[Foundation-l] Why "Wikipedia" and not "the Wikipedia"?

[Delirium]

Samuel Klein wrote:
> Wikipedia does not take an article, nor does Wikimedia.
>
> When combined with an adjective modifying the project name, or a
> common noun modified by the name, the compound noun does take an
> article.
>
> "Wikimedia is a non-profit charitable corporation." is correct; so are
>  "The English Wikipedia",  "the Wikipedia cabal", "the print Wikipedia
> 'Wikipedia:' namespace pages", and "the Wikimedia Foundation".
>   
A bit late on this, but I notice that [[en:Encyclopædia Britannica]] 
consistently refers to that encyclopedia as "the Britannica". Given 
that, I can hardly fault the average non-Wikipedian for being confused 
as to why it's not, in a parallel way, "the Wikipedia"; I imagine 
Britannica's dominance has conditioned a good many people to think that 
"the _Encyclopedianame_" is the proper way to refer to encyclopedias.

I suspect this is some sort of archaic grammar being held over in 
Britannica's case?

-Mark