(Part of a "Rethinking" series.)
The Wikimedia Foundation currently owns and protects the following brand names:
* Wikipedia * Wikimedia * MediaWiki * Wikisource * Wikibooks * Wikiquote * Wiktionary * Wikimedia Commons * Wikispecies * Wikinews * Wikiversity
Of these 11 names, three are confusingly similar: Wikipedia, Wikimedia, and MediaWiki. Moreover, only one has global recognition: Wikipedia. MediaWiki has strong recognition as a software solution and can therefore largely excepted from the following discussion.
Proper protection of these brands involves trademark and domain name registrations and maintenance, and enforcement against misuse or use of confusingly similar names. This is complicated by the fact that the names are frequently used in internationalized variants.
Moreover, not a single Wikimedia content project is close to the success of Wikipedia itself. Comparing the Alexa traffic rankings, only one of the other domain names used is even in the top #1000 (wikimedia.org), and that is largely because this domain name is accessed frequently, but indirectly, through Wikipedia itself (uploaded files). This is in spite of the significant attention given to these projects by featuring them on frontpages of most Wikipedias.
There is an alternative brand strategy: making use of the strongest brand (Wikipedia) to identify all activities of the Foundation. In such a model, there would be:
* Wikipedia Foundation * Wikipedia * MediaWiki * Wikipedia Sources * Wikipedia Textbooks * Wikipedia Quotes * Wikipedia Dictionary * Wikipedia Commons * Wikipedia Species * Wikipedia News * Wikipedia Learning
(The name "Wikipedia Learning" may be a good alternative to "Wikiversity", which identifies the project less closely with a particular institutional type of learning and research, and more closely with its core activity.)
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
At least some of the existing logos could be re-used in smaller versions, positioned under the Wikipedia logo, when identifying the projects.
== Advantages ==
* No more confusion between Wikipedia and Wikimedia, Wikimedia and MediaWiki. * Strength of Wikipedia brand directly reflects on other activities. * Encourages thinking of new projects in terms of their function * As long as the core trademark (Wikipedia) is sufficiently protected, so are all compounds * Acknowledges that the "Wikipedia" brand stands for more than any traditional encyclopedia * Simplifies management and marketing/outreach, in particular, collaborations with other projects-- no more "Wikinews is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation, which also operates Wikipedia" type introductions. * Reduces confusion with other "Wiki" entities, such as Wikitravel * If all projects use the .wikipedia.org domain name, retaining session information across wikis (after SUL) gets a lot easier (cf. wikia.com) * 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. * 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.
== Risks ==
* Community acceptance. Perhaps this issue should be voted upon if there is at least some support for it. * Internal use will require some adjustment (many pages affected). The frequent use of templates to identify related content should make this process easier. Phasing this in gradually should be fine. * Loss of visual identity. Again, this could at least partially be addressed by having small visual identifications under the Wikipedia logo for the different activities. * Initial confusion among those who have finally learned the differences between the names. :-) This is part of every rebranding experience.
== Other perceived risks ==
* People would not contribute as much anymore. => I see no evidence to support such an allegation, anymore than, say, people are contributing less to Wikia.com's wikis because they are all unified under a single brand identity. I am convinced that some people would quit over such a decision, as some people will always quit (or threaten to) over anything that is remotely controversial. I doubt that this would have a significant long term impact. * Some people do not identify with Wikipedia's values. => The kind of people who join another project because they hate Wikipedia are not necessarily the kind of people who build healthy communities. If even the mere association with the Wikipedia name would give them a headache, they are not part of a Wikimedia community to begin with. * 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. * 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. * But we spent so much effort telling people about our "Wiki-"thing, all this will now be for nothing! => Not at all. Indeed, rebranding exercises are usually an excellent opportunity to _raise_ awareness of a project. "Wikiversity is now Wikipedia Learning!" "Huh, there was a Wikiversity? And it's got something to do with Wikipedia?" * What if one of the projects eventually gets bigger than Wikipedia? Won't we look silly? => Talk about problems that are nice to have. No, we won't look silly, because awareness about the project will, from the beginning, be tied to an existing, well known brand name. Would Google look silly if Google Mail became more popular than their search engine?
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).
Erik, according to your page on meta you work for the company OmegaWiki, which owns the domain name wiktionaryz.org. Wouldn't you say that there is a conflict of interest here in your proposal of a plan which would severely dilute or destroy the Wiktionary trademark?
Anthony
Anthony, The "Stichting Open Progress" owns the domain "WiktionaryZ". We were told by the Wikimedia Foundation that we could not use the name WiktionaryZ for our project when it sadly became clear that our project would, for now, not be a WMF project. Consequently we had to suffer the pain of renaming / rebranding our project to OmegaWiki. We own the domain and it is still generating traffic ..
Almost all occurrences of the name WiktionaryZ have been changed to OmegaWiki except for some pointers that indicate that we have a history. This history is ours. It is as unthinkable for the WMF to use the phrase WiktionaryZ as it is indeed our domain.
For Erik there is no conflict of interest as the name WiktionaryZ is no issue at all; we do not use it. On an organisational level, Open Progress and the Wikimedia Foundation are in my opinion sister organisations who work very much together to achieve the same or similar goals. The role that Erik plays in the Stichting Open Progress and the role that Erik plays in the Wikmedia Foundation is known to both organisations. So when there is a potential conflict of interest it is a declared conflict of interest.
The technology and the data of OmegaWiki are respectively Free Software and Open Content. We aim to provide technology and we hope / expect that this functionality we are developing in Open Progress will be used where applicable.
Thanks, Gerard Meijssen Voorzitter Stichting Open Progress
On 5/8/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Erik, according to your page on meta you work for the company OmegaWiki, which owns the domain name wiktionaryz.org. Wouldn't you say that there is a conflict of interest here in your proposal of a plan which would severely dilute or destroy the Wiktionary trademark?
Anthony
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 5/8/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Anthony, The "Stichting Open Progress" owns the domain "WiktionaryZ". We were told by the Wikimedia Foundation that we could not use the name WiktionaryZ for our project when it sadly became clear that our project would, for now, not be a WMF project. Consequently we had to suffer the pain of renaming / rebranding our project to OmegaWiki. We own the domain and it is still generating traffic ..
Thank you for this info. To clarify something which I had to look up, "Stichting Open Progress is the Dutch not for profit organisation that is the legal organisation behind OmegaWiki."
It apparently is *not* a for-profit enterprise as I had incorrectly assumed.
Anthony
Almost all occurrences of the name WiktionaryZ have been changed to OmegaWiki except for some pointers that indicate that we have a history. This history is ours. It is as unthinkable for the WMF to use the phrase WiktionaryZ as it is indeed our domain.
For Erik there is no conflict of interest as the name WiktionaryZ is no issue at all; we do not use it. On an organisational level, Open Progress and the Wikimedia Foundation are in my opinion sister organisations who work very much together to achieve the same or similar goals. The role that Erik plays in the Stichting Open Progress and the role that Erik plays in the Wikmedia Foundation is known to both organisations. So when there is a potential conflict of interest it is a declared conflict of interest.
The technology and the data of OmegaWiki are respectively Free Software and Open Content. We aim to provide technology and we hope / expect that this functionality we are developing in Open Progress will be used where applicable.
Thanks, Gerard Meijssen Voorzitter Stichting Open Progress
On 5/8/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Erik, according to your page on meta you work for the company OmegaWiki, which owns the domain name wiktionaryz.org. Wouldn't you say that there is a conflict of interest here in your proposal of a plan which would severely dilute or destroy the Wiktionary trademark?
Anthony
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 5/8/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Erik, according to your page on meta you work for the company OmegaWiki, which owns the domain name wiktionaryz.org. Wouldn't you say that there is a conflict of interest here in your proposal of a plan which would severely dilute or destroy the Wiktionary trademark?
Aside from the factual incorrectness of the statement (no company called OW, my work so far has been as an independent contractor), I do not consider this a Covered Transaction under COI as - the impact you allege is not the intent - it is not specifically targeted at Wiktionary, but a broad strategic proposal - a community discussion is one of the least problematic transactions conceivable.
If other Board members disagree with my understanding of the situation, they will tell me so (and J-B in particular has been rightly vocal in pointing out COIs where they exist).
On 5/8/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 5/8/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Erik, according to your page on meta you work for the company OmegaWiki, which owns the domain name wiktionaryz.org. Wouldn't you say that there is a conflict of interest here in your proposal of a plan which would severely dilute or destroy the Wiktionary trademark?
Aside from the factual incorrectness of the statement (no company called OW, my work so far has been as an independent contractor), I do not consider this a Covered Transaction under COI as
- the impact you allege is not the intent
- it is not specifically targeted at Wiktionary, but a broad strategic proposal
- a community discussion is one of the least problematic transactions
conceivable.
If other Board members disagree with my understanding of the situation, they will tell me so (and J-B in particular has been rightly vocal in pointing out COIs where they exist).
Thanks for the response. Gerard has already corrected me on the name of the company, and the fact that it is a non-profit. As such I don't see any potential problem with the relationship.
I apologize if I implied an allegation of improper intent. I was confused, and now things have been clarified. I guess I should have asked my loaded question privately first.
Anthony
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
2007/5/8, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com:
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 is the great danger I see too. If you rename, say, Wikibooks to Wikipedia Textbooks, you give the impression that it is part of Wikipedia, that its function is to serve Wikipedia. Currently, many projects are trying (and not rarely succeeding) to get their own identity, with their own plans and functions. By renaming them to "Wikipedia something", we would be telling them that that is not the way we want to go. I think that's a big hurdle to be taken, with relatively minor gain.
Currently, many projects are trying (and not rarely succeeding) to get their own identity, with their own plans and functions. By renaming them to "Wikipedia something", we would be telling them that that is not the way we want to go.
I understand the emotional reasons for projects to have their "own identity," rather than being directly associated with Wikipedia through their name. What are the rational ones?
Well because Wikinews is not an encycloPEDIA of news, for example. And Wikisource and Wikimedia commons are becoming more and more known, let them the time to be known.
Wikipedia blabla, would be much more confusing for other users than the name we already have. Moreover, using Wikipedia blabla will let people think the blabla project is a sub project of wikipedia, which it's not.
On 08/05/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Currently, many projects are trying (and not rarely succeeding) to get their own identity, with their own plans and functions. By renaming them to "Wikipedia something", we would be telling them that that is not the way we want to go.
I understand the emotional reasons for projects to have their "own identity," rather than being directly associated with Wikipedia through their name. What are the rational ones?
-- Peace & Love, Erik
DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open, free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 5/8/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
I understand the emotional reasons for projects to have their "own identity," rather than being directly associated with Wikipedia through their name. What are the rational ones?
If it ain't broke, don't fix it?
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
On 08/05/07, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/8/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
I understand the emotional reasons for projects to have their "own identity," rather than being directly associated with Wikipedia through their name. What are the rational ones?
If it ain't broke, don't fix it?
Indeed. What is allegedly broken?
- d.
On Tue, May 8, 2007 12:57, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
If it ain't broke, don't fix it?
is answered by Yann Forget:
Nowadays I participate in many Wikimedia projects, and I think it important not to mix up things which are different.
As Walter Vermeir notes:
Wikimedia is the grant umbrella that connects all wikis of all projects and languages. It is the glue between all wikis.
but, as Eric's original post on our branding pointed out, the vast majority of *readers* do not understand about our multiple projects that are all under that single umbrella and hence they don't make use of the sister projects to anything like the same degree. And if our editors are building walls between the projects then is it any surprise that the media and non-editing readers get completely muddled about things?
"Wiki..." naming was great when we started. Wikis were new, unusual, fantastic opportunities to get involved and we had a najor first-mover advantage. But using that format for the newer projects hasn't worked so well; they don't get the pull-along effect that they should from their association with 'the big one'. Yes, of course I like everyone else would like to see *all* the projects become massive successes; each language, each context. But until it is clear to people that we are all together in this - that Wikispecies, Wiktionary, Wikinews and the rest *are* under that same umbrella that Wikipedia is - then readers will not use them in the same way and they will, imho, be destined to remain in the shade of Wikipedia.
Wikia gets tied up with people thinking about Wiki(m|p)edia projects precisely because of that naming decision (accident?), as do WikitionaryZ, Wikitravel, etc.
Editors, unsurprisingly, become somewhat possessive of their efforts (I do too!) but if we are serious about wanting to create a 'reference shelf' then I believe Eric's post - and the subsequent discussions - have clear merit. I believe we do not want not desire the 'other' projects to have a separate identity and target audience, we want them to be seen as part of a greater whole. And whilst "Wikimedia" was intended to be the title of that 'umbrella whole' it is failing to reach the mass audience, instead every time one of us talks to the press or gives a talk or writes about "Wikimedia" we have to explicitly clarify and link that name to "... the people who run Wikipedia ...".
It will cause problems in the short term, obviously, but maybe we do need to think more clearly about the future context we operate in; we are not a range of social groups who happen to be working on our individual projects and ignoring the rest (or *should* not be, anyway) but are a larger group of people working, pro bono, to "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge." If we are truly creating that "sum" of knowledge then we need a better way to let everyone know all our projects are together.
"That's our commitment" as our strapline states.
Alison Wheeler
On 5/9/07, Alison Wheeler wikimedia@alisonwheeler.com wrote:
Editors, unsurprisingly, become somewhat possessive of their efforts (I do too!) but if we are serious about wanting to create a 'reference shelf' then I believe Eric's post - and the subsequent discussions - have clear merit. I believe we do not want not desire the 'other' projects to have a separate identity and target audience, we want them to be seen as part of a greater whole. And whilst "Wikimedia" was intended to be the title of that 'umbrella whole' it is failing to reach the mass audience, instead every time one of us talks to the press or gives a talk or writes about "Wikimedia" we have to explicitly clarify and link that name to "... the people who run Wikipedia ...".
I think this may have something to do with what value and significance one wants to attribute to the Wikimedia Foundation. Short quiz for all the Americans on this list: what do Bounty, Dawn, Pringles, Duracell and Lacoste have in common? If you think those are all strong brand names, then you're right. But how many would know that they all belong to the same company (Procter & Gamble)? I would venture a guess that not too many do. Or at least, to most people, it really doesn't matter. They don't buy the products because P&G makes them. They buy them because those brands are well known and they each stand for a certain set of values and a certain identity.
