Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia logos

Older discussion

I very, very much doubt that I'm the first person to point this out, but wouldn't it be better (more consistent, more logical) to use the same logo for both wikipedia and meta wikipedia, or if not, then if a different logo is used for meta, wouldn't it be better to use one that actually says meta on it rather than just a different version of the same? --Lezek

Thanks for volunteering to make a new Meta logo. :) --Brion

You read my mind, that was precisely why I was asking ;) --Lezek

---

Wikipedia: We can sure as hell shovel it. ;-) -- Tarquin 15:30 Oct 15, 2002 (UTC)

Thank you, Tarquin. Your suggestion will be given all due consideration. -- Stephen Gilbert 15:58 Oct 15, 2002 (UTC)

Invalid logo votes

Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump on Thursday, September 25th, 02003.

For those who already cast their votes on the meta, BEWARE:

Your vote would be invalid if you do not have an separate account on meta or if you homepage on meta does not redirect to your homepage on a wikipedia project of which you have more than 10 contributions.

My own vote was classified as invalid! I make my homepage a redirect now and hope it is fixed. But there are still wikipedians do not know that.

-wshun 19:12, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

To clarify: your user page on meta does not have to redirect to your user page on one of the language-Wikipedias, but it does have to point there in some way - just a link will do. This is to avoid people making lots of duplicate accounts and getting more than one vote. --Camembert

Don't you think it's clear enough on the ballot page? CGS 19:26, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC).

I first thought that a user page on meta is sufficient. Sure there are wikipedians fail to read it. :-( --wshun 19:33, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The Current Logo?

Where is the current Wikipedia logo located? It doesn't seem to be on the page...

New Logo Proposal

The logo can't be alphabet-exhastive. Wikipedia needs something truly universal, like this: *[1] Take the logo on the lower right: A blossom for unfurling knowledge. Hibiscus because "wiki" is the hawaiian word for "fast." Arrows pointing out in every cardinal direction. A puzzle piece in the negative space. Oh, and four people leaning into an open central square, collaborating. I know I'm not alone here.

Character errors in Logo

Discussion and Petition still ongoing... --Quiddity 18:29, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Font?

Anyone know what the font for the Wikipedia logo is?

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 76.171.7.6 (talk • contribs) 8:14, Mar 26, 2007 (UTC).

I assume it's Garamond or Cloister, but check with others. Mabuse 17:05, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Hoefler Text. --Kjoonlee 11:43, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Why is the Chinese character "祖"?

Can anyone tell me why is the Chinese character on the logo "祖"? --Voidvector 09:59, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it isn't 祖 but 袓. I don't know why, though. --Kjoonlee 11:55, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Great, a character that has fallen out of common usage. I thought it was 祖 cause that was written on Wikipe-tan. --Voidvector 12:51, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Jumping into a 5 year old discussion to say that the character has not ‘fallen out of common usage’ – 祖父 and 祖母 are the words for ‘Grandfather’ and ‘Grandmother‘ in many dialects of Chinese, and I'm sure the character is used in other words too. Pokepal101 (talk) 03:28, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

According to an article in the NY Times (see the archives of WP:SIGNPOST for a link), some letters were chosen because they are pronounced similar to "Wi" and some letters were chosen because they look interesting. Since 袓 isn't pronounced similar to "Wi" in any of the languages I know, I guess it was chosen because it looks interesting. --Kjoonlee 17:51, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I strongly recommend the character 维, the first character in the Chinese phrase 维基百科 (Wikipedia) instead of this confusing 祖.--尖尖的鹿角 (talk) 11:42, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Text of original logo

Does anyone know what the text in Image:Old wikipedia logo.png is taken from? - BanyanTree 08:42, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

The original contributor (2002!) is still editing, I'd ask him. --Quiddity 16:37, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm not 100% that the uploader is the creator, since the description implies that it was created pre-2001, but I've asked Stephen Gilbert (talk · contribs) if he can drop in and enlighten us. Cheers, BanyanTree 22:36, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi folks. I'm not the creator of the original logo, so I don't have any information about how it was made. I'll see if I can find out who created it. -- Stephen Gilbert 18:36, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

I remember Larry saying something about it once, but I can't find the link (could be lost - much of the 2001 stuff is). But contact Larry Sanger at Citizendium. You could also try asking User:Tim Shell as he would have been the one to load it onto the server when the first instance of UseModWiki was installed. Manning (talk) 13:41, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

