Leaf shouldn’t be a default, but an option.
The button itself is a usability problem, there were more than one instance of YouTubers on video looking for something to click to, because they didn’t think it was a menu, just a decor.
The misalignment is another disaster, it was meant to be a random background object but now it is used as a primary object.
Due to the leaderless nature and the inertia of the project, I don’t expect these kind of issues to be resolved soon, it might take a while.
This is more like an issue with the youtuber, than with Haiku. The leaf menu is detailed in the first point of the User Guide. If some person is doing a review, I would expect a minimal research about the topic that is going to talk about. Not to mention that on a fresh install, there are not much GUI elements to discover. Any experienced people could easy notice the button even without the user guide.
There is no problem with the leaf, and it can be kept ( somehow ) as is.
People attacking other members of the project won´t help or change anything.
Something that could found some consensus is to change the leaf a little, and give it a “floor” to rest on ? Then it would be more obvious that it is resting on that “floor”, instead of misaligned.
As for the youtubers, there are menus in most OSs now, and if they cannot find menus in them, that only shows that they have not looked with attention to it.
Just watch a few newbies try out Haiku on YouTube and you’ll see that the blue leaf is not intuitive. Most people are not sure what it is. Just saying.
That’s not how it works though.
What does this even mean? The various developers in this thread have said: “it’s like that on purpose.” So how do you conclude that “it’s just leaderlessness and inertia” that lead the leaf to be the way it is? Doesn’t make any sense.
Also on the Desktop: a link reading “Quick Tour.” You’d think if people were looking for something, they’d click that and see if it told them where to find things. But they don’t. So what are we supposed to do then?
Put the Windows logo on it so they know it’s a menu. 
Well… I can honestly see where it could appear that way (and I’m sorry it did), again I’ll quote my own post and the beginning one too to show I’m being honest about it all:
While from the first post, I’ve boldly put forward a few concepts I wanted to talk about for improving the leaf, (and that was the whole purpose of my original post), I’m not here to fight for it. If everyone wants the blue leaf there, cool.
Now, the legit problem I have is this (and it’s what led me to snap back with a long held grievance I have with the project): It feels the majority just goes into groupthink mode and that is what has me upset and reacting with the topic of Haiku needing to take itself seriously that I did. I think ‘we have a winner the way it is’ touched a nerve for me because that seems to be the overarching attitude from the user base: Leave it alone and move on. So, no, it’s not the leaf that bothers me but seeing the attitude of closing ranks/consensus in action. My apologies for being rude, for real, but that was the reason why.
Now, ngl it does honestly frustrate me a bit the odd placement of the leaf (which I always thought was a bug, not deliberate) will be left untouched. But… it’s not my operating system or mine to change; it rests with those that contribute to it. All I can do is suggest or discuss ideas.
Now, moving beyond the leaf to my real point (which really should be its own thread), this was (and still is) really the heart of my grievances right here:
And again, I don’t mean the silly leaf, I mean every little thing that gets ignored quietly because it doesn’t fit the mold of the Haiku way of doing things. To use my own ideas as an example (because it’d take a while to look for others’), I know some ideas like a cleaner Depot storefront would take a lot to implement, but some, like picking a simple shade of blue for a highlight are simple commits. Others would need a lot more resources, like adding sleep states and a mobile shell. I’m an idealist… and perhaps I’ve burned out because I’d like to see Haiku do what’s maybe the impossible, but I wish someday like R2 or R3 that it could be do more than it does.
But even if future full releases after R1 don’t gain new features, I’d like to see community wallpaper and sounds ship with a release and have people feel included. I’d like to see more GSoC ideas really take off and improve on Haiku (and I do know some good contributions have done just that! But there could be more 
)
And it’d be wonderful to see people’s suggestions to be voted on in general rather than a nest of people arguing with each other. Every. Single. Time. Or… at least often enough it’s noticeable.
But back to my main point, I wanna imagine a lot for anything but Linux but again, I’m just a dreamer.
Good gosh, this feels like a team that goes out onto the field to play and decides it’s already gonna lose the game. I do totally get your perspective (Linux is a monolith that more than likely can’t be beat from looking at every metric) and we can’t live in dream land — but if more people had a ‘yes we can’ attitude, I think there’s an awful lot that could be achieved!
Again I can’t repeat this enough, but… this will be the last time I say it. It’s clear Haiku just wants to be its own thing instead, built for the developers to enjoy but not a competitor. From a few of the replies I’ve read in this thread so far, I’m sad to see the same spirit of slinging a stone into the head of the Giant Linux isn’t shared.
So… if this thread ends up being the last time I’m on this forum because we don’t have the same goal, then at least I’ve tried to convey what I’m really hoping for. Thank you so much everyone for reading all this; I know it’s totally went into a different direction than the original lighthearted topic of discussing a menu icon, but I am hoping someday Haiku will see its potential. Because I think it has it and can do it.
