Samuel Klein wrote:
Wikipedia does not take an article, nor does
Wikimedia.
When combined with an adjective modifying the project name, or a
common noun modified by the name, the compound noun does take an
article.
"Wikimedia is a non-profit charitable corporation." is correct; so are
"The English Wikipedia", "the Wikipedia cabal", "the print
Wikipedia
'Wikipedia:' namespace pages", and "the Wikimedia Foundation".
A bit late on this, but I notice that [[en:Encyclopædia Britannica]]
consistently refers to that encyclopedia as "the Britannica". Given
that, I can hardly fault the average non-Wikipedian for being confused
as to why it's not, in a parallel way, "the Wikipedia"; I imagine
Britannica's dominance has conditioned a good many people to think that
"the _Encyclopedianame_" is the proper way to refer to encyclopedias.
I suspect this is some sort of archaic grammar being held over in
Britannica's case?
-Mark