It seems it's Bjørn Smestad. Found it while browsing through Nupedia archived pages in Wayback Machine site. 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". Didn't found any account in english Wikipedia with his name. May be he was only involved in Nupedia project. Mosca (talk) 08:56, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I just realized today that the logo I submitted that many years ago were ever used for anything at all... I am amazed. I must admit I was never much involved in either Nupedia or Wikipedia. The text of the quote is from Lewis Carroll's "Euclid and his Modern Rivals". Bjornsm (talk) 11:50, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Favicon

We need a new favicon in my opinion. This one looks kind of boring. We need something like a smaller version of the current puzzle logo, but with a W in the middle or to the side. Any comments would be helpful.–Sidious1701_{(talk • email • todo)} 23:33, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Smoothing the logo?

This has been bugging me for a while, but if you look at the edges of the Wiki "globe" in the corner of the screen there, you'll notice a jaggy white border. Compare this to German or French wikis, and you can see what I'm talking about. I don't have either the imaging know-how or the privileges to fix it myself, but surely someone does? Justme8800 23:33, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Mailing list 3d discussion

There is currently a thread on the foundation mailing list, discussing both a 3d version of the globe with the hidden pieces filled in, as well as the problems seen in the current logo. Just a heads up. :) -- Quiddity (talk) 18:37, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Scott McCloud

Does anyone know if the puzzle logo was inspired by a very similar image in Scott McCloud's 2000 Reinventing Comics? (I'm guessing not, given discussion above, but I'm curious. Anyone?) Thmazing (talk) 19:54, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Renewing discussion

Please participate in the discussion at meta:Talk:Wikipedia/Logo, which has official support, and appears to be moving forward. -- Quiddity (talk) 22:14, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Why there is "Й" in the logo?

Why there is "Й" in the logo? It means "j", not "w"! Kubek15]]$4 ^{(Sign!) (Contribs) (UBX)} 12:00, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Why did they get rid of "Й"? It was much cooler than the current. (Stepanstas (talk) 14:45, 21 May 2010 (UTC))

Devnagari is not correct in the logo

In the current logo, the devnagari script, which is used for languages like sanskrit, hindi, marati etc., is not shown in the correct way. Please correct it . —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.172.113.218 (talk) 15:08, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Problem

The Indic text on the center-left side of the logo is NOT correctly formed. It shows the ि trailing to the right of the character when it should in fact be attached to the character to the LEFT of it, like this:

http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/2415/78634251.jpg
GSMR (talk) 15:53, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Bottom left 'unknown' character - replace it with something Klingon!

Title above says it all. Why not eh? 203.219.156.86 (talk) 10:16, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Where is the 3D model file?

The 3d model constructed for the new logo should be available in the name of openness! Where can i find it? --Beao 19:44, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Second this. Where is .blender file? --AS ^sa 13:32, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Elvish

Given that no one on the Wikipedia payroll will admit that there is anything valuable, or anything at all for that matter, inside the puzzle globe, and given further that one (i.e., yours truly) does not see any Elvish on the globe, one is left to assume that one or more Cabals have conspired to hide all the Elvish on the inside. For shame! (Seriously, though, include Klingon but not Elivish?! Who forgot the Elvish?) kcylsnavS (kalt) 22:38, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Klingon is no longer on the globe anyway. Powers ^T 23:12, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Well it's OK with me to put Klingon on the en.w globe. Just put Elvish on with it. (My opinions on this matter are not to be construed as an admission that I've every read anything by Tolkien. Not into fantasy: SF rules.) kcylsnavS (kalt) 23:15, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

How about putting a real language on, like Irish uncial dotted g or s? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.159.78.56 (talk) 16:06, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

A real language? So Klingon and Elvish were fully developed for nothing, eh? Don't forget the existence of a Klingon Dictionary. Do your homework.

Logo not updated in (at least a few) Wikipedias in others languages

Like German [[2]], Italian [[3]], Portugese [[4]] and French [[5]] Wikipedias, as of the signing of this comment. Even http://wikipedia.org/ [[6]] has the old olgo in the centre. Is this the way it should be? It seems like the new logo just for "testing out" in English Wikipedia... =D KPUFFERFİSH^Ṫ•Ċ 02:57, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

As a side note, perhaps we could describe the characters in the new logo similar to what we had done for the third. Plase improve/edit (the table I mean, not this comment). I'm far from any alphabet expert or something (For most part, I'm just looking at the picture name). Note the many blanks too. KPUFFERFİSH^Ṫ•Ċ 03:52, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Note: table removed since now it is included in the page, to prevent duplication of effort/maintenance --Waldir ^talk 18:35, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Yeah. But the Javanese character on the leftmost column is still missing... KPUFFERFİSH^Ṫ•Ċ 07:03, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

