[Commons-l] Should Commons be renamed?

[Oldak Quill]

On 02/07/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> Erik (user:Eloquence) conducted a smallish survey on Meta about
> Wikimedia brand identities. (See the relevant parts of his email
> below.) Some people identified "Wikimedia Commons" as a confusing
> name, in that it doesn't clearly identify what the project actually is
> or does. Do Commoners think the project should be renamed, and if so,
> to what?
>
> IMO Commons had rather no choice but to choose a confusing name,
> because the obvious name - Wikimedia! - already stands for some other
> idea that doesn't actually have a lot to do with media but only wikis.
> Perhaps Wikimedia (& Wikimedia Foundation) should become Wikimmunity
> (wiki-community - but it kind of sounds like wiki-immunity :)) and
> then Commons can take over the Wikimedia label. Otherwise we're
> looking at "Wikimedia Media"... er... then should MediaWiki be
> "Wikimedia Wiki"? :)
>
> If I search in google for "Commons", Wikimedia Commons is 7th, behind
> Jakarta Commons (something to do with Java), Creative Commons,
> "Commons" (NIH grants?), two Wikipedia articles, and the UK govt
> "House of Commons" website. Clearly using the word Commons is going to
> be an uphill battle in terms of creating an identity. (Doesn't mean
> it's impossible, though.)
>
> Is there any other word like "media" in English that covers the
> meaning of images/graphics + audio + video (+ documents) ?
>
> Wikimedia Formats? (urgh)
> Wikimedia Multimedia?
> Mediagenic? (I just learnt of this word via Wiktionary. It's formed
> from media + photogenic, I quite like it. but there's some companies
> that have taken it already I think.)
>
> Does Commons need a "Wikimedia" identifier in the name? (None of the
> other projects have one.)
> Does Commons need a "wiki" identifier in the name? (All of the other
> projects have it, but I think it's not as essential to Commons as to
> other projects.)
>
> Ideas welcome,
> Brianna
> user:pfctdayelise



Is "Wikimedia" really a necessary part of the name of the project? If we
want Commons to grow, we need to emphasise it's use as a stand-alone image
repository for copyleft images and move away from its use as merely an
auxiliary slave project to the rest of Wikimedia.

One step to achieving this is to adopt a sleeker name. The "Commons" part
seems perfect for what we are trying to do for all the reasons Stephen Bain
pointed out. If we were to get rid of "Wikimedia" as part of the name (it is
clunky (5 syllables!), unrecognised by most and hems in our purpose), I
think we'd need something in its place to differentiate us from other
"Commons". I've no idea what such a name could be; I'd suggest "Open
Commons" or "Media Commons" or somesuch if they weren't so generic and
similar to other projects (i.e. Open Media).

-- 
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/attachments/20070702/7456b254/attachment.htm