So, in the same vain: does it matter whether people know about the organization responsible for the operations of Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Commons, etc.? If Wikimedia's main role is to support the different present and future projects that share a common cause but different goals and approaches (and I'd say that's exactly its role), then the "general public" really doesn't need to know what the foundation is.
I would rather see the projects diversify a little more and become, to the user, distinct entities that share a vision and, if one digs a bit deeper, an infrastructure. This approach fits better into the idea that each project has its own target group of potential users which, in my opinion, doesn't overlap all that much. In that sense, it's crucial to strengthen the projects and brands we have rather than making them all appear the same. They are many practical advantages too but this mail is already long enough.
Regards,
Sebastian
On Wed, May 9, 2007 11:07, Sebastian Moleski wrote:
Short quiz for all the Americans on this list: what do Bounty, Dawn, Pringles, Duracell and Lacoste have in common? If you think those are all strong brand names, then you're right. But how many would know that they all belong to the same company (Procter & Gamble)? I would venture a guess that not too many do. Or at least, to most people, it really doesn't matter. They don't buy the products because P&G makes them. <snip>
But I believe that is the problem we currently have! That list of brands don't market to the same target audiences, and they demonstrate few synergies between them so thay have no need to target similar markets directly, however eachof our 'products' *do* target the same people, and that means (imho) that we do need a much clearer "umbrella" to be visible 'out there'.
A further example; Answers.com runs "WikiAnswers". If we stick ad absurdam with our "Wiki...." convention then how many people will think that "WikiAnswers" is one of ours, when it isn't. David Gerard pointed out that
"People call it "wiki" in English as well. (A conversation yesterday with a TV person who kept talking about "wikis", and it took me a few minutes to realise he was talking about "articles in English Wikipedia". And that's someone in an organisation I *know* has *lots* of internal wikis ...)".
We've lost the battle to call everything "Wiki...." and for the general internet population to realise which is 'ours' and which isn't. It will be a shame to lose some of the name recognition that the non-WP projects have gained - though it is clearly minimal so far - but I think there is merit in realising that we need to change our POV and ensure that non-editors realise that we have more than the one (WP) project.
Alison Wheeler
Hello,
Alison Wheeler a écrit :
On Wed, May 9, 2007 11:07, Sebastian Moleski wrote:
Short quiz for all the Americans on this list: what do Bounty, Dawn, Pringles, Duracell and Lacoste have in common? If you think those are all strong brand names, then you're right. But how many would know that they all belong to the same company (Procter & Gamble)? I would venture a guess that not too many do. Or at least, to most people, it really doesn't matter. They don't buy the products because P&G makes them. <snip>
But I believe that is the problem we currently have! That list of brands don't market to the same target audiences, and they demonstrate few synergies between them so thay have no need to target similar markets directly, however eachof our 'products' *do* target the same people, and that means (imho) that we do need a much clearer "umbrella" to be visible 'out there'.
What make you think that "each of our 'products' target the same people"? I think that we are going the wrong way here. And this proposal confuses a search for readers with a search for contributors.
Each of our 'products' has a specific audience, and people looking for textbooks or pictures do not necessarly look for encyclopedia content, and vice versa. People willing to share their pictures or to publish existing texts do not have the same objective as those willing to write an encyclopedia. I think we need to do the exact opposite: differentiate more each of our projects, so that each gets its specific audience.
Beside, we should not think in terms of commercial products for our projects. We have no deadline, no profits to make, no balance to adjust. Why do people come to our projects? Not because we have a big brand, not because they see an ad. They come because our content is free as a beer and free as a speech. Rather than a brand, that the message we need to spread out: Wikimedia is the greatest (and biggest) free project on the planet.
Regards,
Yann
A further example; Answers.com runs "WikiAnswers". If we stick ad absurdam with our "Wiki...." convention then how many people will think that "WikiAnswers" is one of ours, when it isn't. David Gerard pointed out that
"People call it "wiki" in English as well. (A conversation yesterday with a TV person who kept talking about "wikis", and it took me a few minutes to realise he was talking about "articles in English Wikipedia". And that's someone in an organisation I *know* has *lots* of internal wikis ...)".
We've lost the battle to call everything "Wiki...." and for the general internet population to realise which is 'ours' and which isn't. It will be a shame to lose some of the name recognition that the non-WP projects have gained - though it is clearly minimal so far - but I think there is merit in realising that we need to change our POV and ensure that non-editors realise that we have more than the one (WP) project.
Alison Wheeler
On 5/9/07, Yann Forget yann@forget-me.net wrote:
What make you think that "each of our 'products' target the same people"? I think that we are going the wrong way here. And this proposal confuses a search for readers with a search for contributors.
Each of our 'products' has a specific audience, and people looking for textbooks or pictures do not necessarly look for encyclopedia content, and vice versa. People willing to share their pictures or to publish existing texts do not have the same objective as those willing to write an encyclopedia. I think we need to do the exact opposite: differentiate more each of our projects, so that each gets its specific audience.
That's what I was hinting at as well. Wikisource doesn't have the same target audience in regards to use or contribution as Wikipedia. If that's not obvious to some, think about what input is necessary to create content in Wikipedia versus one in Wikisource. And also think what Wikipedia content is used for versus what Wikisource content is used for.
Beside, we should not think in terms of commercial products for our
projects. We have no deadline, no profits to make, no balance to adjust. Why do people come to our projects? Not because we have a big brand, not because they see an ad. They come because our content is free as a beer and free as a speech. Rather than a brand, that the message we need to spread out: Wikimedia is the greatest (and biggest) free project on the planet.
There, you've lost me. Brands don't need to be commercial to exist. In that I agree with Erik. Wikisource, Commons, Wikipedia et al. are brands. They have a value and an identity, the extent of which however differs wildly between Wikipedia and the other projects.
As you even said yourself though, we have to differentiate between users and contributors. These are different roles with different interests, needs and motivations even if often they may be filled by the same people. To contributors, Wikimedia as an organization and a cause may be very important thus internal communication should recognize and advance that. To users, the foundation is largely irrelevant and there's no real need to change that. For users, what matters is what they get out of the projects and what they can use it for.
Of course, this is all conjecture and just my personal perspective on things. When we're talking about brands, products, positioning, etc. it would really help to engange in some of the activities marketing departments at larger organizations cover. That is, actually identifying what roles people who interact with the projects fill, what interests and needs they have, what they know and don't know, etc. This of course calls for professional assistance from people experienced in the field, something Wikimedia should be able to tap.
sm
Yann Forget wrote:
Beside, we should not think in terms of commercial products for our projects. We have no deadline, no profits to make, no balance to adjust. Why do people come to our projects? Not because we have a big brand, not because they see an ad. They come because our content is free as a beer and free as a speech. Rather than a brand, that the message we need to spread out: Wikimedia is the greatest (and biggest) free project on the planet.
Regards,
Yann
I fear you are overestimating the knowledge of internet users on free licenses. I have no idea if studies have been made on that topic, but I would bet that 90% of our users at least have no beginning of an idea what a free license is. They come at first because when they make a search, they fall on wikipedia at every corner. They come back because it is free as in free beer and it looks really good. And they generally applaud the amazing ability we have to update things immediately as they occur. Only a limited number comes because it is free as in free speech.
Second, most of you have no deadline, no profits to make, no balance to adjust. But a few of us have bills to pay. Bills have deadlines. And bills not paid mean no more websites accessible. Purity is fine. But we have to be practical as well, and accept that money does not smell bad and is also needed to achieve our goal.
And last, about goal. I think the message we need to spread on the planet is not "Wikimedia is the largest free project on the planet". It is "we help the entire humanity to access knowledge" (or educational content etc... replace by your favorite word).
Free is unclear in its meaning. And our mission is not to be THE biggest FREE project. Our goal is to collect knowledge, and to take any step so that it spreads everywhere. Free as in free speech and free as in free beer, are not goals. They are means. We are not building a library. We are offering the tools and the mortar and the bricks so that anyone on the planet can build its own library.
Ant
On 09/05/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Second, most of you have no deadline, no profits to make, no balance to adjust. But a few of us have bills to pay. Bills have deadlines. And bills not paid mean no more websites accessible. Purity is fine. But we have to be practical as well, and accept that money does not smell bad and is also needed to achieve our goal.
But a) We don't even hold fundraisers on a regular basis yet (why not three regularly every year? with the election coming up it will probably be at least three months until we hold another...) and b) How does renaming the projects generate funds? unless we are renaming them "Google Wikipedia Books" :)
cheers Brianna
Brianna Laugher wrote:
On 09/05/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Second, most of you have no deadline, no profits to make, no balance to adjust. But a few of us have bills to pay. Bills have deadlines. And bills not paid mean no more websites accessible. Purity is fine. But we have to be practical as well, and accept that money does not smell bad and is also needed to achieve our goal.
But a) We don't even hold fundraisers on a regular basis yet (why not three regularly every year? with the election coming up it will probably be at least three months until we hold another...)
Correct. We could. But no board member was really available to "push" the fundraising drive in may (june will be for elections). Departure of Danny pretty much desorganized the area, so staff missing as well. But there should be news on this very soon.
The fact we *could* do three fundraising a year does not mean we should not use other ways to raise money. Services is one way (datafeed), using brand awareness is another.
and b) How does renaming the projects generate funds? unless we are renaming them "Google Wikipedia Books" :)
I have no idea. This is not my proposition.
I am mostly commenting on Yann statement "we have no balance to adjust and no deadline", which is just not realistic. We do have deadlines and we do have a balance to adjust (thank god, we do not have profits to make :-)).
cheers Brianna
Florence Devouard a écrit :
I am mostly commenting on Yann statement "we have no balance to adjust and no deadline", which is just not realistic. We do have deadlines and we do have a balance to adjust (thank god, we do not have profits to make :-)).
Ok, granted. I was more thinking of "we have that much cash, which competitor we buy, which new products do we start, where do we invest next?"
Yann
On Wed, May 9, 2007 13:43, Brianna Laugher wrote:
b) How does renaming the projects generate funds?
With a few minor exceptions, people donate / give grants to Wikimedia because of Wikipedia. It is the big encyclopaedia which draws in the largest number of eyeballs and has by a very long way the most name recognition and, therefore, finances all the other projects. If those other projects were to try and raise money on their own account - to be the 'independent projects' that some seem to desire - they would fall at the first hurdle.
To operate all of the range of WMF projects we *must* (imho, ymmv, etc) project an image that helps us generate that income and protect our services and further expand them. That requires us to appreciate the commercial nature of "Branding" even if we are not, as an organisation, a commercial operation in the usual mode. But let us not forget just how much money it takes to run things.
florence wrote:
They come at first because when they make a search, they fall on wikipedia at every corner. They come back because it is free as in free beer and it looks really good.
and we would, in fact, *help* that wider range of projects than just WP by bring them all under a clearer 'brand' then 'Wikimedia' currently projects. Because most readers do not understand that the qualities which they appreciate with Wikipedia also apply to Wikinews, Wiktionary, Commons, quote, etc they don't browse the others in the same way nor treat them as equally deserving of (financial) support.
Alison Wheeler
Alison Wheeler schreef:
On Wed, May 9, 2007 13:43, Brianna Laugher wrote:
b) How does renaming the projects generate funds?
With a few minor exceptions, people donate / give grants to Wikimedia because of Wikipedia. It is the big encyclopaedia which draws in the largest number of eyeballs and has by a very long way the most name recognition and, therefore, finances all the other projects. If those other projects were to try and raise money on their own account - to be the 'independent projects' that some seem to desire - they would fall at the first hurdle.
But who are the wikis that costs all the money? That must be EN Wikipedia and the rest of the top 5 or 6 wikipedias and commons.
The others wikis may have not a lot fund raising power but the do not need it because the are so small.
My total yearly operating budget for wikizine is about 30 euro. I know that is not the same but even with a couple of zeros after it the cost on the total budget for the smaller wikis must be pocket change.
On Wed, May 9, 2007 23:43, Walter Vermeir wrote:
But who are the wikis that costs all the money? That must be EN Wikipedia and the rest of the top 5 or 6 wikipedias and commons.
That is quite probably true *at the moment*
The others wikis may have not a lot fund raising power but the do not need it because the are so small.
That is a self-fulfilling prophecy though which I am sure you, like me and most everyone else, would seek to do what is required to make it a false statement. We don't want them to be small but to benefit from a greater awareness of the whole.
I'm not saying that we should go down a route of changing everything from 'm' to 'p' but it would clearly help us to refine the brand images we promote and display to *readers* and help us to generate a greater and more stable income that benefits the whole range of projects. And yes, the attitudes and beliefs of editors clearly matters, but editors are a very small percentage of the beneficiaries of our intention to make our services freely available to all the world.
On another point, frankly the name of whichever project I might be contributing to is the *least* important thing that energises me and, frankly, I think that the way some people have suggested that editors would cease to contribute en masse to a particular project should its name change is completely wide of the mark.
Alison Wheeler
On 10/05/07, Alison Wheeler wikimedia@alisonwheeler.com wrote:
On another point, frankly the name of whichever project I might be contributing to is the *least* important thing that energises me and, frankly, I think that the way some people have suggested that editors would cease to contribute en masse to a particular project should its name change is completely wide of the mark.
Names are, however, important. Consider the tragedy of Usenet group comp.windows.news ...
Having an inappropriate name for a project will affect that project adversely.
I do understand your and Erik's point, but there's got to be a way to do this, should it be considered desirable, without alienating the volunteer base. Much like putting ads on the site.
- d.
Yann Forget wrote:
Beside, we should not think in terms of commercial products for our projects. We have no deadline, no profits to make, no balance to adjust. Why do people come to our projects? Not because we have a big brand, not because they see an ad. They come because our content is free as a beer and free as a speech. Rather than a brand, that the message we need to spread out: Wikimedia is the greatest (and biggest) free project on the planet.
When I reflect on "Ten things that must be freed" I think less about free as in beer, or free as in speech than about free as a verb.
I think there is room for all sorts of projects with overlapping goals, some of which may draw heavily on Wikipedia's content. Isn't that what the viral nature of free knowledge is all about? To me, drawing everything under a single Wikipedia umbrella seems too much like empire building.
