Am I misunderstanding this - you want to replace a recognised symbol with a symbol that’s already being used by another group? That seems counterproductive at best.
I’m also wondering, have you spoken to anyone with poor eyesight? This is my reply to a comment below suggesting that the new symbol would be easier to read:
I’m reading this thread on mobile, and the fediverse logo next to the community name is much easier to see than the three stars. If I didn’t already know what the three stars were from the rest of the post, I wouldn’t have a clue what they were supposed to be in the body. They look like a blurry capital A. Obviously the fediverse logo is bigger there, which helps, but it’s not significantly bigger, and would still be clearer at a smaller size
It’s not being used by another group to represent themselves. It’s a technical symbol like degrees or pi. This idea is similar to how the semicolon is being re-used as a symbol for a group of people. Nothing is being stolen from anyone.
I didn’t say that it was being used to represent anyone, or that it was being stolen, I said that it was already in use. To use your examples, I’d think that using Pi or the degree symbol to represent the fediverse would be a bad idea too, as they could also lead to confusion. The semicolon is punctuation, so there’s less chance of confusion with that.
If an astronomy group made a poster with the three stars, would the stars be representing star clusters, or advertising that they’re on the fediverse? Given that the fediverse is still relatively small, is there more chance of the stars being seen as an astronomical symbol?
Which I'm fine with. If the metaphor is that the Fediverse is a fucking blizzard of snowflakes organizing against corporate social media, I'm all in for it. If it serves to alienate right wing weirdos then all the better. In the end it's all about freezing out the fascists.
I’m reading this thread on mobile, and the fediverse logo next to the community name is much easier to see than the three stars. If I didn’t already know what the three stars were from the rest of the post, I wouldn’t have a clue what they were supposed to be in the body. They look like a blurry capital A.
Obviously the fediverse logo is bigger there, which helps, but it’s not significantly bigger, and would still be clearer at a smaller size
The pentagram icon is the original symbol for the fediverse, created back in 2018 by Dr. Quadragon and Eukombos. It’s a great depiction of the decentralised nature of the fediverse, and has been serving the community well. However, its design is a little too complex to be used at small sizes, as you would in text or in a button. It’s also only available in image form, not as a typographical character.
I think they have a valid point. Currently on my website I use a Mastodon logo next to email and git and all that jazz. It's not ideal, as it's not so important that I'm on Mastodon specifically (and I might move to a self-hosted #Seppo instance in the future), but the existing fediverse icon would not work well at that scale.
It's a huge branding effort to make it catch on though. And part of me likes the pentagram better.
Can you answer, “Why do we need a symbol that represents the Fediverse?” Because modulo that, your question becomes, “Why does the symbol that represents the Fediverse have to have a Unicode codepoint?”
We don’t need it to be a Unicode character, but there are advantages if it is that are so obvious they don’t even bear discussion.
symbol.fediverse.info
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