April 6th is "New Beer's Eve" and the Minnesota User Group is meeting to celebrate the day at Lake Monster Brewing Company! Lake Monster welcomes kids, has free wifi, and a limited selection of non-alcoholic beverages available in addition to their beer. (Pop, juice, and kombucha.) While there is a new pizza restaurant next door, OG Zaza, that you can order food from, we will be providing snacky bits including sausage stuffed dates in a puttanesca tomato sauce, and Hummus with veggies.

"New Beer's Eve" that marks the day before National Beer Day, which is celebrated on April 7. National Beer Day celebrates the Cullen–Harrison Act which was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on March 22, 1933. Beer became legal at midnight on April 6th, 1933, leading to many late night celebrations.

See action shots from our previous Minnesota User Group event Wikipedia Day 2025 in Minnesota, on January 15, 2025.

• Date: Sunday, April 6, 2025
• Time: 1 to 3:30 pm
• Place: Lake Monster Brewing Company, 550 Vandalia St #160, St Paul, MN 55114

Transit

• Metro Green Line | Raymond Ave Station
• Buses: 63 & 67

We will have a live feed going around 1pm(ish).
Use the following link to a Google Meet space to join in and cross your fingers: :-)
https://meet.google.com/qak-efto-vbv

Please add subjects you wish to discuss at the meetup to this agenda.

• Update on reestablishing recognized user group status
  • Wikimedia user groups/Creation guide
  • Wikimedia Foundation Affiliates Strategy/Implementation/User Group recognition process
    • Wikimedians of Minnesota User Group page
    • DRAFT: Letter of intent (does anyone know where we can find the old letter of intent -if there is one?)
    • We need a Triumvirate to submit the request. (Three active Wikimedians with 300 or more contributions to a Wikimedia project on a registered account that has existed for more than 6 months).
      So far we have myotus and pingnova. Who wants to be the third of the 'Three Stooges'?
    • Discuss/Vote on new user group logo (see below)
• ...

• Update on Wikipedia Training sessions at Minnesota Tribal Nations Colleges in 2025
• Update on Wikipedia Edit-a-thons:
  • Hmong Culture @ Hmong Cultural Center or Hmong Archives
  • Latine Culture and Cuisine @ MN History Center
• Questions/concerns/items MN User Group is interested in seeing addressed at meta:Youth Conference 2025 - Pingnova will be attending
• Attending We Rise, United Hmong National Development Conference as exhibitor or attendees - possibility of tabling for our group at the event or attending to take notes and network. Pingnova will be attending.
• ...

• Discuss willingness to support proposal of claiming WP:MN redirect
• Review proposed changes to WikiProject Minnesota main page and read the draft proposal (Current Wikipedia:WikiProject_Minnesota site)
• Review proposed changes to Wikimedians of Minnesota User Group main page and read the draft proposal (Current Wikimedians of Minnesota User Group site)
• Add at least five new redlinks to Wikipedia:WikiProject Minnesota/List of wanted pages by topic
• ...

Wikimedians of Minnesota User Group to Minnesota Wikimedians User Group

(Is it too tomayto/tomahto?)

Type treatment needs some discussion. Which words are emphasized?
What is the Group called in the logo?

• "Wikimedians of Minnesota User Group" (This is on the User Group page)
• "WikiMedia Minnesota User Group"

• 
  Northstar
• 
  MN State & Flag
• 
  Original

Design-Northstar
Strengths:

• Simple, clean design
• Mimics Wikimedia logo the best in both design and tri-colors
  • Likely to be approved
• Emphasizes "North Star" and Minnesota as the North Star State
• Type treatment emphasizes Minnesota
• Works well in Black & White

Weaknesses:
*Blue circle brackets are broken (Joe needs to fix) Fixed

• Too Abstract. A Jump to recognize an 8-pointed star as Minnesota

Design-MN State & Flag
Strengths:

• Colors and style take on design of MN Minnesota State Flag.
• Type treatment emphasizes Minnesota, similar to many other User Groups type treatments.
• Spacing (whitespace) between Globe and State correctly follows WikiMedia design.
• Type treatment emphasizes Minnesota

Weaknesses:

• Design uses colors outside of WikiMedia's preferred color palette of RED(#9B0000), GREEN(#2F9A67) and BLUE(#00669A).
  • May be rejected.

Design-Original
Strengths:

• No need to change. No strong arguments to change
• Works well in Black & White

Weaknesses:

• Somewhat dull / Two colored
• No SVG version (Vector version)
• Spacing (whitespace) between Globe and State does not follow WikiMedia design.
• The design/use of the state may be lost on Non-Minnesotans.

For background, I am the designer of the Original logo. It seems to me that the MN State & Flag logo is obviously superior, and of the 3 choices, it would be my preference. But based on my (thankfully tangential) previous experience, I expect the powers-that-be in this process to be ridiculously inflexible about whatever "branding" standards they happen to hold dear. Documentation for these standards seems to be a bit scattered, so most of the following observations are based on the Wikimedia_movement_affiliates/Logos_best_practices page.

