[Foundation-l] Merge wikis

[Thomas Morton]

On 4 Jul 2011, at 23:57, Juergen Fenn <juergen.fenn at gmx.de> wrote:

>
>
> Am 02.07.11 14:17 schrieb Alec Conroy:
>>> if you talk to the press, or to media experts, they all know
>>> "Wikipedia" but not "Wikimedia". The most simple and reasonable way is
>>> to use the famous brand, not to invest in "Wikimedia".
>>
>>
>> There's an even bigger opportunity here--
>> Make a brand new brand name that captures the ideology better than
>> Wikipedia-Mediawiki-Wikimedia.
>> Wikipedia's an encyclopedia, Mediawiki's the software, Wikimedia's the
>> ISP-- and none of those names capture the "spirit of the movement".
>> Coming up with a good brand name and associating it with our movement
>> and our foundation--   whether the foundation ever changes its name
>> formally or not, there should be a  brand name for "Wikimedia
>> projects, their users, and their allies".  And unlike our other brand
>> names, this one should actually be inspiring to people who don't
>> already know what it means.
>
> I beg your pardon, but Ziko and WereSpielChequers are absolutely right
> here. You won't manage to introduce another brand name after ten years
> of Wikipedia. Even if you tried, it would be to no avail. It was a huge
> mistake to introduce the sister projects under a different brand and to
> keep them apart from Wikipedia proper. After all, it did not foster
> creativity and diversity, but it rather split the movement into parts

I disagree, speaking from a position of some experience.

Wikipedia was not marketed well, per se. It was an innovative ANC
exciting idea, launched at the right time to the right audience.

Even to this date; very little serious marketing had been done.

Now. With that said I agree - there is not a lot of point trying to
establish a new brand. But WikiMedia is worth pursuing as an umbrella.
This is a new decade, the internet has moved on (in a way it could be
said to have left us behind, and we survive by being well known) and
this is the perfect opportunity to work on the brand.

Im very hopeful the board has something to input here; this is
squarely in their ballpark and we need quick and pivotal action on it.

This is not at all a re-branding issue but one of brand-extension -
something any marketer would be on top of!

I do agree that more interaction should be fostered (although
independence is a good thing for projects with radically different
aims) and that smaller projects should be offered the opportunity to
hijack wikipedias brand to Market themselves.

But remember they are still a little behind WP in age, in a few years
they will hopefully pervade our consciousness in the same way.

Tom