The main list of updated logos is at commons:Wikipedia/2.0‎, and the main discussions about the new logo are primarily at commons:Talk:Wikipedia/2.0‎, and here at WP:VPT#New logo. HTH. -- Quiddity (talk) 18:10, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

The lost character

I've completed the table with the characters of the old logo. Now all of them have images for illustration, in case the reader doesn't have the appropriate fonts to render the texts.
However, there's still one character that resists identification: the one on the lower left corner. Can you find out anything about that? --Waldir ^talk 11:45, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

It is ᡅ U+1845 on Mongolian script —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.88.82.94 (talk) 13:19, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! :D --Waldir ^talk 18:35, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Viewing

Is anyone here able to see all of the font representations (below the individual glyph images) in the table? I can see most, but only about 85-90% I think. If you can see all of them, and you're using a Windows PC and Firefox, can you please tell us what your font settings are? kcylsnavS{^screech_harrass} 01:51, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

You just need to add more fonts (I believe), but I'm not sure which. I get about 85% of them too (For example, I'm missing these from the first 3 lines: Khmer vo, Javanese wa, Gothic vinja, Gurmukhī vava). However I can't read any of those languages, so I haven't tried too hard to fix it... See Help:Multilingual support for our help page. -- Quiddity (talk) 20:10, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

I just added images to all the glyphs, so now anyone will be able to see them, and since they're vectorial images, one can even zoom at will :). I tried to recreate them as closely to the original as possible, using the Code2000 font that Nohat mentioned he had used (incidentally, some of the text glyphs will become visible if you install the Code2000 font in your computer, particularly the Klingon one).

Now, while some of the glyphs only had to be slightly distorted (vertical compression, mostly) to fit the original design, several others had no close match (or no match at all) in Code2000. These include:

• The Japanese wa+i (the Code2000 version looks different from the logo, but I uploaded it anyway since the image we had was even less like it)
• The Tibetan wa+i (the glyphs aren't implemented in Code2000 at all)
• The Greek omega (the Code2000 version with the tonos doesn't look like the one in the logo, but the omega alone is pretty similar; I'm wondering if Nohat drew the omega with Code2000 and the tonos using another font)
• The Korean hangul wi (The Code2000 version looks different from the logo; contrary to the Japanese character, the current version looks more like the logo so I didn't upload the Code2000 glyph)

The remaining ones seem to have been originally produced with Code2000. I am particularly happy with finally providing an undistorted version of the Klingon character (the previous one was simply cut from the logo, thus keeping the perspective distortion). I ask your help to find out the font used for the characters listed above, so we can finally have an accurate archive of this chapter of our history. Any guesses? --Waldir ^talk 18:40, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Open use logos?

I'm kind of throwing this here, because I'm not in the mood to write a huge, detailed proposal to the Foundation just yet, and thoughts might be appreciated first. Should Wikipedia have an "open use" logo? Debian has separate logos: one is Free™®©, the other is strictly reserved for officially endorsed products. There are Free products that do have a strongly defended logo and branding (Firefox, Java and, um, Wikipedia), but one look at the small schism between Debian and Firefox shows that having a single, non-free logo and trademark in place is an invitation to do a wholly lawsuit-compliant fork that doesn't benefit the end user much. There's a similar situation with the Java programming language: The platform is open source, the branding isn't - but they put the mascot under BSD license, so at least people can create spiffy web buttons without signing their soul to Sun Microsystems the Devil Oracle. (See, it's getting worse every year.) In my opinion, Wikipedia could benefit from officially sanctioned "open use" logos. An alternate version of the puzzle ball might be confusing to the end users, but maybe open logos could be based on the word mark portion of the logo? The "W" favicon is pretty widely known already, isn't it? --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 23:37, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Very interesting idea. I'd like some contextual examples explained, to better understand. Questions (I realize a lot of answers depend on which designs are hypothetically chosen, so just generally/abstractly)...:

I'd be curious to learn of applicable situations for the "open use" logo, and by contrast, which would continue to use the "official" logo. I assume the official items would include obvious items like WP:Merchandise (including PediaPress publications and WP:Wikipedia CD Selection), but what else?

I assume that WP:Banners and buttons fits in here somewhere, but how? Would fan-made buttons and banners need to use the "open use" logo instead of the trademarked logo?