Ec
Yann Forget wrote:
Beside, we should not think in terms of commercial products for our projects. We have no deadline, no profits to make, no balance to adjust. Why do people come to our projects? Not because we have a big brand, not because they see an ad. They come because our content is free as a beer and free as a speech. Rather than a brand, that the message we need to spread out: Wikimedia is the greatest (and biggest) free project on the planet.
Your last sentence raises an important distinction. Which is more appropriate?
"Wikimedia is the greatest free project on the planet"
or
"Wikimedia is incubating and supporting the greatest free projects on the planet"
?
SJ
When I reflect on "Ten things that must be freed" I think less about free as in beer, or free as in speech than about free as a verb.
I think there is room for all sorts of projects with overlapping goals, some of which may draw heavily on Wikipedia's content. Isn't that what the viral nature of free knowledge is all about? To me, drawing everything under a single Wikipedia umbrella seems too much like empire building.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Yann Forget wrote:
Beside, we should not think in terms of commercial products for our projects. We have no deadline, no profits to make, no balance to adjust. Why do people come to our projects? Not because we have a big brand, not because they see an ad. They come because our content is free as a beer and free as a speech. Rather than a brand, that the message we need to spread out: Wikimedia is the greatest (and biggest) free project on the planet.
When I reflect on "Ten things that must be freed" I think less about free as in beer, or free as in speech than about free as a verb.
I think there is room for all sorts of projects with overlapping goals, some of which may draw heavily on Wikipedia's content. Isn't that what the viral nature of free knowledge is all about? To me, drawing everything under a single Wikipedia umbrella seems too much like empire building.
Ec
You ring a bell here. From time to time, we hear rumors of fears that "Wikipedia could become the main source of information" - a sort of Google empire of knowledge. With hints of World Domination.
Of course, WE know that this fear is non sense since our content is free and may be used by anyone and reworked in other projects. Still, there is always this fear in the background against anything that might become a monopole.
I think the proposed rebranding would fuel that fear of monopoly. In the long run, it might not be such a bad idea that we are not seen as ONE. This goes along the same comments that Delphine gave. Some defaults and criticisms of Wikipedia could spread to the other projects.
Ant
On 10/05/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
You ring a bell here. From time to time, we hear rumors of fears that "Wikipedia could become the main source of information" - a sort of Google empire of knowledge. With hints of World Domination.
BTW - this is one reason, when the press call trying to stir up a fight between us and Citizendium, I always say they're a good thing because more freely-reusable content is good, they validate the model and encouraging free content is something we're absolutely for.
(I know they still haven't picked their actual license. If they pick one that *isn't* a proper free content licence ... well.)
Has anyone approached Scholarpedia about free content licensing, by the way? They wouldn't need to change a single thing about the Scholarpedia model - just require new works to be free content.
- d.
On 5/10/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/05/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
You ring a bell here. From time to time, we hear rumors of fears that "Wikipedia could become the main source of information" - a sort of Google empire of knowledge. With hints of World Domination.
BTW - this is one reason, when the press call trying to stir up a fight between us and Citizendium, I always say they're a good thing because more freely-reusable content is good, they validate the model and encouraging free content is something we're absolutely for.
(I know they still haven't picked their actual license. If they pick one that *isn't* a proper free content licence ... well.)
I think it is mistaken to think that an encyclopaedia that did not go for GFDL could not survive... Look at the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. To the content producers the big thing with wikipedia is that we are open access, not that we are GFDL. Well guess what, Stanford is open access but completely copyright, not left.
Has anyone approached Scholarpedia about free content licensing, by the way? They wouldn't need to change a single thing about the Scholarpedia model - just require new works to be free content.
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
On 11/05/07, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
I think it is mistaken to think that an encyclopaedia that did not go for GFDL could not survive... Look at the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. To the content producers the big thing with wikipedia is that we are open access, not that we are GFDL. Well guess what, Stanford is open access but completely copyright, not left.
This is one reason I want to talk up free content as an important part of what we are.
Has anyone approached Scholarpedia about free content licensing, by the way? They wouldn't need to change a single thing about the Scholarpedia model - just require new works to be free content.
Erik would be the person for this, but he may be just a touch busy ... is there anyone who routinely works on this sort of thing? It's of almost-direct interest to WMF's interests to make free content *normal*.
- d.
On 5/11/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 11/05/07, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
I think it is mistaken to think that an encyclopaedia that did not go for GFDL could not survive... Look at the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. To the content producers the big thing with wikipedia is that we are open access, not that we are GFDL. Well guess what, Stanford is open access but completely copyright, not left.
This is one reason I want to talk up free content as an important part of what we are.
Has anyone approached Scholarpedia about free content licensing, by the way? They wouldn't need to change a single thing about the Scholarpedia model - just require new works to be free content.
Erik would be the person for this, but he may be just a touch busy ... is there anyone who routinely works on this sort of thing? It's of almost-direct interest to WMF's interests to make free content *normal*.
Not routinely, but I *should*.
You can feel free to ask me this sort of question, also.
::starts looking at Scholarpedia::
-Kat
On 08/05/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
I understand the emotional reasons for projects to have their "own identity," rather than being directly associated with Wikipedia through their name. What are the rational ones?
Because they're not encyclopedias, not even close. Encouraging people to think of them in that way will cause them damage.
(I too have thought it'd be better for the projects if Wikipedia was regarded as just one Wikibook, which it arguably is!)
There's a reason the foundation's called "Wikimedia", not just "Wikipedia".
- d.
2007/5/8, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org:
Currently, many projects are trying (and not rarely succeeding) to get their own identity, with their own plans and functions. By renaming them to "Wikipedia something", we would be telling them that that is not the way we want to go.
I understand the emotional reasons for projects to have their "own identity," rather than being directly associated with Wikipedia through their name. What are the rational ones?
The rational one is that many projects feel that they are an independent project with its own goals and functions, and not an auxiliary project to Wikipedia. Which they would look like under your proposal.
On 08/05/07, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
The rational one is that many projects feel that they are an independent project with its own goals and functions, and not an auxiliary project to Wikipedia. Which they would look like under your proposal.
And, more importantly, get treated like one by others.
I suggest instead pumping up the Wikimedia name. Wikimedia Commons is a project with a lot of instantly-useful value for readers - all it needs for fame is search and tagging that doesn't suck, so the casual user can find anything!
- d.
On 5/8/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 08/05/07, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
The rational one is that many projects feel that they are an independent project with its own goals and functions, and not an auxiliary project to Wikipedia. Which they would look like under your proposal.
And, more importantly, get treated like one by others.
I suggest instead pumping up the Wikimedia name. Wikimedia Commons is a project with a lot of instantly-useful value for readers - all it needs for fame is search and tagging that doesn't suck, so the casual user can find anything!
Indeed, the proper response to the lower profile of the other projects is to advertise them more heavily, not to submerge them further.
The Wikimedia Commons is not "a Wikipedia-brand image repository"; don't turn it into one.
Kelly
On 08/05/07, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
Indeed, the proper response to the lower profile of the other projects is to advertise them more heavily, not to submerge them further. The Wikimedia Commons is not "a Wikipedia-brand image repository"; don't turn it into one.
Once we have tags (or category intersections that don't suck mud in MySQL) and/or a decent search, I do plan to get really really heavily into promoting Commons far and wide. I realise that won't be fantastic for our bandwidth bill ...
- d.
On 5/8/07, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
Indeed, the proper response to the lower profile of the other projects is to advertise them more heavily, not to submerge them further.
{{Strong support}}
The Wikimedia Commons is not "a Wikipedia-brand image repository"; don't turn it into one.
Agreed.
Delphine
This would bring on large resentment by many different projects. Also, this would only make sense if you'd make the different projects abide to the same rules (meaning more centralization and less autonomy which the projects enjoy today). This might make sense after SUL is implemented but again, I'm not so sure it's feasible even if I might be for it [to a limited extent].
On 5/8/07, Delphine Ménard notafishz@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/8/07, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
Indeed, the proper response to the lower profile of the other projects is to advertise them more heavily, not to submerge them further.
{{Strong support}}
The Wikimedia Commons is not "a Wikipedia-brand image repository"; don't turn it into one.
Agreed.
Delphine
-- ~notafish NB. This address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to this address will probably get lost.
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Kelly Martin wrote:
Indeed, the proper response to the lower profile of the other projects is to advertise them more heavily, not to submerge them further.
This may or may not be off topic, but one thing we are terrible at is cross-project community support. The submerged projects are largely our own doing. Mostly this is because most editors are (and I mean this factually, not disparagingly) wrapped up in their own work and project, and not necessarily connected to the wider Wikimedia mission or free content, and not well-acquainted with the other projects. From my perspective as a dual Wiktionarian and Wikipedian, I would say a huge proportion of Wikipedia articles that could have crossproject templates (i.e. {{wiktionary}}), which is most of the non-proper noun, non-phrase articles (100s K?) lack them. There is virtually no use of internal linking between the projects, even though it is [[wikt:easy|]], as easy as linking to another namespace. We should link all technical terms, and lists of terms, phrases, etc., from Wikipedia to Wiktionary instead; whereas now we have crappy stub articles or neverending terms lists on them, we could have more more useful dictionary articles, which affords etymologies, parts of speech, dictionary-style citations, audio pronunciations, and translations.
Unfortunately, all my attempts to do so so far have ironically met with people branding me a deletionist and vigorously defending their article on *their* project, with no concept of the parallel goals of projects like Wiktionary. People know Wiktionary is a wiki, but it's a foreign project to them. Transwiki should be a *process* not a deletion process, and instead of throwing things in the perceived trash heap of other projects, transwikied content should be integrated into Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia lends almost no manpower to helping with the cleanup of (massive amounts of) stuff transferred to Wiktionary, and consequently, it mostly languishes without entering the main namespace. This isn't all Wikipedia's fault: Wiktionary has never really made any internal effort to take on the transwiki process, and also lacks the equivalent {{wikipedia}} templates on most relevant articles, and furthermore, has increasingly been becoming more receptive of encyclopedic content. My suggestions to get rid of encyclopedic entries like placenames, brand names, names of TV shows, etc., have met with similar "inclusionist" resistance, when every failed search of those points the reader to the more useful Wikipedia article. ("Perhaps there is an article [[X]] in our sister encyclopedia project, Wikipedia.")
While I love the identities of both projects, we need to find a way to do that without making them foreign to each other, as that is a very bad way of promoting our long-term goals.
Dominic
On 5/8/07, Dmcdevit dmcdevit@cox.net wrote:
Kelly Martin wrote:
Indeed, the proper response to the lower profile of the other projects is to advertise them more heavily, not to submerge them further.
This may or may not be off topic, but one thing we are terrible at is cross-project community support. The submerged projects are largely our own doing. Mostly this is because most editors are (and I mean this factually, not disparagingly) wrapped up in their own work and project, and not necessarily connected to the wider Wikimedia mission or free content, and not well-acquainted with the other projects.
It seems to me that not very many people at all are connected to the wider Wikimedia mission. And those that are, in most if not all instances, are *more* connected to an individual project than they are to the mission of Wikimedia in general.
I'm not at all sure how to solve this, and even less sure about a solution which has any chance of being accepted.
This really is an example of the group being its own enemy. The core group of Wikimedians is getting overruled by an overabundance of respect for the individual rights of people who don't care about Wikimedia at all. From http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html:
"In the early Nineties, a proposal went out to create a Usenet news group for discussing Tibetan culture, called soc.culture.tibet. And it was voted down, in large part because a number of Chinese students who had Internet access voted it down, on the logic that Tibet wasn't a country; it was a region of China. And in their view, since Tibet wasn't a country, there oughtn't be any place to discuss its culture, because that was oxymoronic.
Now, everyone could see that this was the wrong answer. The people who wanted a place to discuss Tibetan culture should have it. That was the core group. But because the one person/one vote model on Usenet said "Anyone who's on Usenet gets to vote on any group," sufficiently contentious groups could simply be voted away. "
When I read that, I couldn't help but think about Wikimedia. Your example regarding transwiking is an example of much the same thing.
Anthony
On 5/8/07, Dmcdevit dmcdevit@cox.net wrote:
Kelly Martin wrote:
Indeed, the proper response to the lower profile of the other projects is to advertise them more heavily, not to submerge them further.
This may or may not be off topic, but one thing we are terrible at is cross-project community support. The submerged projects are largely our own doing. Mostly this is because most editors are (and I mean this factually, not disparagingly) wrapped up in their own work and project, and not necessarily connected to the wider Wikimedia mission or free content, and not well-acquainted with the other projects. From my perspective as a dual Wiktionarian and Wikipedian, I would say a huge proportion of Wikipedia articles that could have crossproject templates (i.e. {{wiktionary}}), which is most of the non-proper noun, non-phrase articles (100s K?) lack them. There is virtually no use of internal linking between the projects, even though it is [[wikt:easy|]], as easy as linking to another namespace. We should link all technical terms, and lists of terms, phrases, etc., from Wikipedia to Wiktionary instead; whereas now we have crappy stub articles or neverending terms lists on them, we could have more more useful dictionary articles, which affords etymologies, parts of speech, dictionary-style citations, audio pronunciations, and translations.
Agreed with this post, Brianna's thoughtful analysis, and SJ's note on one-word identifiers for the projects being a good thing: perhaps the thing to work on is not the external "branding" of Wikibooks et al, but how they are thought of and treated within Wikipedia culture. Since Wikipedia does generate most of the traffic going toward the Wikimedia projects, a big push to raise the profile of the sister projects within Wikipedia through interwikis, better templates, highlighting "Other Wikimedia Projects" whenever possible, etc would likely do wonders for both traffic and new contributors for these projects. Yes, given our high profile a rebranding campaign would garner a lot of media attention, as they often do (it seems like American television is always running advertisements for one phone company merging with another) -- but it would not address or create what's at the *core* of success for wiki-driven projects: a happy, growing and productive userbase, and usefulness to the reading public. This we can only build through internal community work; more support from all the Wikipedias would help a lot. There should not be a conflict between thinking of Wiktionary, say, as both an independent project -- "the world's best free online dictionary!" -- and as a useful extension for Wikipedia -- "oh yeah, that's where we always link to for word definitions."
As someone else noted, the difference between using "wiki" and "wikipedia" is becoming increasingly blurred in the outside world. If this is indeed the case, it's not *wikipedia* that's becoming the strongest brand -- it's the concept of *wiki*, which is reflected in all of our names. There is nothing at all stopping us from keeping the existing official project names AND internally using the "books -- dictionary -- sources" templates that Erik proposes, which are catchy and to-the-point, and will help draw in contributors to those projects.
