LibreOffice mascot – lesson learned and an apology
With many approaching the holiday season, it looks like the heated discussions about the LibreOffice mascot have settled down. It is probably too early to re-launch the project, as memories of what has happened in October and November are still rather fresh, and so we would like to share our thoughts and plans on this project with you before we the next steps are taken.
The ambitious plan of a mascot decided by the community is likely not to happen before the new Board of Directors of The Document Foundation, which has just been elected, is in place on February 18, 2018. We have learned our lesson, so before any decision to re-launch the initiative, we will set clear rules for the contest and communicate these properly. We want to avoid another round of heated discussions, especially those driven by people who are not regular contributors to the LibreOffice project.
We reiterate our thanks to all contributors who have provided an original artwork in the true spirit of the community, and who have been frustrated by the evolution of the initiative. Please accept our sincere apologies and rest assured we won’t repeat the same experience.
We wish a happy and peaceful 2018 to all LibreOffice community members, and look forward to working with you in the new year!
Hi All
Thanks for all the hard work guys.
Wishing you all a very happy Christmas – and a prosperous, successful New Year.
If this is going to be fair at all, here are a few of the problems you will be facing, and my suggestions on how to solve them. And in the spirit of Christmas, I offer you this bit of advice for free.
1. All those that you had screened out without public vote need a fair chance this time ’round. However, all those that you entered into the competition in your first attempt are now well-known. Some of them have been shown to thousands of followers on other web communities, giving them a very unfair advantage.
Solution: Offer all those who had been rejected before the vote to be re-entered into the next round if they want. As for those who have gained a lot of attention during the first attempt, offer them to enter a new design, as you should allow all artists whose work you published in your first attempt to submit a new design or drop out of the competition. Do not open the competition to further submissions. That would be highly unfair, as artists who failed the original deadline would now have had more time to create new works of art based on a peek at the competitors, which could give them an edge.
In order to keep things fair this time, rules should specify that no participant may show their work of art before the competition is over, nor describe it or directly link to their work in any capacity. They may post a general link to the competition, but that is it. Anybody who breaks this rule needs to be banned from the competition without further notice.
Also make it clear that any attempt of a third party to circumvent this rule will lead to disqualification just as well. If any link to or picture of any submission can be found online outside of the competition, disqualification will be the result.
Disqualifications will be discussed with the disqualified privately. Their work will not be removed. Nobody needs to be publicly embarrassed.
And in order to make sure that nobody uses this to eliminate competitors, the winning vote needs to have at least one more vote than one n-th of the votes, with n being the number of submissions.
2. Voting needs to be fair and transparent.
Solution: Don’t interfere. Do your own research to disqualify anyone who violates the rules, and accept information on such violations by the audience. Don’t do “sanity checks” or any such unscientific attempts at cleaning up data you do not like.
Once the voting period is over, all remaining participants’ works should be displayed along with the number and percentage of votes they got. Disqualified entries just disappear “due to rule violations” without being displayed again. Again, no need to embarrass people. If a bunch is removed at the same time, we can hope nobody remembers whose are missing.
Submission with the most votes wins. Period.
3. Have a proper fail-safe in case of voter fraud.
Solution: Should the above-mentioned measures not lead to a clear winner, then and only then will a jury select a winner from all those that have not been disqualified. The reasoning behind this vote can be specified by the jurors in form of an essay.
The voting will not be completely subjective.
There should be scales for the criteria you are going to set, and each submission needs to be rated by all judges. Winner is the entry with the most points in total.
I am aware that it is very likely that someone will try to get every participant disqualified. However, this is my way of redeeming you. If the community really sucks that much, you just vote and be done with it, and can prove to the community that they were the ones who messed up, not you.
Just my two cents. Happy holidays.
And a g00d holiday to your team too.
Sounds like a decent proposal, better luck next time.
On the upside, there turned out to be a lot of people who like to participate in LO user research, hopefully they’ll find their way back when there is a serious issue you want feedback on.
(Including a ‘notify of polls’ checkbox alongside the ‘notify of updates’ setting with similar pop-ups might do the trick?)
And perhaps the data and discussions can be offered to some marketing education course as example? LO is doing a good job of transparantly bringing UI design knowledge to the suite and the public (and upstreamed into software education?), perhaps they can achieve the same with their Marketing.
I have few notes when organizing next contest:
– Target it for artists. 90% of participants didn’t have basic knowledge of anatomy.
– Don’t limit artist’s expression. Don’t fore participants to make oversimplified cliparts. They should be able to make something actually good looking.
– Prizes also should be for artists. There was something like an USB encryption thing… what the hell is this? How do I use it?
Please add an option for “we don’t need a mascot”