A manifesto for ⁂ as a symbol for the fediverse
https://symbol.fediverse.info/
@FediverseSymbol this is stupid:
"We also don’t believe that a large corporation that is joining in as late should be the one defining the iconography for the fediverse."
Who the fuck are *you*, though? If your argument is ad hominem, show your names and your bona fides. Why should anyone care what you believe?
And if you're proposing a symbol after Threads, isn't that even later?
@FediverseSymbol you also say this: "@ is the symbol for e-mail. # is the symbol for hashtags. ☮ is the symbol for peace. ♻ is the symbol for recycling. ⁂ can be the symbol for the fediverse."
These are not the symbols you should compare to. The most recent symbol that makes sense to compare to is the AI twinkles ✨.
https://qz.com/how-became-the-unofficial-ai-emoji-1851059332
The asterism seems really close to it.
Nobody puts an @ on a web page to show what to click to send email. They put an envelope ✉️.
@FediverseSymbol I think it would be a good idea to show some recommended uses of the icon. How would you show that I can Fediverse-like an image on a Web page? How to show that I can join a group? Follow an author? In a list of links to my various profiles, which ones are Fediverse enabled?
@FediverseSymbol finally, I understand the motivation of wanting to show the topology of the Fediverse - a network with nodes and edges.
@FediverseSymbol but what if instead of trying to make a teeny weeny abstract diagram of the Fediverse, the focus were more personal -- about making a connection between two people, no matter where they are and what social networking service they use?
"Follow me on any network."
"Follow me wherever you get your socials."
https://www.anildash.com/2024/02/06/wherever-you-get-podcasts/
@evan In an ideal world, ⁂ would be after every item in this list, so maybe useless in the end. Until that time, ⁂ can help to make following choices.
@FediverseSymbol @evan
⁂ is nice as a symbol for the #Fediverse
but there is a well known symbol already.
It should become an #Unicode
I don‘t care about Meta.
Who should ask whom?
@karlos @FediverseSymbol @evan requests for characters can be made to the Unicode Technical Committee. The proposal process is described here: https://www.unicode.org/pending/proposals.html
I am skeptical that they would have much interest in encoding a character for the sake of the fediverse alone. This icon is "just" a rendering of the complete graph K₅, that would perhaps be a stronger basis for such a proposal (although mathematicians just write K₅, so…)
@FediverseSymbol Asterism does not exist in a vacuum. It was not added to Unicode as a fun so that it's use case could be found later.
Asterisms are still used for purposes such as dinkus. Indeed I regularly use it for that myself.
Attempting to repurpose an already used symbol has stron strong "move over loser, we are taking this" vibes.
You want something that is part unicode? Fine, do it the hard (but correct) way like everyone else and submit a proposal.
@ruari Hello! It’s definitely not our intention to erase existing uses of ⁂ :) It’s a great dinkus, it’s used in weather forecasting, and apparently can stand for “untitled”. In a way, that’s a sign that it’s been reused for different usages several times already.
@ruari Many symbols have, # are now for hashtags and chat rooms as much as they are for ordinal numbers, and they haven’t been used for weights in a long time. Here we use two @s, one for username (which comes from microblogging), one for belonging to a server (which comes from earlier computing), and we don’t use it for prices anymore. And most smileys re-use symbols :)
@ruari What I mean is that symbols can be repurposed without loosing the meaning of their previous uses, it’s all a matter of context!
As for proposing to Unicode, it’s not the way to go to propose a new symbol out of the blue. It only accepts symbols that are already widely in use with a clear meaning.
@ruari One good thing about the ⁂ (besides its look and the conceptual meaning we can put behind), is that’s its other uses are relatively nice and not used much in social media contexts. So we believe there is a space for it to be used with a meaning here without conflicting with its others. When I read a book and see a dinkus, I’m not going to thing “fediverse”.
@FediverseSymbol I read the book. Very much enjoyed it! I think it's over a decade old now? A second updated edition would probably be justified!
And I'll find his account ;-)
Once chanced upon a Freemason's book they use it extensively.
@spaduf @ruari @FediverseSymbol
more precedent for symbols changing their meanings and use cases over time.
@and#meant very different things before the internet was a thing.$is well known in front of numbers, but there's a few companies using it to denote symbols for trading currency and digital usernames for doing such.If you code, then
$ ! = & %all have different meanings depending on language.
I think ⁂ could work, looks good and is already in the fallback fonts on most systems.
... I'm gonna use ⁂Fediverse everywhere. It looks like a brandmark and doesn't require anything special to get it to show up.