[Foundation-l] Rethinking Brands

[Yann Forget]

Hello,

Andrew Whitworth a écrit :
>> There is an alternative brand strategy: making use of the strongest
>> brand (Wikipedia) to identify all activities of the Foundation.

I am very surprised by this proposition, and I agree 100 % with the
objections below. Nowadays I participate in many Wikimedia projects, and
I think it important not to mix up things which are different.

Regards,

Yann

> As a wikibookian almost exclusively, i have some issues with this idea.
> * Wikipedia is like the domineering older sister, and other WMF projects 
> have been trying long and hard to differentiate themselves from wikipedia. I 
> know at en.wikibooks we've spent considerable time explaining why we are not 
> wikipedia, and how it is that we differ from that project. Naming us 
> "wikipedia books" would simply blur the lines even further, and stamp out 
> our attempts at forming an independent, successful project. Wikibooks is 
> still small but it is growing steadily, and we hope (perhaps naively) that 
> we will be big and important some day just like wikipedia is now. Renaming 
> us to "Wikipedia books" is akin to saying "you will never be as important as 
> wikipedia".
> * Along the lines of the above, many projects have very different policy 
> then wikipedia does. Naming all the sites "wikipedia" will raise confusion 
> because every project handles things differently. Users will be needlessly 
> confused by us saying "no, you can do that on the other wikipedia, but you 
> can't do that on this wikipedia", etc.
> * Saying "Wikibooks is a sister project of Wikipedia" is far less confusing 
> then saying that "Wikipedia books is not quite the same as the regular 
> wikipedia, even though we have the same name."
> * What would be the new URL? would it be something convoluted like 
> en.books.wikipedia.org? There are alot of links that would need to be 
> updated, on-wiki and elsewhere if our URL was changed.
> * The WMF has some history of loving Wikipedia and ignoring the other 
> projects. For example, what percentage of WMF board members have an account 
> at en.wikibooks? any language wikibooks? Other then giving up on other 
> projects and focusing on wikipedia, you should be encouraging other projects 
> to grow independently. changing our name, while you may call it "rebranding" 
> seems alot to me like squashing our identity and our potential as an 
> independent WMF project.
> * Since an encyclopedia and a dictionary are "books", it would really be 
> less confusing to rename wikipedia and wiktionary to "Encyclopedia Wikibook" 
> and "Dictionary Wikibook", respectively. Alternatively, since all of the 
> books at wikibooks are not encyclopedia's, it makes no sense to brand them 
> with the 'pedia suffix :)
> 
> --Andrew Whitworth

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