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

Steven Walling steven at readwriteweb.com
Mon Jun 29 18:13:57 UTC 2009


Okay, I have to say that this whole thread makes us all look a little silly.
Let it be known everlastingly that
*this*<http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/google_launches_the_google>is
why we don't say "the Wikipedia."'

Sheesh.

Steven

On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 11:11 AM, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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
>
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-- 
Steven Walling | @StevenWalling
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