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".
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/sj/wikipedia-the-history-of-a-name/
SJ
ps - I am confused by the first sentence on wikimedia.org [what does 'Wikimedia' mean there?], and the footer of wikimediafoundation says "About Wikimedia Foundation" -- missing an article.
On Sat, Jun 27, 2009 at 1:59 PM, Jim Redmondjim@scrubnugget.com wrote:
On Sat, Jun 27, 2009 at 10:37, Michael Snow wikipedia@verizon.net wrote:
There are some situations where you would use the definite article for singular proper nouns, such as with some geographical names, or when the name is actually a combination of common and proper nouns.
I would also use the definite article if I were referring to a specific language's Wikipedia - "the English Wikipedia", "the Swahili Wikipedia", et al. - instead of to the Wikipedia project in general.
As for referring to Wikimedia, in English one would say "the Wikimedia Foundation" since "Wikimedia" clarifies which foundation we're talking about. If the name didn't use the word "foundation" - if it were "Wikimedia Earth" or "Wikimedia United" - then the definite article would not be necessary.
-- Jim Redmond jim@scrubnugget.com _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l