Bjornsm

Hi, Bjorn! Congrats on your recent finding about the wikipedia logo :) I would like to ask you some things about that:

1. You said you submitted that design for a competition, right? The logo history page currently states (in a statement originally added by Stephen Gilbert) "Jimbo thought it would be a much better logo than the flag". So, was there a competition for a Nupedia Logo, and Jimbo decided to use the winning entry for wikipedia? Did Nupedia ever use the logo? Or was "Nupedia logo" equivalent to "Wikipedia logo" back then? Or perhaps the "competition" ended up not happening and a logo was hand-picked from the proposals submitted?
2. There's this comment from ScottMoonen on the page OldWikiPediaLogo (for which the original diff can't be found): I'd recommend you change the American flag logo. Exremely ethno-centric et. al. I think a globe logo would be much more fitting, if you want to keep with that metaphor. Or perhaps a book. Did this have any influence on your design? Was a globe part of the contest rules or suggestions?
3. Also, I always wanted to know about those two black vertical lines over the sphere: were they added on purpose or were an artifact?

That's all for now. I'll probably come back with more questions soon :) --Waldir ^talk 22:56, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

As the guy who started the original logo text discussion, I thought I'd drop by and say hi. Nice to see an answer to one of Wikipedia's mysteries. That's an awesome story for you to tell at cocktail parties. If you can recall any of the answers to Waldir's questions, you have a far better memory than I. I can't remember what I had for lunch yesterday. Cheers, BanyanTree 00:37, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I see you already answered question 3 on your blog, I stared at the logo for a good 30 seconds before the "N" took shape. Of course nobody would be expecting an "N" on Wikipedia. - BanyanTree 00:52, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments! I have now answered Waldir in his talk page. As I noted there, failing in the attempt at making the logo look like an "N" may be the thing that made the logo suitable for Wikipedia - this may therefore be one of my most welcome failures ever... (I wish all my failures could be like that... :-) Thanks for researching this, otherwise I would never had known about it. Bjornsm (talk) 05:26, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

		The Original Barnstar
		For designing the precursor to the Wikipedia puzzle globe, I award Bjornsm this Barnstar. Thank you! --ragesoss (talk) 15:42, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I've added the link to the Signpost article discussing your story to your userpage: [1]. Feel free to remove it if you don't like this edit to your userpage. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 09:41, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Re: Thanks for updating Wikipedia logo page

You're welcome. It was some sort of luck. Without the link in the page and description:

In this archived page of submitted logos from Nupedia site says at the bottom "Logo ideas posted with permission of their designers. Click on a logo to go to its designer's website." Image link in that page is pointing to this archived page: "Assistant Professor Bjørn Smestad".

I couldn't have done that. I could say "I'm the author!" and it would be my word against others' words. In that archived page there are other logos without links so we don't know who are the authors. When I found it I felt like an archaeologist and thought something like "ha ha, got you!". But it wasn't easy. Initially I wasn't even searching specifically for the logo author but for information in general about how Wikipedia was born and how Nupedia worked. Unfortunately much information from those times is lost (a lot of pages can't be found in the archives) but at least that little piece of the puzzle was found. Any way, congratulations, without knowing you made part of this project's history. Even though your logo is not the current logo, the basic idea is there. Mosca (talk) 17:43, 31 August 2009 (UTC)