[Foundation-l] WikiPedia Foundation?

[Marco Chiesa]

On 5/10/07, daniwo59 a aol.com <daniwo59 a aol.com> wrote:
>
> Apparently, the phone message has been changed, and it now says WIKIPEDIA
> Foundation.
>
> Well, it actually wouldn't be a bad idea for the rebranding. Wikimedia is
confusingly similar to Wikipedia (all the other projects' names differ by
more than a letter), and it can be easily mistaken for MediaWiki. Something
like: Wikibooks, a project by Wikipedia, rather than Wikibooks, a project
from Wikimedia which actually happens to be the same organisation which runs
Wikipedia. In a sense Wikimedia is the least known brand WMF owns, since it
cannot really be associated with anything in particular. Are communities
really attached to the name Wikimedia (apart for blaming the WMF for almost
anything)? The current situation is similar to companies such as
Procter&Gamble or Unilever, whose main brands are much more known than the
parent company name itself, however there are many more companies which have
the name of their main brand, but they also have other brands for niches
(for example FIAT owns the brands IVECO for lorries, Piaggio for mopeds,
Lancia for classy cars, Alfa Romeo for quite sporty cars, Ferrari for really
sporty cars....). In terms of size projects other than wikipedia can be
considered niches, after all.

Cruccone