OMG. Reading this message gave me scary deja vu. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2007-March/001582.html except I was joking.
Five years ago, Wikipedia was barely known at all. Now it is globally known and recognised. What will recognition of WMF projects be like in another five years? Who can tell? But if you envision as I do, eventually a global presence for WMF, a reputation for free access & license quality content in multiple languages, then it seems short-sighted to rename everything after Wikipedia just because it is our most well known project right now.
It seems to me many of our projects are ahead of their time. I guess they will struggle for recognition and popularity until the world catches up. Renaming them won't change that.
This proposal really surprises me, because I feel there is already a perception from non-[English ]Wikipedia projects the Board only cares about English Wikipedia, and that they are not getting the support they want. Suggesting "hey, just rename yourself under Wikipedia and boom, success!" doesn't seem to me that it will go down well.
Speaking for my involvement with Commons, I want success for Commons on its own terms. Not just as a service project to Wikipedia.
Once rebranded, the projects could also be featured in different ways. For instance, a list of projects could be shown in a navigation bar at the top of every page:
: Other Wikipedia Projects: Sources | Textbooks | Quotes | Dictionary | Media | Species | News | Learning
We don't need to wait for a rebranding to do something very similar to this, do we?
- Recognition of Wikipedia as flagship removes some of the media
pressure that every new project has to immediately (or ever) be just as successful, which may very well be completely unrealistic.
What 'media pressure' are you referring to?
Does WMF care if its other projects are or aren't 'successful'? http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-April/029773.html
- Discourages tribal thinking about projects, where even highly
experienced Wiki[mp]edians are treated with as much suspicion as any newbie when they join another Wiki-* project.
I don't see a URL change changing that. While some communities can be overzealously protective, a certain amount of protectiveness strikes me as a good thing. There's a reason why almost all projects have a policy page that amounts to 'We are not Wikipedia, don't do things the Wikipedia way because we do them differently here'.
- There is no such thing as a Wikimedia community. We must recognize
that each small community has its own values and principles, and avoid empire-building. => A healthy dynamic between global and local values is key; describing and spreading the minimal (but important) global values that we have is a core reason we have a WMF and a chapter network in the first place. We already recognize all projects as part of the "Wikimedia" family; changing the brand to "Wikipedia" would merely reduce the confusion.
No. At the moment Wikipedia and Wikibooks and Wikinews etc are all conceptually on the same level. But Wikipedia and Wikipedia Textbooks and Wikipedia News? These latter two are conceptually at a lower level. Reorganising projects like this would not "merely" reduce confusion, it would change people's perceptions about the relations between these entities...and their relative importance.
- This will crush small projects under the juggernaut of the evil
Wikipedia and divert even more attention from them. => There is no basis for such assumptions; indeed, it is quite reasonable to suppose that identification with the strong "Wikipedia" brand will make it _easier_ to resolve the particular technical needs of Wikipedia News, Wikipedia Sources, etc. Raising money and developing partnerships for Wikipedia is relatively easy, compared with a project hardly anybody has ever heard of.
Why not just use the phrases "Wikipedia Sources" etc with potential developers right now, then?
I'd appreciate other critical commentary on this brand model. Frankly, I see very few benefits in the strategy we have chosen to adopt (perhaps more as a habit than as a result of careful deliberation).
I'm guessing that's because brand recognition wasn't at the forefront of people's minds when they mused about potential project names. e.g. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-March/011854.html :)
Making such a major change merely in service of brand recognition seems backward to me, especially given that we're not selling anything.
regards Brianna user:pfctdayelise