concept removed the colour, and changed the overlayed text into one letter or symbol per puzzle piece. Both Friedland and Stansifer have assigned copyrights to the logo to the Wikimedia Foundation.
The current logo
There was some controversy over switching the English Wikipedia to this logo due to several reasons, one of which was the fact Wikipedia's servers were flickering throughout most of the process.
Before being released to all Wikipedias, the logo was lightened up slightly.
After the John Seigenthaler Sr. Wikipedia biography controversy, a column in The Times[1] insinuated the logo as being a metaphor for the entire project. Rosemary Righter wrote "Just above the omega, at the point where, on human heads, they used to perform frontal lobotomies, bits of the jigsaw are missing."
3D Versions
Although the Nohat version was made in POV-Ray (see this talk), it was merely an image projected into a sphere, with a bump map applied to provide relief and simulate separate puzzle pieces.
It has since been tried to produce a real tridimensional object, with each puzzle piece sculpted independently, to allow alternative renderings. See Modeling the 3D Wikipedia puzzle ball - first attempts to produce the logo in Blender rendering program, and a Wikipedia Puzzle Ball Animation (prototype).
See also the thread What is on the back of the logo? at the foundation-l mailing list
Physical versions
A very large puzzle globe, dubbed the Wikiball, featured in Wikimania 2007, depicted an approximation of the Wikipedia logo. A smaller version was distributed to the participants. The large ball was dismantled after the closing ceremony, and many participants kept a piece or more of the puzzle.
Alphabets represented in the logo
The puzzle logo includes 15 letters from 15 different alphabets, many of which — but not all — represent a letter from that alphabet that most closely resembles the English "W", as in "Wikipedia". The alphabets represented are as follows:
| Armenian capital hiwn (Ւ) |
(empty) | (empty) | (empty) |
| Khmer lô (ល) |
(empty) | Japanese Katakana wa & i (ワィ)[2] |
Klingon r (PUA[3] U+FE81 — "ﺁ") |
| Tibetan wa & i (ཝི) |
Greek capital omega with tonos (Ώ) |
Latin W (W) |
Arabic yeh with underdots (ۑ) |
| Devanagari va & i (वि)[4] |
Chinese (袓) |
Cyrillic capital short i (Й)[5] |
Korean Hangul (위) |
| (unknown) | Kannada vi (variation of va & i, which is ವೖ) |
Hebrew resh (ר) |
Thai cho ching (ฉ) |
It has been suggested that some of these characters should be changed to reflect the actual spellings of "Wikipedia" in various languages.[6]
See also
- m:Meta:Historical/Logo history
- Wikipedia:Banners and buttons
- Wikipedia:Slogans
- Wikipedia:Wikimedia logos
- Some Errors Defy Fixes: A Typo in Wikipedia’s Logo Fractures the Sanskrit — New York Times
- meta:Errors in the Wikipedia logo
- List of writing systems
References
- ^ Righter, Rosemary (9 December 2005). "Unreliable (adj): log on and see", Times Online.
- ^ Apparently a typing error for u & i (ウィ).
- ^ This character is in the Private Use Area area of Unicode and may not display without the correct fonts.
- ^ Due to a formatting error, the characters are reversed on the globe image, showing as (िव). There are problems with this in some web browsers as well.
- ^ Given as capital i (И) in some logos; see User talk:Nohat for more information.
- ^ m:Talk:Errors_in_the_Wikipedia_logo
