[Foundation-l] Re: Progress on wikimedia.com?

Anthere anthere9 at yahoo.com
Wed Feb 9 05:41:35 UTC 2005



Erik Moeller a écrit:
> I seem to recall that there were negotiations underway at some point 
> with the owner of wikimedia.com on transferring that domain name to the 
> Foundation. To this day, there is no content under the domain, not even 
> ads, just a German "Under construction" notice. I would like to inquire 
> what the outcome of the past negotiations was. If they failed, is there 
> any chance that we can get the domain by virtue of owning the trademark 
> rights to "Wikimedia", and the domain name not being used in any other 
> way by its owner?

Negociations were under way with a member of the german association. I 
do not remember with certainty who. Possibly akl.

> My interest is primarily that I would like the Foundation site to move 
> from wikimediafoundation.org to wikimedia.org - a domain which is 
> currently just an ugly portal site, but also a subdomain of Meta, the 
> Wikimedia Commons, and the mailing lists.

? I really do not see what you mean here.
Actually, the more time goes by, the happier I am with the full name
Many people get confused between wikipedia, wikimedia and mediawiki
We certainly  need wikimedia.com, but I am not so convinced we should 
move the site to wikimedia.org.

I think having the foundation
> site there could help to strengthen the Wikimedia brand identity, but 
> when that was discussed in the past, the problem that we do not hold the 
> .com was the main (only?) reason not to do it.
> 
> So, to get the ball rolling, what's the situation? If I can help by 
> getting in touch with the owner, I'll see what I can do. Are we willing 
> to pay for the domain, or does it have to come for free? Legal 
> proceedings cost money, too, so if the owner is happy with a small fee, 
> that might be the least troublesome approach.

A small fee would be reasonable.

> On a different note, yes, Wikimedia and Wikipedia are very confusingly 
> similar. Individually, our naming choices have been good, but taken 
> together, they're a mess. I think it's too late to rename Wikimedia, 
> with international organizations in place and 2 million Google hits on 
> that name. The best way to deal with that problem, in my opinion, is to 
> give a short explanation on the wikimedia.org page  (which would then be 
> the foundation page), with a small icon and a link to Wikipedia.

This is the reason I would now rather support using full adress (with a 
redirection of course from wikimedia.org)

I would be glad if you could take time to fix that up.


> All best,
> 
> Erik





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