Who is currently using an official logo, that we would end up requesting to switch to this new open logo? Which of the 5000+ items in commons:Category:Copyright by Wikimedia would be effected? Which of the internet mirrors?

So basically, apart from the design of the thing, what exactly will people end up arguing about, if this is implemented? -- Quiddity (talk) 21:19, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Regarding design: I agree that the favicon (File:Wikipedia's W.svg, or now File:Wikipedia's W (Linux Libertine).svg) is well known. Slightly complicating (but probably resolvable) is that Wiktionary currently uses the same favicon (see commons:Wikimedia#Favicon).

Just for wild ideas, our globe logo could be transformed into any Map projection... (Done already? I haven't seen any before). HTH. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:19, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Icon transparency

Hi. Not sure this is the right place, because this has nothing to do with the Wikipedia logo itself, instead to do with the little "W" icon you see in the address bar or next to tabs. If you look at this image, you can see that the Commons logo is without a background (looks darker because of the theme I'm using), while the Wikipedia logo is with a while square background. Wouldn't it be better if the background of the "W" icon could be removed too? Rehman 02:47, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

That's the favicon; see File:Wikipedia-favicon.png. Goodvac (talk) 06:42, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Is the above file actually the file that is currently used as the Wikipedia Favicon? If not, is it any one of these? Rehman 01:41, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Logo moving

Every time I open a new page, the logo moves from left to right, which slows down the opening time several seconds, each time. Is this part of the maintenance thing that was being mentioned yesterday, or is this permanent? All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 00:03, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Logo usage

What is the Usage guideline for the famous Puzzle Logo?--Sandbag for smash bros 4 (talk) 05:37, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

See the links in the commons:Template:Copyright by Wikimedia template, particularly the FAQ at the bottom of the commons:Trademark policy page. HTH. –Quiddity (talk) 00:20, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Latin and Cyrillic "vev?"

The section on the new logo has a table of the characters on the logo, including Armenian, Latin and Cyrillic "vev." Curiously, neither the Latin or Cyrillic letters are named "vev." What gives? 74.60.134.199 (talk) 11:35, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Indeed, this article is on the wrong side of the border to gibberish. It doesn't list the Unicode points supposed to be shown, it doesn't mirror the order of code points on its source for no obvious reason, and as you said it doesn't explain why g and the Cyril letter are tagged as vev. I can only guess that this is no nonsense or even vandalism, but some kind of "phonetic wannabe-W-alike glyph sort order". The m:Logo history is less obscure. –Be..anyone (talk) 06:26, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

fixed, @Waldir: thanks. –Be..anyone (talk) 11:34, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

No problem! If there are still issues, let me know, or fix them yourself if you can :) --Waldir ^talk 19:07, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

5,000,000 article celebration

5,000,000 article celebration Wikipedia logo

Surely this logo should be in this internal Wikipedia page? I saw it when Wikipedia was celebrating its 5,000,000th article. If so, what sort of stuff should I put into this page? Qwertyxp2000 (talk | contribs) 04:52, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia logo is in prominent use on HGwiki.net

See:

http://hgwiki.net/Main_Page

--Kevjonesin (talk) 19:38, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Klingon replaced by Ge'ez

I just put this section onto meta:Errors in the Wikipedia logo § Klingon replaced by Ge'ez, and only then checked the page history and saw that the previous entry was in June 2013, so the page isn't active and probably no one will see it there. So... pasting here.

---

Wikipedia logo : § Current logo says

The new logo was rolled out on the projects in May 2010. It features the new 3D rendering of the puzzle globe, with corrected characters (and the Klingon character replaced by a Ge'ez character).

The Ge'ez character is ው, U+12CD ETHIOPIC SYLLABLE WE. In the table in Ge'ez script#Ge'ez abugida it is in the second section of the table, second row (consonant Wäwe), sixth column (vowel ə [ɨ]), so it is pronounced [wɨ] (IPA), which is pretty close to the first syllable of "Wikipedia" in English.

However, Wikipedia:Wikipedia logos : § The finalized logo : § Alphabets represented in the logo doesn't reflect that change, though a reader would expect "The finalized logo" to refer to the current one. The table of characters there (row 2, column 4, corresponding to the location on the jigsaw globe illustrated there) has

Klingon r ()

I'm rather afraid to edit that table and section. Can someone else make the appropriate fix?

