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

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/6/27 Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org>:
> On Sat, Jun 27, 2009 at 11:29 AM, Andrew Gray <andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk>wrote:
>
>> (Perhaps Britannica gets it because "Encyclopedia" is a common word -
>> we'd feel silly with the sentence "I looked it up in Encyclopedia
>> Britannica", because "I looked it up in encyclopedia" would itself be
>> wrong)
>
>
> I don't have a problem with the sentence "I looked it up in Encyclopedia
> Britannica".  In fact, after consideration, I'd say adding in "the" would be
> technically incorrect.  Looking at britannica.com, EB consistently refers to
> itself without "the" in the beginning.

Interesting. I am inclined to take my lead from the organisation
itself for things like this, so perhaps I should change my speech.

> Now look at www.cia.gov.  Seems to be no rhyme or reason to the use or
> nonuse of "the" when the CIA refers to themselves.  "About CIA", "History of
> the CIA", "Offices of CIA", "Contact CIA".  "To accomplish its mission, the
> CIA engages in research, development, and deployment of high-leverage
> technology for intelligence purposes. As a separate agency, CIA serves as an
> independent source of analysis..."  They must have used Intellipedia to
> create that paragraph.

I hate inconsistency like that. What kind of major organisation
doesn't have a style guide detailing how its name should be used?