On 8/13/2013 10:33 PM, Dominic McDevitt-Parks wrote:
[Changing the subject line since the subject of the thread has shifted.]
I think all of these naming discussions over the years have been more annoying than useful. WALRUS has its charm, but is a bit silly and no one denies that. I don't think the "Federation" was any less absurd, however, and I'm not sure the "Coalition" is far behind. The newer names are professional, but seem to tend towards projecting a false sense of formal organizational structure/maturity to achieve that. I don't think we should be too quick to change all the names on things yet again before we've hashed these things out. To be honest, I even missed the change from Federation to Coalition earlier this year, and I'm usually attentive to these things.
My opinion is that we should just be clear and descriptive, if we are moving away from adorableness. I would favor "Wikimedia United States" (do we actually know AffCom would dislike that, even if we became a user group, which is trivially easy?), and, if not that, "Wikimedians in the United States" or "United States Wikimedians".
I generally agree with all of that. Maybe I ought to be more supportive of WALRUS, given what I named some of the regular Signpost features in the early days, but even there the name on the actual masthead is serious enough. I think the only objection to "Wikimedia United States" would be if someone believes that name should be reserved for a full-blown national chapter. I don't know if this group is on that track ultimately, or wants to be, but I equally don't know that we'd want to operate completely outside such a chapter if there was one. Now that I see Richard's suggestion, "Wikimedia US Community" could work as an interim name if we do want to be on that track, but not sound like we're claiming the status prematurely.
--Michael Snow