References

--Thnidu (talk) 23:40, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

Paul Otlet drawing

Someone pointed out to me that there is a drawing made by the information scientist Paul Otlet (1868-1944) that looks eerily similar not only to the Wikipedia puzzle ball logo, but also to the front page. Check out this video at 1:11 link here. I still don't know the original source of the drawing but am attempting to track it down. If I understand correctly from WP:Wikipedia logos, the third logo was the first iteration of puzzle ball, with the vote going towards User:Paul Stansifer's design, then User:Nohat's modifications are what resulted in the "silver ball" or "silver puzzle ball" design that was accepted. So I'd like to ask Paul Stansifer and Nohat directly; were you aware of Paul Otlet or his drawings when you were constructing your designs? Or, does anyone else have information as to this possible origin? Hexatekin (talk) 18:12, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I have never heard of Paul Otlet or, to the best of my knowledge, ever seen any of his drawings. Nohat (talk) 06:26, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Coat of arms of Wikipedia?

While investigating the hypothetical question, I came across this talk page on French Wikipedia. It is unclear whether a final proposal for a coat of arms for Wikipedia was determined. In any case, I collected the images in the Commons category linked here.Chicbyaccident (talk) 09:51, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

This seems highly hypothetical, and if it were about any other website or organization, I'm sure that we would have never mentioned this in the article without solid sources. I'll be bold and remove it again. effeietsanders 04:18, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Case style of slogan

Is there a reason why the English Wikipedia's slogan ("The Free Encyclopedia") is rendered with each word capitalised? The other Wikipedias, to my knowledge, seem to have the slogan in sentence case (e.g. "L'encyclopédie libre" for French, "La enciclopedia libre" for Spanish, "L'enciclopedia libera" for Italian). It seems to me that the English version should also be rendered in the same way (i.e. as "The free encyclopedia"). RAVENPVFF | talk ~ 06:29, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

Flag

The article content now starts with: "Wikipedia's first true logo was an image that was originally submitted by Bjørn Smestad for a Nupedia logo competition which took place in 2000. Jimmy Wales (Jimbo) thought it would be a much better logo than the flag, and it remained for the next eight months". It briefly mentions 'the flag', but never actually states that 'the flag' (which probably refers to the American flag, which I heard more often being mentioned as the first file that was used as logo) was used as logo. Could someone confirm that this was indeed the case, and can we then make that explicit without keeping it this vague? effeietsanders 04:17, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

20th Anniversary coming up

I just had a thought as we are approaching the 20th anniversary - do we want to add a puzzle piece to the globe to celebrate 20 years of building this repository? VanIsaac_WS^cont 09:05, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

As a suggestion the Tocharian syllable "Wi" would be interesting in terms of its appearance, the history of Tocharian within Indo-European language studies, as well as demonstrating the alternate "Fremdzeichen" letterforms of Tocharian not found in other Brahmi-derived scripts. The piece could go to the right of the Ge'ez (Ethiopic) "wə", so that the new piece would be barely visible, but the marking would only be seen from alternate views. VanIsaac_WS^cont 05:14, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

The Wikipedia logo

I have two questions about the logo on Wikipedia.

1. The logo, where it says "WIKIPEDIA The Free Encyclopedia," I noticed that the word WIKIPEDIA is probably written in an all caps font, usually the shorter letters are technically the lowercase ones. Is it written as "WikipediA" in HTML text, with a capital A at the end? It could be true, because there is a redirect to Wikipedia at WikipediA.
2. Does each character on the Wikipedia sphere stand for the first letter of Wikipedia in each language? Probably not, since Greek Ω is on the list, but the Greek word for Wikipedia is Βικιπαιδια. In any case, please answer my questions if you have time, and thank you. Gioguch (talk) 03:11, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Three-Layered Cake Logo on Wikipedia Home Page - Melting Trump or 20th Anniversary of Wikipedia?

I can't find any documentation on the Three-Layered Cake Logo that I see on the meta home page. I'm guessing its an image for the 20th anniversary of Wikipedia. But the W atop the cake looks suspiciously like a crown, the frosting looks like yellow hair, and the two red candies look like eyes. And the way the frosting is dripping suggests melting... So what I also see is a certain famous political figure with royal ambitions melting into a hole following the 2020 elections. I realize Wikipedia is politically-neutral, but still, as an news-obsessed American, am I reading too much into this image? Thanks Happy temporizer (talk) 18:00, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Edits

Anyway, I realized some accidental un-capitalization. I fixed those. Continue this page if you edit too. 22:23, 26 December 2023 (UTC) from a non-user