Put the Windows logo on it so they know it’s a menu.
I need this to happen every first of April 
Only a few days left to push this change!
It’s quite pleasant to discover that bikeshedding is a phenomenon not wholly confined to Emacs development… As for my two cents, until now I’d never given it much thought, but it does resemble not so much a leaf as a feather, and I can’t imagine why such a harmless decoration is a bug that must be uprooted and destroyed, or how the merits and demerits of isomorphism fit into this scheme.
No, it is not a legit problem. It’s a feature. It’s a part of why Haiku is still here, still getting better, against pretty stiff odds.
From the beginning, Haiku users were delighted to be able to carry on from BeOS. As we were delighted to have BeOS, those of us who had been there for that. And we’re delighted to see smart people working on it and keeping it moving in a more practically usable direction - more hardware support, more robust web browser, stuff like that. It’s kind of a miracle.
Surprised that people still look at this computer screen and like what they see? Don’t be. Surprised that people might “close ranks” and be receptive to consensus, and not real interested in dialectic wrangling about decorations? Don’t be. It’s a good thing, that far from spelling Haiku’s doom, is a big part of why it’s still here.
No, it‘s more like we are a rugby team and you want to tell me we should take on a football(soccer) team.
It‘s simply a different thing.
We can be good at what we do, but defeating linux in the things it is good at makes no sense.
We can be great at the desktop, but that has nothing to do with linux.
To summarise @nephele, we are not trying to beat Linux because we are a desktop system and Linux is not.
Linux is used mainly on the server, we are not trying to beat Linux on the server.
Linux is not used much on the desktop, we are aiming to beat Linux on the desktop.
We want Haiku to compete in the Desktop space, Linux can stay on the server where it belongs.
In relation to that, if the project starts trying every different idea people are “sure it will make Haiku greater than Windows”, it would resemble a cart with one horse pushing in either opposite sides. A lot of effort to implement said novelty feature, then a lot of effort to get rid of it when things don´t work. Given the lack of manpower, that involves losing a lot of time.
As stated, Haiku is not running to confront linux. It would(is) nice to be able to do the same tasks as one does on linux, but it is still not there yet. Also, which “linux” ? Ubuntu ? Slackware ? Even in linux world one cannot reach a consensus ( gnome x kde ) .
Since we are talking about wallpaper and sounds again : an simpler way would be to have them in a homepage. Those who want them, can see previews and download them from there. But again, who will implement all this ? There are a lot of things that could be implemented/changed, and too few people to do it, so things must be chosen. And some ( many ) times, the chosen ones will not be those that someone prefers. Attacking people or the project for not doing what one prefers will not help, either.( Hey, I still would like the floppy drive working 
).
I don’t see Haiku as a GNU/Linux competitor. Granted, it is Unix-like in some ways and, as such, it has some similarities with Linux but, when I started using it, it felt (and still feels) more like BSD than Linux. But it’s clear it’s not BSD either.
I ported all my own libraries and apps so that everything works just as it works on GNU/Linux or FreeBSD. In fact, I don’t think the term “port” is correct - they work natively on Haiku. Sometimes I have to look at the UI to be sure which OS I am working on, because otherwise my work flow is very similar compared to the other operating systems. Such similarities are probably the reason people tend to talk about comparisons with other operating systems or want to compete with them.
Still, Haiku is its own thing, with its own specific goals. It doesn’t have or need to be / look like anything else. It doesn’t have to compete with anything else. That includes the UI. I personally like it as it is, simple and efficient. I know I can customize it but I never felt the need to do so. Some people might say it looks “old” (with the assumption anything “new” is better by definition). I consider the default UI a feature and I like it as it is. It’s easy on the eyes and gets the job done nicely.
And, for the love of God / Devil / whatever, leave the leaf alone. It’s great as it is in the default UI.
Haiku makes people dream. More users, more dreamers…
Perhaps we tend to expose our dreams as they are. We should think about what we really want (or don’t want) and, express reasonable wishes instead.
But, I think that to answer no systematically is killing the enthusiasm and the end result as bad as to say yes to everything. A bit of flexibility from time to time wouldn’t hurt.
In this case, having the choice to pick between leaves of colours that are already existing in the full Haiku logo would be nice and wouldn’t change the UI design.
Just let the user decide what they like to see!
Well then, you better package your own app that can change the Deskbar logo. Probably tricky with how locked-down Haiku is compared with BeOS.
Don’t get too down. You never know what ideas of yours have secreted themselves into the back of someone’s brain and might reappear someday is some surprising way.
I want that on my desktop! Maybe that idea needs to be polished up a bit. I love it.