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

[phoebe ayers]

On Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 1:45 PM, Thomas Dalton<thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/6/28 Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com>:
>> Wikipedia does not take an article, nor does Wikimedia.
>
> As far as I'm concerned "Wikimedia" doesn't exist as a proper noun.
> It's just an adjective: "the Wikimedia Foundation", "the Wikimedia
> movement", "the Wikimedia projects", "the Wikimedia community" etc.

Nonsense -- Wikimedia is a proper (and trademarked) name. There are
lots of parts of Wikimedia, and that's generally how it's used  --
e.g. "the Wikimedia community" -- but that's no different than saying
"the Microsoft developer community." That common usage doesn't mean
that Microsoft is not also a proper name!

One of the most confusing parts of all of this is the fact that "the
Wikipedia" is incorrect, but "the English Wikipedia" is correct. SJ
explained why better than I can.

-- phoebe