-- phoebe
Just a thought...
There is this press release currently pending: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Press_releases/May_2007
I just realised there were no links to the other projects (it should). But aside from this... when a famous politician (for example) make a big speech, and get quoted everywhere for a really buzz sentence, could we somehow generate some attention for wikiquote and wikinews ? I do not think we could make a press release for this but...
Another example. Let us say there is a presidential election... thanks to the election, Wikimedia France collected a huge amount of pictures from all the candidates.
Now, let us say that immediately after the elections, Wikimedia France publishes a press release to announce that 1) we collected huge amounts of images during and immediately after the elections 2) and that we have a fabulous set of information about the new president
- a biography: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Sarkozy - pictures: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Sarkozy?uselang=fr - quotes: http://fr.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nicolas_Sarkozy - last news about the elections: http://fr.wikinews.org/wiki/R%C3%A9sultats_provisoires_du_second_tour_de_l%2... - even neologisme from Sarkozy name: http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/sarkozyste
ant
On Wed, 9 May 2007, Florence Devouard wrote:
Now, let us say that immediately after the elections, Wikimedia France publishes a press release to announce that
- we collected huge amounts of images during and immediately after the
elections 2) and that we have a fabulous set of information about the new president
- a biography: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Sarkozy
- pictures: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Sarkozy?uselang=fr
- quotes: http://fr.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nicolas_Sarkozy
- last news about the elections:
http://fr.wikinews.org/wiki/R%C3%A9sultats_provisoires_du_second_tour_de_l%2...
- even neologisme from Sarkozy name:
Lovely. We should try doing this all the time, to remind members of all projects how they fit in with the tapestry of wiki culture, and where to look for cross-links and ties across projects, while we labour to make the overlays between the projects work smoothly, and the conceptual project barriers transparent.
SJ
On 5/10/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Just a thought...
There is this press release currently pending: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Press_releases/May_2007
I just realised there were no links to the other projects (it should).
Thanks for your suggestion, I (or other more awake editor - it is close to 4am for me) will care it, perhaps in the Wikimedia Foundation part. It would be applied for other press releases, specially from/on Wikipedia which don't clearly mention to its sister projects.
Cheers,
You also dilute the value of the Wikipedia brand itself. Currently, it is associated most strongly with an encyclopedia; if you change that (e.g. "Wikipedia Species", "Wikipedia News", then the brand itself becomes less focused. Using the sword of name recognition goes both ways.
Titoxd.
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Erik Moeller Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2007 4:41 AM To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Rethinking brands
Currently, many projects are trying (and not rarely succeeding) to get their own identity, with their own plans and functions. By renaming them to "Wikipedia something", we would be telling them that that is not the way we want to go.
I understand the emotional reasons for projects to have their "own identity," rather than being directly associated with Wikipedia through their name. What are the rational ones?
Erik Moeller schreef:
Currently, many projects are trying (and not rarely succeeding) to get their own identity, with their own plans and functions. By renaming them to "Wikipedia something", we would be telling them that that is not the way we want to go.
I understand the emotional reasons for projects to have their "own identity," rather than being directly associated with Wikipedia through their name. What are the rational ones?
There is no need for rational reasons. The emotional are enough. The way things have grown have created a whole group of virtual communities with there own structures.
At lowest level you have the wiki. A community with large local autonomy and there own view about how to carry out the core objects of there project.
The closest friends of a wiki are the sister projects in the same language.
The wikis of the same project in other languages are collages. The do the same work and have the same objectives but are on an other team. There is some exchange and cross-wiki cooperation but it remains other wikis, other communities.
Wikimedia is the grant umbrella that connects all wikis of all projects and languages. It is the glue between all wikis.
Every wiki is proud of there own work. Wikipedians feel offended when media refers to "Wikipedia" when the mean a specific language Wikipedia, usually the English language Wikipedia. I believe that most people from every wiki have the same feeling about there own wiki.
Knocking down this structure could be catastrophic for the communities of the WMF wikis.
Erik Moeller wrote:
Currently, many projects are trying (and not rarely succeeding) to get their own identity, with their own plans and functions. By renaming them to "Wikipedia something", we would be telling them that that is not the way we want to go.
I understand the emotional reasons for projects to have their "own identity," rather than being directly associated with Wikipedia through their name. What are the rational ones?
Other than the fact that projects like Wikibooks have already established a brand identity of its own. Not only among Wikibooks users, but also within the general academic community (for good or ill). I'm not suggesting here that the brand isn't weaker than Wikipedia, but it does have some strong recognition by groups of users well beyond just Wikimedia projects.
If this had been something suggested when Karl Wick was trying to move the Chemistry "textbook" off of Wikipedia, that would be something else entirely. In fact, a suggestion back elsewhen was to name what is currently called "Wikibooks" to be "Wikiversity" instead.
Words mean things, and as has happened with even the name "Wikiversity", the mere suggestion as a location for learning resources has taken on a life of its own. Becoming "Wikipedia Textbooks" has other major semantic implications as well, not all of them very positive to what has become Wikibooks. This also is suggesting that all of this brand recognition that has been developed to date deserves to be ignored completely. Admittedly this is the brand recognition that Wikipedia had in 2003, but there is reason to believe that Wikibooks can grow substantially without the pressing need to go through such a rebranding as expressed in this proposal. Substantial traffic already comes from Wikipedia as it is going to Wikibooks (through links on Wikipedia pages and listing on the front page), as well as from other sister projects. And I support this continued cross linking between projects as something very positive for everybody involved.
So my question I would ask in reverse is what real benefits would happen by this closer association, and how could the negative aspects (such as increased vandalism and more) be compensated for without the sister projects being forced to coalesce into one common user base and content administration? Is there any value at all to the separate identities and policies that have been established for each of the independent sister projects?
I know you aren't proposing a full merger of all administrators and all policies on all projects in a given language, but that is the logical conclusion to any such rebranding and community merger.
-- Robert Horning
On 5/9/07, Robert Horning robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:
Other than the fact that projects like Wikibooks have already established a brand identity of its own. Not only among Wikibooks users, but also within the general academic community (for good or ill). I'm not suggesting here that the brand isn't weaker than Wikipedia
About 1/200th as weak if Google Scholar results are any indication. I don't mean to denigrate the fantastic efforts of the Wikibooks community by any means. I love the project and try to promote it at every opportunity. But, compared to the Wikipedia juggernaut, it _is_ virtually unknown. I think there is a wonderful opportunity for Wikibooks to benefit from the awareness about WP -- and those who are already aware of the name will easily readjust to "Wikipedia Textbooks" (or "Wikipedia" + anything else), as virtually everyone who has heard of Wikibooks knows Wikipedia. Those who are surprised that the projects are related: well, they'd have learned something important.
So my question I would ask in reverse is what real benefits would happen by this closer association,
I would suggest the list of advantages I enumerated in my initial mail as a starting point for discussion.
and how could the negative aspects (such as increased vandalism and more)
Why do you see a risk of increased vandalism? Simply due to project growth?
Is there any value at all to the separate identities and policies that have been established for each of the independent sister projects?
Absolutely. Policies should be specific to a purpose. But that doesn't imply strong project boundaries. As a matter of fact, even within Wikipedia, communities of interest such as WikiProjects have very different approaches to the organization of knowledge. We think of Wikipedia as a single community with a single purpose, but truthfully, the tasks of writing a good article about Pokemon vs. one about the history of the saffron trade are _more_ different than the tasks of writing a physics encyclopedia article vs. a physics textbook. Nevertheless, we manage to reconcile these differences under a single brand identity just fine.
I understand the fear of a loss of identity, but I believe that's the last thing we need to be concerned about. We are talking about wikis, after all. People will express themselves freely.
Erik Moeller wrote:
On 5/9/07, Robert Horning robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:
Other than the fact that projects like Wikibooks have already established a brand identity of its own. Not only among Wikibooks users, but also within the general academic community (for good or ill). I'm not suggesting here that the brand isn't weaker than Wikipedia
About 1/200th as weak if Google Scholar results are any indication. I don't mean to denigrate the fantastic efforts of the Wikibooks community by any means. I love the project and try to promote it at every opportunity. But, compared to the Wikipedia juggernaut, it _is_ virtually unknown. I think there is a wonderful opportunity for Wikibooks to benefit from the awareness about WP -- and those who are already aware of the name will easily readjust to "Wikipedia Textbooks" (or "Wikipedia" + anything else), as virtually everyone who has heard of Wikibooks knows Wikipedia. Those who are surprised that the projects are related: well, they'd have learned something important.
I think you are mistaken at the extent that Wikibooks is recognized independently of Wikipedia. While certainly Wikipedia does get much more press and comment, there have been independent journal articles and blog (outside of the "wikiblogosphere") commentaries about Wikibooks. Reviews of individual Wikibooks have also been mentioned, particular on those topics which have been rather well developed. I'm also curious about what metric you are using to suggest that "everyone who has heard of Wikibooks knows Wikipedia". I know for a fact that there are many individuals who contribute to Wikibooks that have never made an edit on Wikipedia, and often it is their very first time at using a Wiki of any kind. My metric is the interaction I've had with users by being a local administrator on en.wikibooks and participating on the other language editions of Wikibooks. French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Hungarian, Polish and German editions of Wikibooks also all have very active communities and even interact with each other on a fairly substantial level as well, as well as participants on the other 40 or so other active Wikibook projects.
As I've tried to mention on previous posts, Wikibooks is by far and away the largest independent e-book website on the internet, at least if you compare sites with Alexa. It is has more hits than Project Gutenberg, or even most comercial e-book websites. The only numbers I can't compare to are websites like Microsoft and Adobe, where breaking out the stats for just e-books pages is just a shot in the dark. And frankly Wikibooks has stumbled upon this status in a very haphazard fashion with nearly nobody on the board level even noticing.
You can compare site rankings about e-books here:
http://www.alexa.com/browse?&CategoryID=104589
I would call that a brand worth trying to keep. While this may also be an indictment on e-book in general (or the lack of popularity of e-book in any format), Wikibooks is clearly at the top of the game in this category. This isn't to say that there aren't problems on Wikibooks that need to be fixed, but you can't find any website that offers free e-books (as in beer or copyleft) that even comes close to what Wikibooks does right now. The only real "competition" is Wikisource and the Gutenberg Project, which Wikibooks tries to maintain cordial relationships with members of both of those communities as well.
Sure, compared to Wikipedia it is small fry, but compared to most other websites it has a demographic and draw that most for profit coporations would kill for. It certainly has more visitors and a bigger audience than most Linux distros, if you want to make a comparison to other sorts of collaborative projects.
In general terms for user innovation and involvement on the projects, I would rank them as such:
Wikipedia > Commons > Wiktionary > Wikinews > Wikiversity > Wikibooks > Wikisource > Wikiquote >>> Wikispecies (substantially down the list). You could argue about the placement of the various sister projects projects in terms of user involvement, and I would consider most of the sister projects except for Wiktionary and Wikipedia to be roughly identical in terms of user involvement and activity with some differences mainly due to the nature of each project. Page counts would give some slightly different rankings as would other metrics, but I would question page ranks as a conclusive comparison between the various projects.
On 08/05/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Currently, many projects are trying (and not rarely succeeding) to get their own identity, with their own plans and functions. By renaming them to "Wikipedia something", we would be telling them that that is not the way we want to go.
I understand the emotional reasons for projects to have their "own identity," rather than being directly associated with Wikipedia through their name. What are the rational ones?
If you don't understand that that is a rational reason, you don't understand volunteer motivation.
Would this be enough to upset a significant number of volunteers? Enough to damage the projects? It appears this danger is not being taken seriously.
- d.
On 5/8/07, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
Speaking for my involvement with Commons, I want success for Commons on its own terms. Not just as a service project to Wikipedia.
As Wikiquotian, I would love to see Wikiquote offers to quote archive service to Wikipedia as well other our sister projects, but it is not our principal goal in my understanding. We are not mere Wikipedia appendices.
Besides that, since in the modern world "-pedia" is often used for refering something encyclopedia alike, names alike "XXpedia Books" "XXpedia Dictionary" would be confusable. I've seen some people failed to distinguish dictionary from encyclopidia, and vice versa, but I am not sure such ambiguity is helpful for increasing our "recognition" in the long term.
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?
Agreed. And I think it pretty well. is there any good reason not to add such an index in the page "Other Wikimedia projects: ......"?
On 5/8/07, Aphaia aphaia@gmail.com wrote:
Besides that, since in the modern world "-pedia" is often used for refering something encyclopedia alike, names alike "XXpedia Books" "XXpedia Dictionary" would be confusable. I've seen some people failed to distinguish dictionary from encyclopidia, and vice versa, but I am not sure such ambiguity is helpful for increasing our "recognition" in the long term.
Modern encyclopedic collections such as Britannica and Encarta contain far more content than just what you could rigidly define as encyclopedic, such as atlases, important source texts, licensed dictionaries, interactive media, learning materials, etc. Much of this would be under the scope of existing WMF projects. The notion that other representations of knowledge are associated with a mission to create an encyclopedia is not at all alien.
On 5/9/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 5/8/07, Aphaia aphaia@gmail.com wrote:
Besides that, since in the modern world "-pedia" is often used for refering something encyclopedia alike, names alike "XXpedia Books" "XXpedia Dictionary" would be confusable. I've seen some people failed to distinguish dictionary from encyclopidia, and vice versa, but I am not sure such ambiguity is helpful for increasing our "recognition" in the long term.
Modern encyclopedic collections such as Britannica and Encarta contain far more content than just what you could rigidly define as encyclopedic, such as atlases, important source texts, licensed dictionaries, interactive media, learning materials, etc
You don't understand my points. I am here talking about publications which contains "pedia" as part of their brand names. Encarta isn't the case.
In Japan we have seen many -pedia named publications (most of them are published by major companies. I got 50 results with -pedia suffixed paper publifications on amazon.co.jp. Some of them seem to be textbook (or very narrow interest encyclopedia) but no atlas, dictionary, media collection or quote books.
And I would point out those materials you called
what you could rigidly define as encyclopedic, such as atlases, important source texts, licensed dictionaries, interactive media, learning materials, etc
has weeker brand image or nothing, and don't make the connotation of -pedia suffix broader.
