[Foundation-l] The Wikimedia Foundation is not the WMF

[Ray Saintonge]

Angela_ wrote:

>On Mon, 20 Sep 2004 14:07:03 -0400, Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>Although you should check your final result against the current revision
>>on WMF.org, in case there have been last-minute changes)
>>    
>>
>I would like to request that everyone stops using the abbreviation WMF
>to refer to the Wikimedia Foundation. We do not own the domain name
>WMF.org and it is not likely we ever will. If people make the effort
>not to use it, it will reduce confusion and misdirected traffic.
>
>Although I quote Sj above, this is in no way directed only at him.
>It's bad enough that we don't own wikimedia.com that I think efforts
>should be made to prevent even more links to sites that are not really
>us.
>  
>
Good point, both in the particular and in general.  To me WMF normally 
refers to the World Monetary Fund.  It made me wonder what they had to 
do with Wikimedia fundraising. :-)

The problem with initialisms is bigger than unavailable domain names.  
There are other possible misunderstandings when an initialism is used.  
One example that led to a furious exchange more than a year ago was over 
"LOL".  The user intended it as "Lots of Luck" to encourage the 
contributor; the recipient read it as "Laughing out Loud" and felt that 
his work was being insulted.

Ec