OldWikiPediaLogo

In its first day of existence, because the nearest thing to hand (for JimboWales) that was suitable for a logo was an American flag, indeed WikiPedia had the American flag, OldGlory?, for a logo.

ScottMoonen sensibly suggested:

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.

Then others responded...

Or a quill and inkwell. -- SunirShah

It's a very temporary thing, the nearest thing Jimbo had to hand. Definitely won't be the WikiPedia logo--not that I agree with you that the U.S. flag is "ethnocentric" (which seems very strange to say to me, given that the U.S. is, after all, the biggest ethnic melting pot in the world). -- LarrySanger

A truly ethnically aware person would be anathema to an ethnic melting pot. The more cultures involved, the stronger your organization because there is more information available to bring to the table. Any country that has a policy or culture of assimilating immigrants will have a difficult time adapting to the future, especially given free trade, globalization and the Internet. -- SunirShah

I suppose it would be better to be like YugoSlavia?, then? Or to treat foreign workers the way some Germans treat their GastArbeiteren?? Perhaps you do not understand the concept of an ethnic MeltingPot?; have you been to the UnitedStates? Have you met the sons and granddaughters of immigrants here, and how they both preserve their ethnic heritage while freely intermingling with those who have a quite distinct ethnic heritage? For generations, Americans have been saying that one of the things that makes the country great is precisely that we have mixed together so many different cultures. I think some of us in the United States understand rather better what you're trying to say than you do yourself. -- LarrySanger, who plays IrishFiddle? even though he's not Irish

I grew up in Deep River, Ontario, Canada. Deep River has the largest number of PhD?'s per capita in Canada, so it's diverse (as its population comes from far and wide); but the surrounding Renfrew County is frighteningly homogeneous. Now I live in Ottawa, Ontario and I work in the high tech sector. I would guess that the high tech sector is over one quarter recently landed immigrants.

I think the phrase that sums up my best experiences so far: "We don't melt, we mingle." Melting and mixing has that unfortunate connotation of becoming homogeneous, like two metals melting and mixing together to form an alloy--a homogeneous (in every sense of the word) mixture/solution. Homogeneity is bad (or so I posit.) And don't forget the melting pot is the metaphor used by immigration theorists who believed in assimilation policies.

I haven't travelled extensively in the States. But I don't think it's all that different from Canada. Canada has until quite recently not done very well to accept foreigners into its society. Even now, it has problems. One needs only to wander into Renfrew County to see what I mean. I find my current high tech environment to be better at adapting; partly out of necessity, partly out of education.

Taking an extreme example like Yugoslavia is a fallacy for two reasons. One: extreme boundary cases aren't interesting compared to the average case in social phenomena; two: it isn't a paradigm case. Yugoslavia has been "mixed" as such for hundreds of years. The conflict there is centuries old, involving particular details not part of the general case. In that case, a religious conflict that is really a resource (geographic) conflict of two nations combatting. Not the same as a single nation building from diverse individuals. -- SunirShah

P.S. I like the new logo.

Me too, it's great!