this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023

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Community Icon Poll (self.meta)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Ategon to c/meta

28 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Edit: This link is outdated, see new poll here https://programming.dev/post/190520

Hey everyone

Wanted to run a poll about the community icons to choose between a couple options

Option 1 - Use UBP icons - Use unified icons for all of the communities similar to beehaw

Option 2 - Use UBP for general communities and specific language, etc. icons for specific communities

Option 3 - Dont use UBP icons

Vote using the strawpoll here (doing strawpoll so it can be ranked voting) [removed in favor of new post]

EDIT: I have remade the poll with two more options. If you voted in the previous one please vote again in this. The new options are just for adding different colored gradients to the unified icons for different communities

Quick example of this:

all 29 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] Daan 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I like the bottom one the best (option 3) for the reason that they have different colours. The colour tells something about the community you're looking for.

A 4th option where you still have the UBP icons, but with the colours as shown in the bottom picture would be a good middleground. (Option: 'Use UBP icons everywhere but with different colored gradients')

just my two cents

[–] Ategon 3 points 1 year ago

Actually yeah true, forgot to add that to the poll. I can remake it real quick

[–] RandomDevOpsDude 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I can't vote due to VPN, but the UBP icons look awesome, and I think using them across the board will look great. With specific language icons, can still use the actual icon with the modified color gradient (like git community is) and still gets the point across and looks great IMO.

[–] RandomDevOpsDude 1 points 1 year ago

After looking at my subscribed, rather the community list as a whole, I'm torn between 1/2

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Maybe just let each communities decide? If some want to have a uniform theme between them let them have it and if others don't too. Like, I wouldnt like to see any style, or lack of, being enforced on anyone.

[–] Feyter 6 points 1 year ago

I think the poll is too confusing with the 5 options of which are all very Similar, to be honest. Actually I'm already not sure what I've voted for and it's just a moment ago 😅

I would say just do what you think looks the best regards the poll.

[–] Ategon 5 points 1 year ago

Ill switch all the icons according to what gets voted on. Will leave voting open for a day

[–] JackbyDev 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Can you elaborate on the option of UBP but with different gradients?

The wording of the options is a little confusing.

[–] Ategon 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah I just edited the post to do a quick example

Just means that instead of the usual blue purple gradient communities all have their own color scheme to separate them from each other

ex. the godot icon may have the godot colors, functional programming will have an orange gradient, etc.

[–] ruffsl 2 points 1 year ago

Wow, the multi color gradients per different community is rather clean, but still aids in rapid legibility. Still think shape masking should be left to the user's chosen theme or client side rendering, but the neon on black is warming up to me.

[–] Ategon 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Due to issues with this poll would you guys be open to running it again on rcv123?

Things that would change

Random ordering of options
Better descriptions of options
Handling so theres no accidental voting
Better ranked system (transferable vote instead of points)

[–] Daan 4 points 1 year ago

Yes! You could also change the post so all the options have a preview like you did before adding the new poll options. So changing "Quick example of this:" to "Option 4 - ... "

Example

Option 1:
<image>

Option 2:
<image>

Option 3:
<image>

Might clear things up as well.

[–] JackbyDev 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah totally!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Better ranked system (transferable vote instead of points)

https://civs1.civs.us/civs_create.html ? or https://star.vote for scored ballots

[–] Ategon 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Also if a UBP option wins ill run another vote for hexagon vs circle

[–] l4sgc 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My top choice for icon shape is definitely the vertical hexagons we have now, but the poll should probably include options for both vertical and horizontal hexagons. Maybe square and squircle as well.

[–] ruffsl 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I think this should be done via CSS, rather than baking in the masked shape into the PNGs. We could customize our instance's default bootstrap theme for Lemmy-UI. This would allow us to keep the icon artwork unaltered as full-size square canvases, then mask them client side based on the user's preferred theme or custom layout. E.g. allowing the user to distinguish user avatars versus community icons based on masking shape, like on GitHub.

There is a growing development of RES like user side enhancements for Lemmy:

https://programming.dev/post/135335

[–] l4sgc 3 points 1 year ago

Yes letting everyone choose their own icon shape is a great idea, and thanks for sharing that script, I've been missing the compact view!

[–] Ategon 2 points 1 year ago

Ill likely try to get that working in the instance and then the poll can just be the default option

[–] Paradox42 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

While I personally like the idea of having the shape be decided by user/instance CSS choices, would that not potentially reduce the immediate brand recognition, when those outside our instance see our community icons?

[–] ruffsl 2 points 1 year ago

If folks vote for the UBP option, then I think that unified color palette and aesthetic would be a reasonable enough clue of instance origin.

That said, if we did hardcode shapes into our instance icons, it's not like there's a lot of maskable radial shapes to choose from that would:

fit inside the default circle that remote Lemmy instances would render our community icons as.
not overly crop out or limit the artwork canvas with fat dilated margins.
https://maskable.app/

With hexagons, octagons, rotated 45 or 30 degree offsets, at tens of pixels font heights: those are hardly differentiable at some point. So regardless, we could easily collide with other servers already that choose hexagons, or any polygon that fits in Lemmy's minimum circle mask.

[–] ruffsl 3 points 1 year ago

For context, check the comments here for the discussions behind proposed options:

https://programming.dev/post/149568

[–] jim 2 points 1 year ago

I'm getting a timeout for the strawpoll. I don't really care that much, but I think it's nice to not use UBP. Variety is the spice of life.

[–] spartanatreyu 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Gah, I messed up my vote. I clicked on the option I wanted (2) and then clicked vote.

I didn't realise it was a thing where you had to drag the options into the order that you wanted.

Now I've entered a vote that is what the default order of responses is.

Not sure why the button is called "Vote" and not "Submit" if you're submitting an order instead of a single vote.

[–] canpolat 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I did the same. I submitted the default order without realizing that it was an ordered list.

[–] ruffsl 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I suspect the current poll rankings are a little biased from the initial ordering of the ranked options. I think strawpoll.com's website should randomize the initial ordering per voter, as well as ask the user to move options from one column to a second columb to make the UI more apparent that all options should be re-ranked by the voter.

[–] sisyphean 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I have a question. If these were the final results (in descending order of votes):

x~1~ votes for UBP icons for non-language-specific communities
y~1~ votes for UBP everywhere
y~2~ votes for colorful UBP everywhere
x~2~ votes for colorful UBP icons for non-language-specific communities
z votes for no UBP icons

Where y~1~ + y~2~ > x~1~ + x~2~, so more people wanted UBP everywhere but because of the two independent options (where to use them and what color), their votes got fragmented, what is the right course of action?

I think it would have been better to have two polls, one about the question of using visually consistent icons and another one about what they should look like.

[–] ruffsl 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Looks like strawpoll.com is simply ranked only, not necessarily RCV. True RCV could solve this problem by allowing instant runoffs after closing polls:

https://www.rcv123.org/

This one also supports randomized ballot order, which is cool.

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