Brion Vibber saith:
On Fri, 8 Aug 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:
I intend to edit relevant documentation and webpages to change the name of the software from "Phase III" to "MediaWiki". This is the name that Mav suggested, and it fits nicely together with "Wikimedia". Google shows that the name is unused. Any objections?
Sounds nice, and less likely to send crowds of confused protesters after us than "PediaWiki". ;)
What exactly was the history of PediaWiki? I've seen that name occasionally... mostly in outdated pages. I understand it was the original name of the software, but...why was it called that?
And MediaWiki intuitively sounds like software for editable multimedia - something where people can edit sounds and movies online, etc. Wikimedia sounds like a corporation (which is OK since it's a foundation) but a MediaWiki is (to me) a Wiki for multimedia. There's no real "editing" of pictures/sounds - you can replace old media with new...but that's not really a Wiki: Wikis need editing abilities, else anonymous FTP to an HTTP-served directory could be called a Wiki.
Why do we need to _rename_ Phase III? Keep that for the name for Phase IV, which meta's Main Page used to say was a temporary name (probably still does...)
===== -Geoffrey Thomas geoffreyerffoeg@yahoo.com
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Geoffrey-
And MediaWiki intuitively sounds like software for editable multimedia -
We allow embedding all kinds of files using image: and media: links. We support LaTeX formulas, and SVG support is planned (which could quite possibly allow collaborative editing of SVG files). We would be really multimedia compliant if we added support for GNU Lilypond, as has been suggested in the past, but there don't seem to be enough music buffs to pull it off. Furthermore, it is one of my design goals to make image embedding as simple as possible, but even now our image handling has features which other wikis lack (such as reverting and restoring specific revisions of an image).
Wikipedia itself has all types of media (except for videos, I think). Aside from that, the term "media" can be interpreted in many ways -- I interpret it more as a means of communicating ideas and concepts than a specific *form* of media. In other words, MediaWiki is about turning wikis into effective media. And there are yet more interpretations: MediaWiki is "middleware" between the database and the wiki-application for which it is used. MediaWiki is mediocre. MediaWiki can be used to calculate medians. MediaWiki has been featured in many media reports. MediaWiki is better for information storage than floppy disks. MediumWiki allows you to communicate with dead spirits.
Why do we need to _rename_ Phase III?
Because Phase IV is still a while away, or may not happen at all (we may stick to making incremental improvements to this codebase), and because we need to advertise our software in a way that appeals to people beyond our current image as an encyclopedia project. "Phase III" is a crappy designation, so people just refer to it as "the Wikipedia software" (822 hits on Google) as opposed to "Wikipedia Phase III" (55 hits).
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.
Regards,
Erik
Geoffrey Thomas wrote:
Why do we need to _rename_ Phase III? Keep that for the name for Phase IV, which meta's Main Page used to say was a temporary name (probably still does...)
My sentiments too. I don't see the need for a cutesy name for something that is only software.
Ec
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