Erik wrote:

Right now, many people do not use the Wikipedia software because they think it is too tailor made for an encyclopedia. That's true in some respects (we do not make it easy enough to change all the Wikipedia-specific strings), but we are becoming more general as our spinoff projects prove, and I hate to see interesting projects use inferior software like TWiki because it has better marketing.

I agree.

Marketing of the software is needed so that we can expand the user/developer base of the software. For that we need a real name. MediaWiki is the best name suggestion so far; Phase III is a crappy generic name that nobody uses outside of Wikipedia. PediaWiki is a no starter because the software is being used in many non-encyclopedia contexts. MediaWiki is also a play on the name Wikimedia and is thus associable with the Foundation (which itself is not any specific project but a family of different projects using the same software in different contexts). Thus the name MediaWiki is not married to any one context while making it very clear that it is developed by Wikimedia.

We get clear credit and a larger user/developer base. I see only positives with the name change.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)