David Gerard wrote:
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Minutes/2018-11-9,10,11#Branding
So this has been dictated from above - the "community consultation" is window dressing for a decision that's long been made.
Hence the nonsensical claims of massive community support by fiddling the numbers, employing literal wiki spammers to do the consulting, etc.
Wikimedia Foundation Inc. is bad. There are dozens of examples illustrating why this is true, but this forcible rebranding is a particularly good demonstration of the rot.
The people most directly responsible here are Katherine Maher and Heather Walls. They're both subscribed to this mailing list, they both understand that this decision would upset long-time contributors, and they both simply decided to ignore any complaints in favor of attempting to siphon more money from donors and force their "vision" on the broader movement. You don't see either of them defending themselves or their actions here for a reason. They didn't both forget how e-mail works or how the wikis work, they've intentionally chosen to plug their ears and march forward.
What's more offensive, in my opinion, than this forcible rebranding effort is that they've spent and will continue to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on it. It would be bad enough to make this unilateral decision and implement it with the existing bloated staff, but instead they've hired agencies and consultants and wasted additional hundreds of thousands of dollars in donor money on this sham exercise.
But don't worry, highly deceptive advertising is back on the projects, in mid-April, to ensure continued funding of this and other charades.
MZMcBride