Can we have a different favicon (ॐ) for Hinduism SE?

Question

Generally, questions from other Stack Exchange sites are shown on the right side of the screen while reading our Hinduism questions/answers and most of them have favicons associated with them. For example, a chef's cap for questions from Cooking Stack Exchange. I was just wondering why we don't have a logo like that for our site. In case it is agreeable then I would like to propose the ॐ symbol for our favicon, as the current favicon "Hi" seems quite vague and irrelevant.

Answer 1

After more internal discussion and comments under this meta post, we agreed that ॐ would indeed be a good favicon for this site. We forwarded the request to our design team a little while ago, and they came back to us with the new icons today. They should be appearing soon if not already, depending on caching. Thank you for bearing with us!

Here's how it should now look:

Answer 2

First off, sorry for not getting to this sooner. I wish I had a good excuse, but honestly the post just fell through the cracks until I was poked about it again recently.

I can start by at least telling you the origin of the current favicon: the first two letters of the (English) word "Hinduism." Perhaps not the best symbol for your community, but fairly standard for our favicon designs. All beta sites have favicons based on the light blue "Stack Exchange Q&A balloon" shape, mostly (but not always) containing two letters. More customized favicons, like the chef's hat you mentioned, are part of the site design that graduated sites get.

That said, the first thing I did to look into your actual request was figuring out why you wanted the ॐ symbol. From what I can tell, it is the most common representation of OM (or AUM), an icon/sound of great importance in Hinduism. On those grounds, it seems like it would be a good choice.

However, I also saw that OM and the ॐ character is also important to other religions, such as Buddhism and Jainism. There's even a question on Buddhism Stack Exchange that references it. That shared usage disqualifies it, I think. A good favicon should be pretty unambiguous; in other words, when you see it, you shouldn't be left wondering which site it represents.

My usual caveat applies here: I'm not an expert in the topic, so I had to go do some research and it's possible I didn't get the full picture. If you think I've missed something significant, feel free to let me know.