[ruby-talk:14267] Re: Ruby mascot proposal

Danny van Bruggen,

# Wouldn't Matz himself make a nice mascot? Just give him an anime
# makeover, and take the head as a logo. It would make a nice change
# from all the animal/language comparisons...

That's definitely a very clever idea, but for reasons mentioned below, I 
now think _any_ Ruby mascot is a bad idea for the time being.
 
# If it isn't a good idea, I'll vote for the bird, because it looks
# funny.

On the other hand, others don't like it for precisely that reason.
FWIW, an overwhelming majority of people that I surveyed at the Austin
Ruby meeting didn't like it. (It only took one hand to tally votes
however. :-) And most didn't think the alternative proposal was
appropriate either.  (And we are not merely talking about not liking
in the sense of preferring something else, but disliking to the point
of refusing to wear it or use it on a web site.) This was a little
surprising to me, but I suspect such feelings are much more widespread
than one would gather from postings on this topic.

I think the most important conclusion is that there is no pressing
need for this rather divisive and controversial feature.  So I think
we should hold off on choosing a mascot (official or otherwise).
Given the various moderately reasonable critiques of all proposals to
date, it may be that we would be better off without a mascot for the
time being.

Perhaps in the meantime, a common motto something like the
following could be used instead:

    Ruby -- The future of human oriented programming.

It has a convenient ASCII representation, and there is still room for
considerable (_unofficial_) artistic creativity in terms of
typesetting and enclosing this motto in various simple, elegant,
geometric figures for tee shirts and such. (Think of it as a 
polymorphic logo that could be instantiated in unending variety.)

(OK, some people just _have_ to have a mascot. Well then, as one pair of 
famously pragmatic authors stated, Ruby is a transparent language. So 
let's have a perfectly transparent mascot. :-)

Conrad Schneiker
(This note is unofficial and subject to improvement without notice.)