Thanks For the Logos; Help Us Choose a Winner 66
Over the course of October, we marked each day of our 15th anniversary month with a different reader-submitted graphic, instead of the usual Slashdot logo. (Thanks to all the artists who participated, whether or not your submission made it to the page: to keep it to one each day, we had to reluctantly cull a lot of great ones.) Now that all the selected graphics have had their day in the sun, we'd like your help in figuring out which one of the selected artists will receive a Nexus 7 tablet (in addition to one of our anniversary T-shirts). Take a look at the current poll and cast your vote. We've listed a handful of favorites as poll options, but feel free to pick the "some other" option and make a case for your favorite in the comments. As the note below all Slashdot polls warns, "This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane." So we'll take the results with a grain of salt ("advisory") — but as of this writing, four of the options are between 13 and 16 percent, which gives us an idea that it's working pretty well.
The Current One... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll probably get flamed, but I kind of like it when some things that have reached a fairly high level of developmental maturity don't get dramatically changed. Slashdot, even when it went a little higher tech, still didn't get dramatically changed from the way it's been for years and years. I actually appreciate that when change doesn't seem to actually improve the purpose.
Re:The Current One... (Score:4, Insightful)
The Images? (Score:3, Insightful)
How about a page that shows them all next to each other? That would probably help the vast majority of people in voting.
Pick the best, for what? (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess I would throw it back to the slashdot team and ask, what is it you hope to achieve with rebranding? Why a new logo? Is it merely to commemorate the history of slashdot? If so, I'd say you've already done that with the month-long logo fun.
Rebranding is done for a number of reasons. Historical milestone isn't typically one of them. It's sometimes used as an excuse for "We haven't grown our user base for a while and need something fresh to entice more visitors", but the event alone isn't usually enough. This is generally true because if you are happy with your growth and retention, don't mess with it.
If you aren't happy with growth or retention, that could be due to any number of factors and a new logo isn't likely to fix it. Knowing who the target demographic is would be the key to rebranding. But I advise extraordinary caution. Slashdot is old-guard when it comes to the internet, an institution really. An unchanging logo conveys stability and reliability. It also helps smooth transitions to other changes you may make in the future with respect to appearance, functionality, or content.
Re:The Current One... (Score:4, Insightful)
Amen ad infinitum. And if they must be animated, they must not repeat. And frankly, there's no need for it to be animated anywhere but the frontpage. At least, please pretty please, make the animation a config option. I hate having to tweak my browser everywhere I go just not to be annoyed.