Another concerns, for some people, even Wikipedia is a word too long to recognize. For them It is not only a buzz word, but also nonsense foreign-sound words. I have seen many Japanese people who call wikipedia "wiki" (there as even a campaign "don't call it Wiki"). The brand name is not so globally established as you wishes, specially in non Indo-European language areas. I don't expect much longer Wikipedia blah blah blah is memory-friendly for those people.
On 09/05/07, Aphaia aphaia@gmail.com wrote:
Another concerns, for some people, even Wikipedia is a word too long to recognize. For them It is not only a buzz word, but also nonsense foreign-sound words. I have seen many Japanese people who call wikipedia "wiki" (there as even a campaign "don't call it Wiki"). The brand name is not so globally established as you wishes, specially in non Indo-European language areas. I don't expect much longer Wikipedia blah blah blah is memory-friendly for those people.
People call it "wiki" in English as well. (A conversation yesterday with a TV person who kept talking about "wikis", and it took me a few minutes to realise he was talking about "articles in English Wikipedia". And that's someone in an organisation I *know* has *lots* of internal wikis ...)
- d.
Brianna, lovely post, as ever.
Interesting thread; while I feel the energy spent thinking about branding is slightly misdirected, energy spent towards helping the projects gain further definition and individual identity would not be (and many of the results - including stronger sense of identity and stronger recognition - would be).
I like the idea of focusing each project on a single word that defines what it does, for use in interproject templates, independent of resolving the naming issue.
SJ
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.
Brianna Laugher wrote:
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
The way I read it (forgive me if I am wrong), your email seems to be implying that this is a suggestion from WMF. It is not so. It has not been discussed on the board, and even less agreed upon. Take it for what it is, a simple suggestion by one person, not a wmf suggestion.
Note that there is chance other suggestions are made by board members during elections time. Please take these suggestions as platform discussion, not as wmf position.
Thanks
Ant
Florence Devouard wrote:
The way I read it (forgive me if I am wrong), your email seems to be implying that this is a suggestion from WMF. It is not so. It has not been discussed on the board, and even less agreed upon. Take it for what it is, a simple suggestion by one person, not a wmf suggestion.
Note that there is chance other suggestions are made by board members during elections time. Please take these suggestions as platform discussion, not as wmf position.
Thanks
Ant
Anthere,
Thanks for clarifying. The USPTO Trademark Office is not like Wikipedia in that you can "edit this trademark" whenever you want, and given the investment in securing a trademark, the entire thread evidenced a startling lack of understanding as to why trademarks should go on a slow path. I was wondering what the Board was thinking, but you have clarified that this is not a Board topic at present.
Thanks
Jeff
On 5/8/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Note that there is chance other suggestions are made by board members during elections time. Please take these suggestions as platform discussion, not as wmf position.
My posting has nothing whatsoever to do with an election.
Florence Devouard wrote:
The way I read it (forgive me if I am wrong), your email seems to be implying that this is a suggestion from WMF. It is not so. It has not been discussed on the board, and even less agreed upon. Take it for what it is, a simple suggestion by one person, not a wmf suggestion.
Note that there is chance other suggestions are made by board members during elections time. Please take these suggestions as platform discussion, not as wmf position.
Thanks
Ant
Permit me if I may, there have been many "suggestions" that have been made on this list recently with the seeming official stamp of approval (some with notes of discussion of the WMF board, others not so much), and this is the thinking of at least one member of that board. Quite often discussions like this quickly turn into actual policy and have impact directly on individual projects, and this is a radical policy change. And this proposal/suggestion was not made in the context of any upcoming elections or any campaign platform.
In this case, some substantial opposition to this proposal has been voiced, and there is some concern that this may have even more widespread support among board members than just this one individual. Since most of us aren't privy to most board discussions, it can be difficult to tell if this is something that has been discussed at length previously or simply a random thought.
I do appreciate that you have voiced at least a neutral attitude toward this idea as perhaps a future direction for Wikimedia projects.
On 09/05/07, Robert Horning robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:
Florence Devouard wrote:
Note that there is chance other suggestions are made by board members during elections time. Please take these suggestions as platform discussion, not as wmf position.
change. And this proposal/suggestion was not made in the context of any upcoming elections or any campaign platform.
Indeed. You don't have to like each other, but could you at least keep the board sniping off the public list?
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 09/05/07, Robert Horning robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:
Florence Devouard wrote:
Note that there is chance other suggestions are made by board members during elections time. Please take these suggestions as platform discussion, not as wmf position.
change. And this proposal/suggestion was not made in the context of any upcoming elections or any campaign platform.
Indeed. You don't have to like each other, but could you at least keep the board sniping off the public list?
- d.
That was not sniping. That was a statement. And even though it is denied, I believe it is true. If others do not, that is fine by me. Whatever. I think YOU are the one sniping here.
The only thing I ask here, is that a proposition, by whoever board member - be it Erik (on brands), or Jimbo (on search engines), or I (on governance) or anyone else, be seen as a proposition by a person by default, rather than Foundation, unless stated otherwise.
I am not worried. Even when a comment is presented as Foundation, that does not prevent you from objecting :-))
Last. Even though I do not agree with the rebranding, I appreciate the discussion. I think Erik presented a pretty clear and straigthforward landscape of benefits and drawbacks.
ant
Robert Horning wrote:
Florence Devouard wrote:
The way I read it (forgive me if I am wrong), your email seems to be implying that this is a suggestion from WMF. It is not so. It has not been discussed on the board, and even less agreed upon. Take it for what it is, a simple suggestion by one person, not a wmf suggestion.
Note that there is chance other suggestions are made by board members during elections time. Please take these suggestions as platform discussion, not as wmf position.
Thanks
Ant
Permit me if I may, there have been many "suggestions" that have been made on this list recently with the seeming official stamp of approval (some with notes of discussion of the WMF board, others not so much), and this is the thinking of at least one member of that board. Quite often discussions like this quickly turn into actual policy and have impact directly on individual projects, and this is a radical policy change.
Fair enough :-)
And this proposal/suggestion was not made in the context of any
upcoming elections or any campaign platform.
I read you (and Erik), but allow me to have a different opinion :-)
In this case, some substantial opposition to this proposal has been voiced, and there is some concern that this may have even more widespread support among board members than just this one individual.
I have NO idea of what the other board members think on this point.
Since most of us aren't privy to most board discussions, it can be difficult to tell if this is something that has been discussed at length previously or simply a random thought.
Hmmm. I do not think anything in Erik is ever random :-)
No, re-branding has not been discussed at length and there is no ongoing planned proposition. However, brands have been discussed, and as Danny put it some time ago, a company dealing with brands met at last board meeting. Brands are also clearly part of our strategy to collect funds.
We made it amongst top brands in 2006 (see http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2007-01-26-brand-survey_x.htm), it would be unreasonable not to discuss brands.
I do appreciate that you have voiced at least a neutral attitude toward this idea as perhaps a future direction for Wikimedia projects.
I am not supportive of the idea. However, I am supportive of the discussion. Some issues have been discussed ad nauseam on this list. Brand have rarely been the topic of dicussion, so I appreciate the freshness ;-) Mostly, even though the conclusion of the proposition might be "not a good idea", I believe the discussion is important to hold, and might spark other thoughts that will be precious.
Ant
On 5/8/07, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
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.
Not at all. First of all, the understanding of Wikipedia as a resource expressed here is very limited. Wikipedia is unlike any encyclopedia in history. See, for example, these blog posts where I pointed out some of its unique characteristics:
http://intelligentdesigns.net/blog/?p=61 - in how it deals with current events http://intelligentdesigns.net/blog/?p=54 - in its sourcing methods http://intelligentdesigns.net/blog/?p=57 - in its scope
which is only really scratching the surface of the surface. And see http://intelligentdesigns.net/blog/?p=60 for some thoughts about its future potential for growth and restructuring. We happen to have called Wikipedia an "encyclopedia", and this semantic classification can be useful. But a higher level of abstraction is necessary in order to understand its social and cultural role as well as its potential for growth.
Wikipedia, in its design, is a universal "first stop" for knowledge. It is not a textbook that you consult for in-depth learning, or an online course that you take. It is not a collection of quotations that you use to look things up when you want a nice quote for your PowerPoint presentation. This universality will not change as long as we're still in this rough conceptual space.
Wikipedia will therefore remain a strong and probably our strongest brand. Perhaps Wikinews and Wikiversity would have similar universal appeal if they could grow in the same way, though we have clearly seen so far that these dynamics of growth do not apply. It is unreasonable to think that we would ever look "silly" for naming other projects in connection with Wikipedia, anymore than it is unreasonable for Google to name their projects after their search engine & company (Google News, Books, Mail, etc.).
The second mistake that people make in this discussion is that the broader public understanding of Wikipedia is not identical to our community's own nerdy conception thereof. A common argument through this thread has been "But project so and so is not an encyclopedia, so it should not be called Wikipedia Xy, that's confusing!"
You might want to ask yourself, then, why people ever starterd writing dictionary entries, collections of quotations, source materials, or instructional texts on Wikipedia in the first place. This was, after all, a primary motivation for spinning off these projects! Literally, in its early days, Wikipedia _was_ used for all these things, if only on a small scale.
Clearly, many contributors did not feel limited by the notion that "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia in the traditional sense". We built policies to express that notion, and it was probably a good idea to spin off more focused communities (though I sometimes have my doubts about that). But we have to explain explicitly to people, again and again, what Wikipedia is not, because it is _not_ obvious.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not
The idea that "Wikipedia is making a dictionary" or "Wikipedia is making course materials" is not at all counter-intuitive to most people who have never been washed in Wikipedia's culture and its nerdy battles for semantics. Indeed, it is the opposite notion -- that there is a thing that's called Wikimedia that runs Wikipedia, and also those other things -- that tends to lead to confusion.
For example, just in the last few months a potential partner believed Wikiversity to be a separate organization, even at a fairly late stage in our discussions. But the more common case is that people ask me "So, Wikimedia is .... Wikipedia?" Some might even suspect that it's some kind of scam trying to ride on the Wikipedia trademark.
So I strongly agree with what has been said about the Wikimedia naming issue being the most serious of them all. I would already be quite content if, for instance, we were named the "Free Knowledge Foundation" (analogous to the FSF). That particular name appears to be taken though.
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.
Again, even in a best case scenario, I do not think that any other project will overtake Wikipedia's popularity and brand recognition. Perhaps, in our wildest dreams, some can reach comparable size (which would not necessarily make the Wikipedia branding approach problematic any more so than GMail's popularity makes it a bad idea to call it "Google Mail"). But so far, the differences are orders of magnitude large.
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.
Clearly not, as the reactions to this posting demonstrate -- a lot of people would get quite pissed. But so far I have not seen convincing rational arguments beyond that, and I believe the emotional impact can be dealt with by implementing the changes gradually and involving the community in the process as much as possible.
Speaking for my involvement with Commons, I want success for Commons on its own terms. Not just as a service project to Wikipedia.
The naming does not at all imply that it would be a service project.
: 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?
Probably not. Though, admittedly, my conviction that we should rebrand the projects soon has only grown through the discussion so far.
- 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?
Look at the initial coverage about Wikinews as a fine example.
Does WMF care if its other projects are or aren't 'successful'? http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-April/029773.html
Of course. That does not mean that we should not face new and exciting challenges, especially if there are good windows of opportunity. I will respond in more detail regarding LP in the coming days.
- 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'.
Yes and no. Tribalism can be enormously harmful. The mess we tried to clean up with the licensing policy is an example of that; there has been non-free creep in a number of projects & languages due to a desire to do things "differently." And, to some extent, the response to that policy has been very aggressive and hostile. "Who are these people to make policy for our project? We're not Wikimedia, we're Wiki-xy." Of course, only a tiny minority of users feel that way. But it's exactly that kind of attitude that a broader communal identity might counteract. It would be meaningful to say "We are all Wikipedians. We share these values." Wikimedia, on the other hand, is a detached concept, which seems to be related by many to notions of bureaucracy and management, rather than genuine community.
I do not deny that each project should have reasonable leeway to develop policies that make sense for its application. But I do not see any reason to believe that the rebranding would have a negative impact on that ability. Wikimedia seems to generally have an inexhaustible supply of complaints when things don't go the way people want them to. It's the opposite (harmony through shared values) where we have deficiencies.
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.
Do people think of Google's various services as being less important than their primary service at google.com? Perhaps, a little bit. The search is their flagship product. Wikipedia is ours, and will likely remain so for quite a long time. But in general, the name serves more as an identifier of an association with a known and (hopefully increasingly so) trusted entity.
With thousands of wikis out there, "Wikiversity" or "Wikisource" don't tell you anything about the origin of the project at all. Either people think it's just another wiki, or they think that _everything_ that starts with "Wiki" belongs to us. And when we do answer, our answer is cumbersome and confusing: "Wikinews is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation, which also runs Wikipedia .."
- 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?
Because people will shout at me if I do it? ;-) Seriously, I'd be more than happy to use these names in the context of communications with third parties if authorized to do so.
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 :)
Actually quite the opposite. In the full project proposal,
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Project_plan
I explained that "Wikimedia" should be an explicit part of the name to strengthen the WMF brand. To some extent, that has succeeded, though Commons itself is not that widely recognized yet in my experience. But, at the time, I did not realize how problematic the Wikipedia/Wikimedia naming confusion would in fact be in the future. (To my own embarrassment, I contributed to making things worse by strongly supporting and partially implementing the software name change to MediaWiki.)
Making such a major change merely in service of brand recognition seems backward to me, especially given that we're not selling anything.
General brand recognition is one of the arguments for this change, but it is hardly the only one I gave. And while we're not selling anything, surely we want to spread knowledge widely, and our messaging to be clear.
On 09/05/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
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.
Again, even in a best case scenario, I do not think that any other project will overtake Wikipedia's popularity and brand recognition. Perhaps, in our wildest dreams, some can reach comparable size (which would not necessarily make the Wikipedia branding approach problematic any more so than GMail's popularity makes it a bad idea to call it "Google Mail"). But so far, the differences are orders of magnitude large.
Is the only measure of success number of pages and number of hits?
Some of our projects (Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Commons, Wikiquote) naturally lend themselves to a kind of "shallow" entry where number of hits is a more or less accurate metric for success - people come to these projects looking for bite-sized pieces (one page) of information.
Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikiversity are not like this. The information in these projects is multi-page, deep, perhaps the reader is more engaged in the info, not just passively receiving it. More thought is required. And they are perhaps more targeted at educators to pass on to learners, rather than directly to learners.
Wikinews, I still await for an inspired description of what its success might be, because I have a feeling it could be huge and revolutionary but I can't envisage it yet. Wikispecies also eludes me somewhat.
Anyway, your general comparisons with Google are not wholly convincing, because Google Mail is built by paid Google employees who don't need to be personally invested in the identity and importance of the project they're working on.
Speaking for my involvement with Commons, I want success for Commons on its own terms. Not just as a service project to Wikipedia.
The naming does not at all imply that it would be a service project.
Apparently not to you, but to everyone else...
Yes and no. Tribalism can be enormously harmful. The mess we tried to clean up with the licensing policy is an example of that; there has been non-free creep in a number of projects & languages due to a desire to do things "differently." And, to some extent, the response to that policy has been very aggressive and hostile. "Who are these people to make policy for our project? We're not Wikimedia, we're Wiki-xy." Of course, only a tiny minority of users feel that way. But it's exactly that kind of attitude that a broader communal identity might counteract. It would be meaningful to say "We are all Wikipedians. We share these values." Wikimedia, on the other hand, is a detached concept, which seems to be related by many to notions of bureaucracy and management, rather than genuine community.
It seems to me WMF just needs to work on its branding within the Wikimedia communities. :) How did you (WMF) let communities develop and devolve away from your - our - core beliefs and values? What are you doing to prevent to reduce that disconnect?
With thousands of wikis out there, "Wikiversity" or "Wikisource" don't tell you anything about the origin of the project at all. Either people think it's just another wiki, or they think that _everything_ that starts with "Wiki" belongs to us. And when we do answer, our answer is cumbersome and confusing: "Wikinews is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation, which also runs Wikipedia .."
Well if you propose to rename everything "Wikimedia _", I would probably agree with that. Strengthening the Wikimedia brand == good. Replacing it with the Wikipedia brand, er...
People don't get the concept of open content licenses, either. But that doesn't mean we should represent it as merely "free" until they cotton on. Educating everyone is a slow, repetitive process. This is what I meant when I said our projects are "ahead of their time". There are even many revolutionary things about Wikipedia which are still not widely perceived. We can be the ones that make the world rethink how they approach copyright. It's hardly going to be a simple task, is it?
regards Brianna user:pfctdayelise
On 5/9/07, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote: One former Wikiquote sysop posted a bunch of dumb copies of policies and guidelines from English Wikipedia and labelled them "official policy of project" even not trying to replace the word "Wikipedia" with "Wikiquote". I forgot it when i wrote my latest reply. So perhaps it is not only you to think it a good idea, Erik.
On 09/05/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
* As for service project or not
Apparently not to you, but to everyone else...
As for identity, I would like to point on Wikipedia we have spent many times so-and-so Wikipedia policy wasn't applied here because they were separate projects. I am not sure if this idea is widely shared.
Yes and no. Tribalism can be enormously harmful. The mess we tried to clean up with the licensing policy is an example of that; there has been non-free creep in a number of projects & languages due to a desire to do things "differently." And, to some extent, the response to that policy has been very aggressive and hostile. "Who are these people to make policy for our project? We're not Wikimedia, we're Wiki-xy." Of course, only a tiny minority of users feel that way. But it's exactly that kind of attitude that a broader communal identity might counteract. It would be meaningful to say "We are all Wikipedians. We share these values." Wikimedia, on the other hand, is a detached concept, which seems to be related by many to notions of bureaucracy and management, rather than genuine community.
Well if you propose to rename everything "Wikimedia _", I would probably agree with that. Strengthening the Wikimedia brand == good. Replacing it with the Wikipedia brand, er...
I agree Wikimedia XXX might make a sense semantically, but for recognition I am sceptical in a global context as I wrote before.
"Wikimedia Commons" is already confusable with CC, shortened as "Commons" ... at least from google result in Japanese, this tendency doesn't help to increase recognition. Most of the top ten results on Google in Japanese are related to CC or Lessig's _Commons_, and no result for Wikimedia Commons.
Other "Wikimedia + (common name)" may reach the similar end, I suspect. While it could be helpful to increase the recognition on "Wikimedia" brandname, I am not sure how it helps each projects to be recognized.
On 5/9/07, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
Some of our projects (Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Commons, Wikiquote) naturally lend themselves to a kind of "shallow" entry where number of hits is a more or less accurate metric for success - people come to these projects looking for bite-sized pieces (one page) of information.
Wikipedia, one page of information? Many topics start with very detailed overview articles and allow you to explore in depth, and the creative uses around Wikipedia that we know about certainly encompass everything you list for Wikibooks+. You can definitely consult WP in similar manners as you would a textbook. Yes, the average engagement with the resource may be shorter. But I think traffic is still a reasonable measure of that, as short lookups are unlikely to lead to lots of subsequent hits. And, let's not kid ourselves as to the size of the gap in recognition & use.
Anyway, your general comparisons with Google are not wholly convincing, because Google Mail is built by paid Google employees who don't need to be personally invested in the identity and importance of the project they're working on.
To be fair, the largest community that Google operates is not strongly Google-branded: Orkut. But there's another big difference, in that Wikipedia _does_ stand for a community of values & the non-profit that operates it, not just for some faceless corporate entity.
The strongest argument against the rebranding I see is that people do not want to be seen as mere service providers to Wikipedia. I can argue against that perception, of course (which I think is certainly logically flawed), but if that is the majority feeling, and unlikely to change, then it may be pointless to debate the issue any further (and be useful to limit the discussion, perhaps, to the Wikimedia/Wikipedia confusion). So, the best next step will probably be to summarize the arguments that have been made here, and to poll for some numbers.
Hoi, When you end this Wikipedia is everything else and now make it Wikipedia is the organisation as well, does that mean that there is a need for an organisation for every project ?? Thanks, GerardM
On 5/9/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 5/9/07, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
Some of our projects (Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Commons, Wikiquote) naturally lend themselves to a kind of "shallow" entry where number of hits is a more or less accurate metric for success - people come to these projects looking for bite-sized pieces (one page) of information.
Wikipedia, one page of information? Many topics start with very detailed overview articles and allow you to explore in depth, and the creative uses around Wikipedia that we know about certainly encompass everything you list for Wikibooks+. You can definitely consult WP in similar manners as you would a textbook. Yes, the average engagement with the resource may be shorter. But I think traffic is still a reasonable measure of that, as short lookups are unlikely to lead to lots of subsequent hits. And, let's not kid ourselves as to the size of the gap in recognition & use.
Anyway, your general comparisons with Google are not wholly convincing, because Google Mail is built by paid Google employees who don't need to be personally invested in the identity and importance of the project they're working on.
To be fair, the largest community that Google operates is not strongly Google-branded: Orkut. But there's another big difference, in that Wikipedia _does_ stand for a community of values & the non-profit that operates it, not just for some faceless corporate entity.
The strongest argument against the rebranding I see is that people do not want to be seen as mere service providers to Wikipedia. I can argue against that perception, of course (which I think is certainly logically flawed), but if that is the majority feeling, and unlikely to change, then it may be pointless to debate the issue any further (and be useful to limit the discussion, perhaps, to the Wikimedia/Wikipedia confusion). So, the best next step will probably be to summarize the arguments that have been made here, and to poll for some numbers.
-- Peace & Love, Erik
DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open, free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 5/9/07, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
<snippage>
It seems to me WMF just needs to work on its branding within the Wikimedia communities. :) How did you (WMF) let communities develop and devolve away from your - our - core beliefs and values? What are you doing to prevent to reduce that disconnect?
<snippage>
Well if you propose to rename everything "Wikimedia _", I would probably agree with that. Strengthening the Wikimedia brand == good. Replacing it with the Wikipedia brand, er...
I think this is a vastly more useful suggestion. There is even no need to _officially_ rename everything. We *are* Wikimedia, and this merely needs a change in behaviour in referring to our projects, no need to confuse the issue by renaming.
What ought to be done, is to make it a point to call (whichever project we are referring to) our projects in the style of <projectname> of Wikimedia or "The Wikimedia <projectname>" or some more euphoniously structured combined form of the overarching Wikimedia community and the specific project under its aegis.
I remember vividly how presenters of the CNBC business channel never tired of repeating they were a subsidiary of GE. It got so repetitive that it was nearly comical, but it made the point, and I doubt nobody forgot they were run by that organization whether they were discussing GE stock or not. This is what we need to do, repeat we are run by Wikimedia, so many times, so repetitively that people begin to tire of us repeating it over and over and over and over again.
This is the only thing really needed. Repetition, repetition, redundant superfluous repetition ad nauseam to an extent that makes people reporting on us bored to tears of our excessive repetition of Wikimedia, Wikimedia, Wikimedia, nothing but Wikimedia.
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
On 09/05/07, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
Wikinews, I still await for an inspired description of what its success might be, because I have a feeling it could be huge and revolutionary but I can't envisage it yet. Wikispecies also eludes me somewhat.
I sometimes envisage Wikinews as a statement. "We know there is this great potential for a sea-change in the way journalism is done; our job isn't to lead that charge, but if it does take off as some people anticipate it will we have this site and community set up to work for it."
On 09/05/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 5/8/07, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
would not necessarily make the Wikipedia branding approach problematic any more so than GMail's popularity makes it a bad idea to call it "Google Mail"). But so far, the differences are orders of magnitude large.
You mean, the way GMail operates as Google Mail in the UK?
Speaking for my involvement with Commons, I want success for Commons on its own terms. Not just as a service project to Wikipedia.
The naming does not at all imply that it would be a service project.
*cough* It is a service project. If it tried to break away from that, we'd need another service project.
- d.
Hoi, The other projects may get some extra traffic from being in the Wikimedia Foundation. The amount of struggle to differentiate themselves is huge. There is not really attention for the other projects in a same way there is not really attention for the languages from the WMF.
There finally is some struggle coming from other projects against the Wikipedia only mentality. The only excuse that I find reasonable for the overwhelming attention Wikipedia gets is that we are hopelessly understaffed and underfunded.
In my opinion there should be more attention for the other projects and languages. This is an argument I have made often before. With a rename to Wikipedia something, the amount of attention within the WMF will only get worse.
PS I like it that you revisit issues, this is however not a good idea.
Thanks, GerardM
On 5/8/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
(Part of a "Rethinking" series.)
The Wikimedia Foundation currently owns and protects the following brand names:
- Wikipedia
- Wikimedia
- MediaWiki
- Wikisource
- Wikibooks
- Wikiquote
- Wiktionary
- Wikimedia Commons
- Wikispecies
- Wikinews
- Wikiversity
Of these 11 names, three are confusingly similar: Wikipedia, Wikimedia, and MediaWiki. Moreover, only one has global recognition: Wikipedia. MediaWiki has strong recognition as a software solution and can therefore largely excepted from the following discussion.
Proper protection of these brands involves trademark and domain name registrations and maintenance, and enforcement against misuse or use of confusingly similar names. This is complicated by the fact that the names are frequently used in internationalized variants.
Moreover, not a single Wikimedia content project is close to the success of Wikipedia itself. Comparing the Alexa traffic rankings, only one of the other domain names used is even in the top #1000 (wikimedia.org), and that is largely because this domain name is accessed frequently, but indirectly, through Wikipedia itself (uploaded files). This is in spite of the significant attention given to these projects by featuring them on frontpages of most Wikipedias.
There is an alternative brand strategy: making use of the strongest brand (Wikipedia) to identify all activities of the Foundation. In such a model, there would be:
- Wikipedia Foundation
- Wikipedia
- MediaWiki
- Wikipedia Sources
- Wikipedia Textbooks
- Wikipedia Quotes
- Wikipedia Dictionary
- Wikipedia Commons
- Wikipedia Species
- Wikipedia News
- Wikipedia Learning
(The name "Wikipedia Learning" may be a good alternative to "Wikiversity", which identifies the project less closely with a particular institutional type of learning and research, and more closely with its core activity.)
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
At least some of the existing logos could be re-used in smaller versions, positioned under the Wikipedia logo, when identifying the projects.
== Advantages ==
- No more confusion between Wikipedia and Wikimedia, Wikimedia and
MediaWiki.
- Strength of Wikipedia brand directly reflects on other activities.
- Encourages thinking of new projects in terms of their function
- As long as the core trademark (Wikipedia) is sufficiently protected,
so are all compounds
- Acknowledges that the "Wikipedia" brand stands for more than any
traditional encyclopedia
- Simplifies management and marketing/outreach, in particular,
collaborations with other projects-- no more "Wikinews is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation, which also operates Wikipedia" type introductions.
- Reduces confusion with other "Wiki" entities, such as Wikitravel
- If all projects use the .wikipedia.org domain name, retaining
session information across wikis (after SUL) gets a lot easier (cf. wikia.com)
- 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.
- 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.
== Risks ==
- Community acceptance. Perhaps this issue should be voted upon if
there is at least some support for it.
- Internal use will require some adjustment (many pages affected). The
frequent use of templates to identify related content should make this process easier. Phasing this in gradually should be fine.
- Loss of visual identity. Again, this could at least partially be
addressed by having small visual identifications under the Wikipedia logo for the different activities.
- Initial confusion among those who have finally learned the
differences between the names. :-) This is part of every rebranding experience.
== Other perceived risks ==
- People would not contribute as much anymore. => I see no evidence to
support such an allegation, anymore than, say, people are contributing less to Wikia.com's wikis because they are all unified under a single brand identity. I am convinced that some people would quit over such a decision, as some people will always quit (or threaten to) over anything that is remotely controversial. I doubt that this would have a significant long term impact.
- Some people do not identify with Wikipedia's values. => The kind of
people who join another project because they hate Wikipedia are not necessarily the kind of people who build healthy communities. If even the mere association with the Wikipedia name would give them a headache, they are not part of a Wikimedia community to begin with.
- 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.
- 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.
- But we spent so much effort telling people about our "Wiki-"thing,
all this will now be for nothing! => Not at all. Indeed, rebranding exercises are usually an excellent opportunity to _raise_ awareness of a project. "Wikiversity is now Wikipedia Learning!" "Huh, there was a Wikiversity? And it's got something to do with Wikipedia?"
