[Foundation-l] Rethinking Brands

[David Gerard]

On 09/05/07, Andrew Whitworth <wknight8111 at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Wikipedia has a domineering culture, and because it was the first project,
> many of the members there are in the habit of calling wikipedia simply
> "wiki". Notice how people refer to en.wikibooks to describe the english
> wikibooks, but nearly all wikimedians use the term "enwiki" to describe
> wikipedia. Doesnt help that this ambiguity is embedded in the software. The
> fact that the news media has picked up on wikipedian's jargon and refers to
> it as simply "wiki" is not so much a surprise as an obvious result.


This appears to be an undue assumption of malice on the part of the
Wikipedia community.

The rest of the world, Wikipedia is the first they've heard of. So
they shorten it as seems natural to them.

I would *hope* this slows down as office wikis become more common.


> If everything goes our way (and admittedly this dream is some ways off) It's
> not hard to imagine Wikibooks growing like wildfire, but what we need is
> more help, more marketing, and more recognition for the brand we already
> have. Wikibooks is in a very important stage of growth right now, and
> rebranding us now would be detrimental.


It may be worth noting that there is no push whatsoever (that I have
heard of) for an initiative such as this from any of the Wikipedias.

A lot of smaller projects seem to blame their woes on that big mean
Wikipedia taking all the attention, evil bastards that they are. I
suspect you should look to the people paying the attention.


- d.