Importantly, under the Thematic Organizations heading, it reads: "Logos including maps of regions or countries should not be used as they may be used as a political statement." Now, there are a few fine-grained arguments that could be made to exempt us from this prohibition (It's not a map, it's an outline. It's not a region or country; it's a state. This applies to Thematic organizations; we're a User group. Because of our Original design, we should be grandfathered in.) I doubt these will fly. And anyway, the border disputes resulting from the forthcoming Canada-US war will soon render even an outline of the state controversial. ;-) Still, as I noted, MN State & Flag seems the best to me, and if you want to fight for it, rock on.

But if we fail to land on either state-outline logo? First, I note (from the same standards page linked above) that the LGBT+ logo (which they put forth as a model) does stray from the 3-color palette, even re-coloring recognized Wiki-shapes. If we can do this when we're feeling gay, we can do this when we're Feeling Minnesota. Second, since the MN 8-pointed star is hiding 8 M's in it, by definition it's also hiding 8 W's in it, which seems irresistible to Minnesota Wikimedians. So I played around with this a bit:

(a) realizes the top and bottom pairs of points with typographical M & W. (My sense is that the MN star is equally valid whether positioned with 1 or 2 points uppermost... as shown here, 2 makes most sense with my typological tricks.) Unfortunately, the star is just too hard to read in this version, so it's kinda nonsense. (b) moves the letters inside; much sounder. (c) sets the star pointing North, giving the letters a jaunty angle; however, I don't like the effect. To me, "North" looks like it's pointing a tad to the side, even though it's within 0.5 degrees of true; I believe it's the clashing angles of the letter "M" that virtually skew the compass points. Finally (d) situates this MN-blue circle within the familiar 3-color segmented circle. Note that I've replaced the second Wiki-blue segment with a Wiki-green segment so that, weirdly, by changing this color we better reinforce the standard 3-color palette. Also, I just think it looks a touch better with the splash of green. Even if you reject this "M & W Star" design (maybe it's too busy?) I still recommend that you update "Northstar" to this color system.

Technical notes: The above are just quick sketches, and I don't currently even have a .svg editor installed, so ideally if you see anything you like, someone who is actually competent (Myotus?) can run with it. So I'll note that the "M" is Century Gothic, and the "W" is Goudy Old Style. The official Wikipedia "W" is in Hoefler, a proprietary font (why they do this is beyond me). Few widely-installed fonts (I'm using mostly those bundled with Windows 11) feature a 2-V "W", and of the 2 or 3 I had, Goudy Old Style was the best match to the Hoefler "W". Very few fonts provide an "M" with pointed tops, which is vital to this design: Century Gothic is the only one I have that looked any good at all. The angles do not match those of the Northstar, but no typographical "M" will do that. However, if one were super-ambitious, one might raise the M's central trough: this would both make the "M" angles closer to the star angles, and make the structure of the "M" more closely mirror the "W". It looks like, compared to mine, Myotus's star takes up a little more of its circle's space; that's probably superior; as I said, my logos are just sketches. Phil wink (talk) 19:47, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I couldn't quickly find detailed nomenclature/display standards, but according to the standards page I linked above, "creative and descriptive names are encouraged with Wikimedia user groups." Given our previous go-rounds with the powers-that-be, this is an obvious lie. First, note that in all their models, WIKIMEDIA is the bigger and darker word... everything else is lighter gray and smaller. This would not necessarily be my choice, but I believe they are quite set on which element is primary and which is secondary. My preference for name is simply "Minnesota Wikimedians". If the "M & W Star" design happens to be chosen, it is really the only fitting name, as it reflects the logo perfectly. But also, it is the least fussy option, and is justified graphically by the "New Wikiland Wikimedians" model on the above-linked page, and page-name-wise by New_England_Wikimedians. Cheers. Phil wink (talk) 19:47, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

-TBD-

• Myotus (talk) 20:15, 18 January 2025 (UTC) Yep! See you there![reply]
• Skvader (talk) 22:58, 26 February 2025 (UTC) Thank you for the invite! I'll be there unless it snows a bunch (I've heard ♫ sometimes it snows in April ♫.)[reply]
• McGhiever (talk) 23:42, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• paul2520 💬 18:14, 5 March 2025 (UTC) same as Skvader said! ❄️[reply]
• Svartaqueen (talk) 02:05, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Dktrfz (talk) 14:53, 7 March 2025 (UTC) I'll be there![reply]
• gobonobo ^{+ c} 01:27, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Pingnova (talk) 07:03, 22 January 2025 (UTC) Strong maybe, but don't want to over-promise.[reply]
• TheSavageNorwegian 23:24, 26 February 2025 (UTC) Supposed to be making maple syrup that weekend, but the sap may not be flowing this late if this weather holds up.[reply]
• ~Darth Stabro^{Talk • Contribs} 02:06, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• / RemoveRedSky ^{[talk] [gb]} - No guarantees that I'll be attending. I've never been to a Wikipedia Meetup before.
• Dflovett (talk): I hope to make it! 21:22, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Phil wink (talk) 19:51, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• SunTunnels (talk) 16:07, 17 March 2025 (UTC) Perchance...[reply]

• Unfortunately I work 10 hours every Sunday. Would love to join you some other day, or an evening. - Reptilian1

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