[Mediawiki-l] Quick-reference guide for distinguishing "Wiki", "Wikipedia", "Wikimedia", "MediaWiki", etc

[Rowan Collins]

Coming upon yet another situation where it would be nice to reference
a quick guide to often-confused names, I've expanded Jens Ropers' list
(below) into a page on meta: explaining the difference between
different terms, and highlighting how they should and shouldn't be
used.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Names

I've inserted some references to it at relevant points around meta:,
but please link to it from wherever you think would be appropriate.
[And, obviously, improve on anything non-optimal about it...] I've
called it "Names" rather than something like "Often-confused terms" so
that it's nice and easy to remember; my idea being that when somebody
misuses one of these terms, we can say "BTW, please see
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Names".

Thanks Jens for the idea, and the basis of the text. It may be cute
having names which are all puns on each other, but it sure is
confusing to the unitiated!


On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 20:12:50 +0200, Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
> '''Wikimedia''' is the name of the Wikimedia Foundation, the parent
> organization encompassing our various projects such as Wikipedia,
> Wiktionary, Wikispecies, Wikicommons, etc.
> '''MediaWiki''' is the wiki software that is developed for and used by
> these projects (and available for others to use for their wikis as
> well).
> '''Wikipedia''' -- the free encyclopedia -- is but ONE project of the
> Wikimedia Foundation.
> '''Wiki''' is a generic term to describe certain kinds of collaborative
> websites that can be user/visitor-edited (and most Wikimedia foundation
> websites are examples of wikis).
> '''Wiki software''' is any software that powers wiki websites at the
> backend. Such software is also called a '''wiki engine'''. There are
> MANY other wiki engines besides MediaWiki, big and small; good, bad and
> ugly ones; a list is here: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiEngines
> 
> All --
> Anybody have a good idea where to post this info prominently? Or better
> yet, could whoever knows please go ahead and post this info
> prominently? Because these matters frequently seem to be a source of
> confusion.

-- 
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]