On Sat, Jul 16, 2011 at 12:30 AM, Keegan Peterzell <keegan.w...@gmail.com> wrote:
In reply overall-- I definitely agree that Wikipedia is, by far, our strongest brand-- and a very different brand than the one that would be served by a wider unnamed movement. I haven't been anywhere near as ambition to think we could get a brand anywhere as good as Wikipedia. Its brand is so off-the-charts it's a little unfathomable. I'd be happy with something in the neighborhood of Wikimedia-- if donors and editors communities can easily understand it means "Wikimedia Movement on other servers", I'm good. > Now, how can we expand this into another name? > Simple answer: we can't. Well... we certainly do it as well as Wikipedia. But we can "piggyback" off the Wikipedia name in ways, as the name Wikimedia does. ... > Advancement of the Wikipedia brand is the only feasible option > to expand Wikimedia coverage, as shown by almost every study both > academically and journalistic relating to our products. If Wikipedia is > tied into any coverage related to a sister project it will be read and > understood. If not tied in, we get confusion. Exactly. The whole online world "gets" Wikipedia, and the closer you can be tied to it, the more people understand your values. All the WMF-sites ARE seen as "tied" to Wikipedia-- but the third-party sites are misunderstood, seen as just randomly off doing their own thing. Something close, but not something so close as not to imply direct control by the foundation. I have a very long list of non-wikipedia related names. The list of piggy-back names off Wikipedia is pretty short however: "Wikimedia Movement" would work for the movement, but it seems a little "too in-use" and "too-close to home" for us to use that. "Wiki?edia Movement" , no clue how you could pronounce it. "Wiki*edia Movement" , pronounced "Wiki-Staredia Movement", "Wiki-Edia Movement", pronounced Wiki-Edia "Wiki-Seedia Movement", each project is a seed? hokey. For some unknown reason, I also like WikiZedia. An Omega or other symbol in the middle might also work if we want to get really crazy, but pronunciations are essential All these are are very geeky and so not ideal. My brain really isn't the right brain to generate a good piggy-back brand. I don't care what we call it, I more want us to recognize it and start calling it something. And these names also might still be too close to home for some of us. As for the word "Movement"-- it can always be termed Alliance, Coalition, Cloud, Constellation, Sphere, or something else entirely. Movement is the best factual description, I think, but brands are a whole different ballgame. Alec _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