- What if one of the projects eventually gets bigger than Wikipedia?
Won't we look silly? => Talk about problems that are nice to have. No, we won't look silly, because awareness about the project will, from the beginning, be tied to an existing, well known brand name. Would Google look silly if Google Mail became more popular than their search engine?
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). -- Peace & Love, Erik
DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open, free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 5/8/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
In my opinion there should be more attention for the other projects and languages. This is an argument I have made often before. With a rename to Wikipedia something, the amount of attention within the WMF will only get worse.
That is an assertion. You have not provided reasons for it. I assert the opposite, with the following reasons: 1) It makes it easier to raise funds, thanks to the strength of the WP brand 2) The rebranding alone will instantly elevate the projects' visibility, if properly orchestrated. 3) It lowers the initial barrier of skepticism that people (both newbies and WP regulars) will have when first seeing the project names and logos, due to their familiarity with Wikipedia. 4) It encourages the strongest element of the community (the Wikipedia subset) to think of these projects as being part of a single, unified mission, a set of shared values, and an undying ambition.
I think it's a bit too late to rename project, _now_. Even if they are not as spread as Wikipedia, Wikinews/books/source/ etc are at least recognizable: they have a growing identity. Instead of resolving the problem of their less "importance amongst common people" compared to the Wikipedia's one, you just confirm the difference: by saying "Wikibooks is now Wikipedia Books" you say: "Yes, you were right; Wikibooks was less important then Wikipedia, that's why we renamed it".
Another problem is: if you abuse of the brand "Wikipedia", you just make it weaker. As for now, Wikipedia is a strong brand: it makes people thinking at a _encyclopedia_. It's the encyclopedia bit that gives the identity. But if you use the wikipedia brand for other uses, people will get confused. People will start to not understand which is the real identity of the wikipedia: encyclopedia? Books? etc etc etc
Summarizing: this brand-rethinking is not a solution. Instead, it gives more problem to solve.
This solution will backfire.
Gatto Nero
On 5/8/07, Claudio Mastroianni gattonero@gmail.com wrote:
I think it's a bit too late to rename project, _now_.
Not really. None of the names beyond Wikipedia has wide recognition, not to mention that even widely known names get changed all the time because of strategic reorientation or for other reasons. Sure, some of these name changes are failures (the idiotic Borland change to Inprise is a good example), but that is typically the case when a very popular, trusted name gets changed to something completely different. That is not the scenario we are talking about -- I would _not_ suggest changing the "Wikipedia" name.
Even if they are not as spread as Wikipedia, Wikinews/books/source/ etc are at least recognizable: they have a growing identity.
Not outside the wikiblogosphere.
Instead of resolving the problem of their less "importance amongst common people" compared to the Wikipedia's one, you just confirm the difference: by saying "Wikibooks is now Wikipedia Books" you say: "Yes, you were right; Wikibooks was less important then Wikipedia, that's why we renamed it".
No, it says that Wikipedia is our strongest and quite probably most universal project; it does not say anything about allocation of resources. And, as I've explained, arguing for partnerships and support actually gets much _easier_ once you throw the big W name around. Everyone is doing "the wiki thing" now, but there is only one Wikipedia. Guess which logo hangs on the Wikimedia office door? Not to mention the two lovely Wikimedia+Wikipedia banners that are used at conferences.. and, when I last visited, Wikimedia Deutschland still had "Wikipedia" on their sign. :-)
if you abuse of the brand "Wikipedia", you just make it weaker. As for now, Wikipedia is a strong brand: it makes people thinking at a _encyclopedia_.
Not really; see my response to Brianna. This is a bias in our own community: We have a strong attachment to our internal semantics, which do not necessarily relate to the way outsiders perceive our projects. For most who use Wikipedia, it's simply a site on the web that has tons of useful information (many are still not aware that it is user-edited). They do not share any academic definitions of what Wikipedia is or is not.
People will start to not understand which is the real identity of the wikipedia: encyclopedia? Books? etc etc etc
Hardly, as the projects would still very clearly be separate. People still think of Google first and foremost as a search engine, but they also understand that Google operates plenty of other projects (many of which, like our sister projects, have a connection to the search engine).
Summarizing: this brand-rethinking is not a solution. Instead, it gives more problem to solve.
That summary lacks argumentative support.
On 5/9/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 5/8/07, Claudio Mastroianni gattonero@gmail.com wrote:
if you abuse of the brand "Wikipedia", you just make it weaker. As for now, Wikipedia is a strong brand: it makes people thinking at a _encyclopedia_.
Not really; see my response to Brianna. This is a bias in our own community: We have a strong attachment to our internal semantics, which do not necessarily relate to the way outsiders perceive our projects. For most who use Wikipedia, it's simply a site on the web that has tons of useful information (many are still not aware that it is user-edited). They do not share any academic definitions of what Wikipedia is or is not.
I think your argument is good, if you treat the project communities as a self-contained corporate entity, and only worry about how the name change would work externally. If the WMF were a corporation like Google, with the majority of the work being done by employees who could pretty much just be ordered to go along with the name change, it would probably work.
But that's not the way things are. The vast majority of people working on the Commons, and Wikibooks, and Wikinews, and all the other projects, are volunteers. The brand is as much for them as it is for those who merely read the content. Confusing all the volunteers, even if none of the "outsiders" notice, would be extremely problematic.
If the name change could somehow be done in a way which doesn't confuse the vast community (many of whom don't speak English well or even at all), it might be a good thing. I haven't really decided if I think it would or not. But at first glance the name change implies to me that Wikipedia is becoming a parent of the other projects. I know that isn't true, but how much time and effort will it take to explain it to the members of all the projects, who don't read this or any of the mailing lists, who don't speak English, etc?
I'm not convinced it would work. You might be able to convince me, though.
Anthony
I recognize the actual brands problems, but it's too late, in my opinion. Similar changes can't be made when all the projects have their own identity. Probably two years ago it was possible, now I fear it would be dangerous for our image.
I also don't think it's a good solution, because the "'pedia", used for other projects than an encyclopaedia, can generate confusion and also will change in a more wikipedia-centric model the actual relations between our projects. I don't think that the community of wikibooks, for example, will ever agree with similar changes.
piero tasso
It is never too late - lots of big brands decide to change their branding. Its costly. But if we want it, better do it now than over 5 years.
On 5/8/07, Piero pierogra@libero.it wrote:
I recognize the actual brands problems, but it's too late, in my opinion. Similar changes can't be made when all the projects have their own identity. Probably two years ago it was possible, now I fear it would be dangerous for our image.
I also don't think it's a good solution, because the "'pedia", used for other projects than an encyclopaedia, can generate confusion and also will change in a more wikipedia-centric model the actual relations between our projects. I don't think that the community of wikibooks, for example, will ever agree with similar changes.
piero tasso
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
teun spaans ha scritto:
It is never too late - lots of big brands decide to change their branding. Its costly. But if we want it, better do it now than over 5 years.
but our brands aren't the ones of a corporation; we are volunteers, I don't think that marketing logics apply at 100% with us.
I fear that similar changes would be dangerous for the identity of "non 'pedia projects" and confusing for the users.
let's say that no, I don't want it :-) (it's just my humble opinion)
"Erik Moeller" erik@wikimedia.org writes:
[...]
- Wikipedia Foundation
- Wikipedia
- MediaWiki
- Wikipedia Sources
- Wikipedia Textbooks
- Wikipedia Quotes
- Wikipedia Dictionary
- Wikipedia Commons
- Wikipedia Species
- Wikipedia News
- Wikipedia Learning
[...]
Besides everything else which has been said already, I do not find these names particularly appealing. "Wikibooks" is short and catchy, "Wikipedia Textbooks" is long and clumsy and has a taste of ugly marketspeak.
Apart from that, one should be clear about the fact, that the success of Wikipedia is primarily rooted in that it meets a specific demand. There is a strong demand for a free encyclopaedia much more than for a free news portal, simply because gazillions of news sites exist on the Web.
thanks,
Johannes
On 5/8/07, Johannes Rohr jorohr@gmail.com wrote:
Besides everything else which has been said already, I do not find these names particularly appealing. "Wikibooks" is short and catchy, "Wikipedia Textbooks" is long and clumsy and has a taste of ugly marketspeak.
Wikibooks is actually one of our most problematic names, as the focus is very much on textbook development. Short and catchy as it ma ybe, it is misleading. Fundamentally, I can see problems with the project's conception around a very specific type of knowledge representation (be it generally a book or specifically a textbook), but if that is how we define it, then we should at least be clear what _kind_ of books we are talking about.
Apart from that, one should be clear about the fact, that the success of Wikipedia is primarily rooted in that it meets a specific demand. There is a strong demand for a free encyclopaedia much more than for a free news portal, simply because gazillions of news sites exist on the Web.
Absolutely. And that only strengthens its role as a flagship in the coming years.
"Erik Moeller" erik@wikimedia.org writes:
On 5/8/07, Johannes Rohr jorohr@gmail.com wrote:
Besides everything else which has been said already, I do not find these names particularly appealing. "Wikibooks" is short and catchy, "Wikipedia Textbooks" is long and clumsy and has a taste of ugly marketspeak.
Wikibooks is actually one of our most problematic names, as the focus is very much on textbook development. Short and catchy as it ma ybe, it is misleading. Fundamentally, I can see problems with the project's conception around a very specific type of knowledge representation (be it generally a book or specifically a textbook), but if that is how we define it, then we should at least be clear what _kind_ of books we are talking about.
Apart from having difficulties understanding this critique, it is surprising, how in this case you get picky about naming, when on the other hand rebranding many different projects to _pedia, which clearly are not encyclopaediae is just fine for you.
Apart from that, one should be clear about the fact, that the success of Wikipedia is primarily rooted in that it meets a specific demand. There is a strong demand for a free encyclopaedia much more than for a free news portal, simply because gazillions of news sites exist on the Web.
Absolutely. And that only strengthens its role as a flagship in the coming years.
... which means that rebranding will almost certainly not make a big difference. There are many news outlets everywhere, with blogs more and more advancing to a top position. The relatively low attractiveness of Wikinews (here I'm speaking mainly about the German edition) is rooted in what it offers (to both readers and writers), not in how it is called. BTW: When I read "Wikipedia News", my association is "News /about/ Wikipedia", rather than a news portal operated by Wikipedia. Am I the only one?
Thanks,
Johannes
Erik Moeller wrote:
On 5/8/07, Johannes Rohr jorohr@gmail.com wrote:
Besides everything else which has been said already, I do not find these names particularly appealing. "Wikibooks" is short and catchy, "Wikipedia Textbooks" is long and clumsy and has a taste of ugly marketspeak.
Wikibooks is actually one of our most problematic names, as the focus is very much on textbook development. Short and catchy as it ma ybe, it is misleading. Fundamentally, I can see problems with the project's conception around a very specific type of knowledge representation (be it generally a book or specifically a textbook), but if that is how we define it, then we should at least be clear what _kind_ of books we are talking about.
(Cross posting to textbook-l as this is a perennial issue that still needs to be resolved)
I don't see that the name "Wikibooks" is necessarily as problematic as you are suggesting here, Eric. Nor do I see that "textbook development" is necessarily the only focus of Wikibooks, even though I would admit that it is a major component of the Wikibooks and should be emphasized.
It would be interesting to see what the sense of the WMF board is on this issue in terms of how focused Wikibooks ought to be on textbooks and what kind of definition of textbooks could be used to distinguish what should or should not be found on Wikibooks. A massive campaign to remove whole categories of content from Wikibooks has been underway for some time, but the actual working definition of what really should belong on that project has never been made clear by those who would have the authority to define this sort of scope of the project.
An effort by the community is currently under way on Wikibooks to help define this scope as best as can be done at the moment without WMF board assistance:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:What_is_Wikibooks/Unstable
I would hope that WMF board members would be aware of this current version of this fundamental policy, as it appears very likely that this will become official and enforced policy on en.wikibooks in the very near future. I have raised some objections to this policy as it has been written, but this is as much of a compromise as we ordinary folks trying to figure out the mayhem of our little project can muster at the moment, and represents nearly a full year of effort by very active community members to help come up with this definition.
I would hope that non-textbook books could also eventually have a role on Wikibooks, but mine is a small voice that is mostly ignored on this subject.
On 5/8/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
(Part of a "Rethinking" series.)
- Wikipedia Foundation
- Wikipedia
- MediaWiki
- Wikipedia Sources
- Wikipedia Textbooks
- Wikipedia Quotes
- Wikipedia Dictionary
- Wikipedia Commons
- Wikipedia Species
- Wikipedia News
- Wikipedia Learning
You unfortunately forgot nine names in your rethinking.
Wikipedia UK Wikipedia Deutschland Wikipedia italia Wikipedia France Wikipedia Polska Wikipedia Србије Wikipedia CH Wikipedia Nederland Wikipedia Israel
Talk about making it easier to fight for a "French-language Wikipedia" or a "German-language Wikipedia".
This said, i can't wait till the English Wikipedia is referred to as Wikipedia UK. ;-)
Delphine
Delphine Ménard wrote:
You unfortunately forgot nine names in your rethinking.
Wikipedia UK Wikipedia Deutschland Wikipedia italia Wikipedia France Wikipedia Polska Wikipedia Србије Wikipedia CH Wikipedia Nederland Wikipedia Israel
Talk about making it easier to fight for a "French-language Wikipedia" or a "German-language Wikipedia".
This said, i can't wait till the English Wikipedia is referred to as Wikipedia UK. ;-)
Some people may want Wikipedia US. The French at least have an "é" to make their project distinct. :-)
Ec
On 5/8/07, Delphine Ménard notafishz@gmail.com wrote:
Wikipedia UK Wikipedia Deutschland Wikipedia italia Wikipedia France Wikipedia Polska Wikipedia Србије Wikipedia CH Wikipedia Nederland Wikipedia Israel
"Wikimedia" is hardly any better, and leads to the same kind of confusion, partially also due to the inherent complexity of the chapter model. If we followed the model I described, I would suggest always using another word as part of the chapter name, e.g. the equivalent of "Association".
On 5/9/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 5/8/07, Delphine Ménard notafishz@gmail.com wrote:
Wikipedia UK Wikipedia Deutschland Wikipedia italia Wikipedia France Wikipedia Polska Wikipedia Србије Wikipedia CH Wikipedia Nederland Wikipedia Israel
"Wikimedia" is hardly any better, and leads to the same kind of confusion, partially also due to the inherent complexity of the chapter model. If we followed the model I described, I would suggest always using another word as part of the chapter name, e.g. the equivalent of "Association".
