[Foundation-l] Rethinking brands

[Erik Moeller]

On 5/9/07, Robert Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:

> Other than the fact that projects like Wikibooks have already
> established a brand identity of its own.  Not only among Wikibooks
> users, but also within the general academic community (for good or
> ill).  I'm not suggesting here that the brand isn't weaker than
> Wikipedia

About 1/200th as weak if Google Scholar results are any indication. I
don't mean to denigrate the fantastic efforts of the Wikibooks
community by any means. I love the project and try to promote it at
every opportunity. But, compared to the Wikipedia juggernaut, it _is_
virtually unknown. I think there is a wonderful opportunity for
Wikibooks to benefit from the awareness about WP -- and those who are
already aware of the name will easily readjust to "Wikipedia
Textbooks" (or "Wikipedia" + anything else), as virtually everyone who
has heard of Wikibooks knows Wikipedia. Those who are surprised that
the projects are related: well, they'd have learned something
important.

> So my question I would ask in reverse is what real benefits would happen
> by this closer association,

I would suggest the list of advantages I enumerated in my initial mail
as a starting point for discussion.

> and how could the negative aspects (such as
> increased vandalism and more)

Why do you see a risk of increased vandalism? Simply due to project growth?

> Is there any value at all to the separate identities
> and policies that have been established for each of the independent
> sister projects?

Absolutely. Policies should be specific to a purpose. But that doesn't
imply strong project boundaries. As a matter of fact, even within
Wikipedia, communities of interest such as WikiProjects have very
different approaches to the organization of knowledge. We think of
Wikipedia as a single community with a single purpose, but truthfully,
the tasks of writing a good article about Pokemon vs. one about the
history of the saffron trade are _more_ different than the tasks of
writing a physics encyclopedia article vs. a physics textbook.
Nevertheless, we manage to reconcile these differences under a single
brand identity just fine.

I understand the fear of a loss of identity, but I believe that's the
last thing we need to be concerned about. We are talking about wikis,
after all. People will express themselves freely.

-- 
Peace & Love,
Erik

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