[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Brand Survey Analysis

Delirium delirium at hackish.org
Thu Jul 5 20:24:02 UTC 2007


Anthony wrote:
> On 7/5/07, Brion Vibber <brion at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>   
>> Anthony wrote:
>>     
>>> On 7/5/07, Brion Vibber <brion at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>> If people are giving you something
>>> because they want to help Wikipedia, then that something should be
>>> used toward Wikipedia, not some other project.
>>>       
>> That might be true if people thought there was a difference between the
>> various projects we do, or if they thought that we shouldn't ever do
>> anything other than encyclopedia pages. On the contrary, though, people
>> often recommend we do additional things.
>>
>>     
> I find it hard to believe that anyone would think there's no
> difference between the various projects.
>   

That's been my experience though---people basically take "Wikipedia" to 
be the overall brand for "putting free information on the internet 
created using a Wiki format", and so they find nothing particularly 
strange about the fact that there's also a dictionary and free media 
repository and whatnot.  As a practical matter I mostly perpetuate that 
"mistake" because it's simply easier to communicate: If I tell people 
they should upload their images to "Wikipedia's free-media repository" 
or that I'm going to "Wikipedia's annual conference", they know what I'm 
talking about immediately.  I *could* explain what the names Wikipedia 
vs. Wikimedia vs. Mediawiki mean, but most people have about as much 
patience for that as they do for Linux vs. GNU/Linux.

-Mark




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