How? I don't get it. Examples?
Delphine
Back to the basics.
On 5/8/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
(Part of a "Rethinking" series.)
You keep asking for "rational reasons". Many people on this thread have said it. Looking for rational arguments might not be the way to go. David Gerard, however, has given, in my opinion, the most striking of all in his last intervention, I quote:
"If you don't understand that that is a rational reason, you don't understand volunteer motivation."
But let's try and leave emotions aside. There is one thing that strikes me in this whole conversation as missing.
You argue that renaming everything Wikipedia would bring the following:
- Strength of Wikipedia brand directly reflects on other activities.
Indeed. Wikipedia is a strong brand, I'll grant you that. Let's push the reasoning a bit further. Is it a "positive brand"? ie. will it really shed light on the other projects once they are called "Wikipedia somethingorother"?
We can argue that yes, Wikipedia is a positive brand. I will argue that it is a positive brand for what it is.
Wikipedia has something on everything. Wikipedia is always up to date Wikipedia is (almost) as good as Britannica Wikipedia is free as in beer Wikipedia is free as in speech Wikipedia is user generated content and allows everyone to share their knowledge etc.
However, we also have:
Wikipedia is unreliable (Hmmm. Not good for Wikipedia books -Wikibooks-, that) Wikipedia has been banned as a source from X and Y news agency (Not good for Wikipedia News -Wikinews- to ever be recognized as a source of news) Wikipedia cannot be quoted by students in universities (So much for Wikipedia source -Wikisource- as a comprehensive source of original works) (So much for ever hoping Wikipedia learning -Wikiversity- is ever going to be anything) (So much for trying to slip Wikipedia books -Wikibooks- into schools) etc.
In the end, I find that one of your "rational" (well, I suppose you deem them rational) reason to undergo such a change is set on a strong personal opinion that Wikipedia everything is the way to go, because It Is Good (TM), because It Will Bring More Cash (TM) and because It Is Better Known (TM). In the end, I find this hardly rational.
For the record, I agree with the fact that our brands are messy. I even agree that we should try to rename some of the projects, but I would do so in the hope of giving them a chance to escape the shadow of Wikipedia.
But in the end, I agree with Yann that the target audiences are not the same for all the projects, that they should not be, and that it ensures that there is a place for all possible contributors and readers. I agree with Andreas and David Gerard that emotion is also a big part of the rational reasons why we should not consider a change in the "Wikipedia all" direction. I agree with Kelly that we should be trying to shed more light on other Wikimedia projects. And I strongly disagree with your statement, which again is posed as a rational reason, but which I believe is not, that the media pressure is so big on the other Wikimedia projects that they all have to achieve the success of Wikipedia. Where is it written that this is the case? Have you polled the active communities in the other projects about this? In any case, on this I agree with Brianna that hits in Google are a lame unit to measure the success (or lack thereof) of a project (and I agree with Brianna on millions of other things she wrote).
Most of all, I am convinced that although Wikipedia may be the best known of our projects, our true mission (distribute free knowledge and even "free" the knowledge) will be achieved on a much greater scale through our other projects. It's Wikibooks you'll find in schools. It's free images from Commons you find in the newspaper everywhere, it's Wikisource academics are pointed to to have access to documents that are found nowhere else... Not Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is an amazing tool to bring everyone to the core of our mission. As such, we should protect it, brand and all. I don't believe, however, that Wikipedia is some magic wand that suddenly unites the whole world. It may sound cool to be called "Wikipedia somethingorother" but it does not reflect our diversity, which I believe is our greatest strength.
Delphine
Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org schrieb/wrote:
There is an alternative brand strategy: making use of the strongest brand (Wikipedia) to identify all activities of the Foundation. In such a model, there would be:
- Wikipedia Foundation
- Wikipedia
- MediaWiki
- Wikipedia Sources
- Wikipedia Textbooks
- Wikipedia Quotes
- Wikipedia Dictionary
- Wikipedia Commons
- Wikipedia Species
- Wikipedia News
- Wikipedia Learning
Such a naming scheme also allows better internationalisation. Names such as "Wikibooks" or "Wikiquote" may make sense in English ("Wiki" + <English description>) but not in other languages.
With a "Wikipedia" + <description> scheme, you could translate the descriptions and have project names like "Wikimedia Lehrbücher" or "Wikimedia Zitate" (both German).
Maybe it's better to use the "Wikimedia" brand for that strategy and reserve "Wikipedia" for the "Wikimedia Encyclopedia":
* Wikimedia Foundation * Wikipedia - the Wikimedia Encyclopedia * MediaWiki * Wikimedia Sources * Wikimedia Textbooks * Wikimedia Quotes * Wikimedia Dictionary * Wikimedia Commons * Wikimedia Species * Wikimedia News * Wikimedia Learning
and in German (e.g.):
* Wikimedia Bibliothek * Wikimedia Lehrbücher * Wikimedia Zitate * Wikimedia Wörterbuch * Wikimedia Nachrichten * Wikimedia Forschung
Claus
On 09 May 2007 21:38:00 +0200, Claus Färber GMANE@faerber.muc.de wrote:
Maybe it's better to use the "Wikimedia" brand for that strategy and reserve "Wikipedia" for the "Wikimedia Encyclopedia":
I don't believe so; the Wikipedia brand enjoys the strongest global recognition, so phasing it out would probably be unwise. If we do _not_ phase it out, we continue to suffer from the single largest source of confusion, the Wikipedia/Wikimedia similarity. In fact, we amplify it if we call Wikipedia the "Wikimedia Encyclopedia".
But your main point is very valid. It is extremely difficult to protect a name globally. And the less protection you pursue, the more deception by spammers and scammers will ensue. Besides those, we have had a few disputes with truly insane detractors. Given the generic nature of the "wiki" prefix, there will also be an ever-increasing overlap with legitimate ventures. Even Google could not properly protect "GMail"; it still resolves to "Google Mail" in the UK and Germany.
We're not in the position of a cereal company that, step by step, sets up operations in different countries. Everything we do is global and multilingual from day 1. Our exploding complexity of brands and domain names across languages & countries poses a huge management problem for an organization of our size.
Even for an artificial name like "Wikimedia", people write it in different scripts; the interwiki links for our article about WMF indicate that this is the case in Arabic, Dhivehi, Persian, Gujarati, Hindi, Hebrew, Macedonian, Russian, Sinhalese, Serbian, Tamil, Thai, Yiddish, and Chinese. For the names that are based on real words like "news" or "-pedia", the number of variants is much larger still, and you get names like "Viquinotícies", "Wikinotizie", "Wikiştiri", all referring to the same project.
As internationalized domain names take off, things will only get worse.
People may complain that giving the Wikipedia brand primacy is horribly unfair. But it is already part of WMF's trademark strategy, which is organized in tiers where we pursue the highest level of protection for brands of high significance. That's the only way to avoid wasting huge amounts of resources on trademark registrations and domain name negotiations, all of which can be quite expensive.
In my opinion, it is much more honest to give a project a spin-off name like "Wikipedia News" _unless_ you are also willing to afford the same level of protection to its name _and_ its officially recognized variants that you give to Wikipedia. And, simply put, we cannot afford to do so at present for all our names.
You may argue that smaller projects do not need the same level of protection, as abusers are less likely to be interested in them. Unfortunately, parasites do tend to plan ahead. Any new brand we announce widely will generate international interest. If we don't immediately pursue wide protection, we will have to wrestle control from illegitimate owners later.
Given its size, Wikimedia has actually done a remarkable job at protecting its interests, and the chapters and local project communities have often helped or led this process. Still, I fear that the challenge is Sisyphean in nature. One reason to simplify brands is quite simple and IMHO appealing: We can free a lot of energy that is currently diverted by whack-a-mole games.
Many people are uncomfortable with the notion of giving the Wikipedia brand primacy. Interestingly, however, the practical challenge you raise (which I also pointed out in my original proposal) has hardly been discussed at all, as have other disadvantages of the current brand setup. Names do not, however, exist in a vacuum!
One way to address the community concerns is to define criteria (clear milestones, annual review, etc.) for a project to receive its own name. Much like we qualified some projects as "beta", having them officially associated with Wikipedia would recognize that their reality doesn't yet reflect our ambitions. Having such a process could also be a major incentive for a community to reach certain goals.
Arguably, if we do recognize at least the _potential_ for projects to obtain independent brands, the organization should not be called "Wikipedia Foundation" -- perhaps it needs a different name entirely.
One thing is clear: rebranding is _always_ controversial, in any company or organization. People become attached to names. But when we have a mess like the one we are currently dealing with, it may be necessary to make some people unhappy in order to achieve clarity, consistency and -- importantly -- basic manageability.
On 15/05/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 09 May 2007 21:38:00 +0200, Claus Färber GMANE@faerber.muc.de wrote:
Many people are uncomfortable with the notion of giving the Wikipedia brand primacy.
Dear Eric Moeller,
Calling Wikiversity "Wikipedia Learning" is not uncomfortable. It is wrong. It misrepresents what Wikiversity is, as if to say, Wikiversity is a subcatgegory of wikipedia whose purpose is to study what wikipedia has.
In practice, it also fails to stand out amongst the numerous education/academic oriented sites, for example:
http://education.wikia.com/wiki/Wikiversity http://academia.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page http://www.wikieducator.org/Main_Page http://collaboration.wikia.com/wiki/Wikiversity http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome http://www.qedoc.org/en/index.php?title=Main_Page
A name does not exist in vaccum.
A name also has meanings and connotations. This proposal purports to change the meaning of "wikipedia" to something which it is not. It will create confusions.
A name is crucial and intrinsic to anything, anybody, anyone. To suggest changing the name for the sheer convenience in marketing in the short term, is to get the priorities wrong.
: ) H.
On 5/15/07, hillgentleman hillgentleman.wikiversity@gmail.com wrote:
Calling Wikiversity "Wikipedia Learning" is not uncomfortable. It is wrong. It misrepresents what Wikiversity is, as if to say, Wikiversity is a subcatgegory of wikipedia whose purpose is to study what wikipedia has.
That depends on how you parse it, and there is a strong argument to be made that the general public will parse it differently from our core community. The kind of literal and semantic arguments found in this thread are unlikely to be made by people who identify "Wikipedia" with a broad notion of a source of knowledge, an online community, and an organization or company.
Moreover, one could hardly argue that the name "Wikiversity" is self-explanatory. It is not a university, it does not award degrees, etc. People understand it by visiting the website and looking at the materials there. I believe the name "Wikipedia Learning" is much more explanatory, and any initial misunderstanding (which any name can cause) will disappear as soon as people actually look at the contents.
In practice, it also fails to stand out amongst the numerous education/academic oriented sites, for example:
http://education.wikia.com/wiki/Wikiversity http://academia.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page http://www.wikieducator.org/Main_Page http://collaboration.wikia.com/wiki/Wikiversity http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome http://www.qedoc.org/en/index.php?title=Main_Page
Excuse me? You would seriously argue that "Wikipedia XY" does not stand out among those names? "Wikipedia" is the only name we have that has global recognition, orders of magnitude more so than any of the above. Wikiversity, on the other hand, is on equal footing with all of them.
A name is crucial and intrinsic to anything, anybody, anyone. To suggest changing the name for the sheer convenience in marketing in the short term, is to get the priorities wrong.
That's a straw man argument; the lines of reasoning (including the e-mail you responded to, most of which you ignored) are more complex than "sheer convenience in marketing". Nor are you proposing any realistic solutions to the problem Claus pointed out.
On 15/05/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 5/15/07, hillgentleman hillgentleman.wikiversity@gmail.com wrote:
Calling Wikiversity "Wikipedia Learning" is not uncomfortable. It is wrong. It misrepresents what Wikiversity is, as if to say, Wikiversity is a subcatgegory of wikipedia whose purpose is to study what wikipedia has.
That depends on how you parse it, and there is a strong argument to be made that the general public will parse it differently from our core community. The kind of literal and semantic arguments found in this thread are unlikely to be made by people who identify "Wikipedia" with a broad notion of a source of knowledge, an online community, and an organization or company.
Moreover, one could hardly argue that the name "Wikiversity" is self-explanatory. It is not a university, it does not award degrees, etc. People understand it by visiting the website and looking at the materials there. I believe the name "Wikipedia Learning" is much more explanatory, and any initial misunderstanding (which any name can cause) will disappear as soon as people actually look at the contents.
Sure, it is not a university. It is not called wikiuniversity. The word :"Wikiversity" has many connotations. It may mean "university" - in the modern sense, or, better, in the original sense, (a community of scholars), it may also mean "diversity". It is not fixed. Let the everybody decide for herself. However, wikiversity is certainly not a community of learners amongst wikipedians.
In practice, it also fails to stand out amongst the numerous education/academic oriented sites, for example:
http://education.wikia.com/wiki/Wikiversity http://academia.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page http://www.wikieducator.org/Main_Page http://collaboration.wikia.com/wiki/Wikiversity http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome http://www.qedoc.org/en/index.php?title=Main_Page
Excuse me? You would seriously argue that "Wikipedia XY" does not stand out among those names? "Wikipedia" is the only name we have that has global recognition, orders of magnitude more so than any of the above. Wikiversity, on the other hand, is on equal footing with all of them.
Once again, Eric, you are only think about the present. I am talking about the intrinsic merit of the name Wikiversity.
A name is crucial and intrinsic to anything, anybody, anyone. To suggest changing the name for the sheer convenience in marketing in the short term, is to get the priorities wrong.
That's a straw man argument; the lines of reasoning (including the e-mail you responded to, most of which you ignored) are more complex than "sheer convenience in marketing".
The principal purpose of this proposal is to help marketing in the short term. The hypothetical administrative conveniences are side gains. If you say, "We are short of manpower and funds and we must change or else we won't make it." , Then fine. Do it. However, the situation is not that critical.
You are suggesting a long term change as a remedy to short term pains.
Nor are you proposing any realistic solutions to the problem Claus pointed out.
Which problem? On "internationalisation"? I have not heard of a complaint from any language that says "we cannot translate the word 'wikinews' into our language.". Please provide some examples.
: ) H.
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org