
Community open letter against renaming Wikimedia to Wikipedia - bpierre
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_open_letter_on_renaming
======
romwell
Oh, it's one of those "if it ain't broken, ruin it by rebranding" moves that
we've seen play out so many times, is it?

Great thinking. People know that Wikipedia is a great encyclopedia, it's in
the name. Let's make it stand for many things that are not the encyclopedia.

If there was a Wikipedia article about it... Oh wait, there is one:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand#Brand_extension_and_bran...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand#Brand_extension_and_brand_dilution)

~~~
romwell
They are accepting comments at brandproject@wikimedia.org

Here is what I sent them, if anyone wants to follow:

\----------------------------

Hello,

I am writing to you regarding the rebranding proposal to use Wikipedia for
projects that are not Wikipedia.

In short: please don't. This is a plain example of brand dilution.

The brand has a clear meaning: Wikipedia stands for an encyclopedia. The trust
and widespread acceptance of the brand comes from this clear association.
Wikipedia doesn't stand for the news. Or for the books. Or for pictures. Or
for _media_.

Wikipedia stands for an encyclopedia, which is valued as a source of
knowledge, and is held to standards and format that other Wikimedia projects
don't have to follow. A "Wikipedia article" is an encyclopedia article. It's
not a news piece, not a book, not a picture, not a data set, not a dictionary
definition, nor any of the other things that Wikimedia projects attain.

By making Wikipedia an umbrella brand for all of those, you kill the brand,
plain and simple.

Please value the efforts of all people who made these projects possible, and
keep Wikipedia Wikipedia.

Sincerely,

\---------------------------

Another option is using the talk page [1].

If you also think that Wiki _pedia_ should only stand for the encyclo _pedia_
, make your voice heard by either of the means.

[1][https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Communications/Wikimedi...](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Communications/Wikimedia_brands/2030_research_and_planning/community_review)

~~~
microcolonel
Seems like the discussion is marked closed.

~~~
metasj
Ongoing discussion here:
[https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Communications/Wikimedi...](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Communications/Wikimedia_brands/2030_movement_brand_project)

------
x32n23nr
Having multiple great other projects with little recognition (or much less
public awareness) than Wikipedia must be challenging, and for all of us,
readers, unfortunate. Projects like Wikidata (basis for all knowledge graphs
powering search engines), Wikinews (what could potentially be fact checked
news in an age of misinformation), etc could all benefit from some raised
awareness for all Wikimedia projects. Even raising money from donations, is
usually targeted at Wikipedia. I do not how the governance structure of
Wikimedia influences the distribution of donations, or whether renaming is
meant to influence this. Overall, I see a sincere struggle to get traction
around more Wikimedia projects - and I find that commendable.

~~~
romwell
Counterpoint: a "Wikipedia article" has a worldwide recognition and trust
precisely because it does _not_ stand for a _news article_.

If you rebrand Wikinews to being a part of Wikipedia, the value of a
"Wikipedia article" goes down, since there is less distinction between the
two.

You might raise awareness. You might also kill the brand, and the project.

There are other ways of raising awareness than by rebranding.

~~~
basch
>a "Wikipedia article" has a worldwide recognition and trust

For the average person, Wikipedia exists as a mix of trust and distrust, with
its distrustful image preceding it.

It still carries the reputation of something you cant cite in school, that
anyone can edit. The name itself is thrown around as a pejorative, even by
people who behind closed doors consume it.

This is also a surprisingly hard claim to google, for sources. "wikipedia used
as a pejorative -site:wikipedia.org -site:wiktionary.org
-site:wikipedia.nd.ax" etc returns nothing I want.

~~~
romwell
Perhaps it's a surprisingly hard claim to google because it's not something
that happens often? :)

I personally don't know anyone who would use it that way. Yes, people are
aware that articles on controversial topics can fluctuate, but generally,
people love using Wikipedia as a starting point of finding out about things.

When someone wants to find out about West Indian Manatee, they don't go to
Britannica.

~~~
frosted-flakes
For some things, maybe. But it seems that more often than not, the Wikipedia
article is just a jumble of incomprehensible technical terms and mathematical
formulae, and I end up looking elsewhere. At least for anything remotely
technical.

For example, Fitts's Law[1], which is a super simple concept that the further
away a target is, the bigger it needs to be to quickly and accurately reach
it. It's super relevant in any sort of graphical user interface design,
particularly mouse-driven ones, and you don't need to know the math behind it
to understand it. But this is how Wikipedia introduces it:

> Fitts's law is a predictive model of human movement primarily used in
> human–computer interaction and ergonomics. This scientific law predicts that
> the time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of the
> ratio between the distance to the target and the width of the target.

And it jumps right into a bunch of complicated-looking math from there. If
you're not already familiar with the topic and you're also not a
mathematician, the whole thing is complete gibberish.

That was only the first topic I thought of, and I've never seen that
particular page before.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law)

~~~
romwell
It's hard for me to see anything bad with this article, but I am a
mathematician :)

I agree that there are problems with Wikipedia getting too technical and dry,
but that's kind of expected of an encyclopedia.

Still, there is a consistent expectation, even if it's "technical mumbo
jumbo".

It's very different from whatever _other_ Wikimedia projects offer. And that's
the problem.

~~~
frosted-flakes
It reads like a research paper, that's why it's bad. It could start off
something along my description of the topic in layman's terms before getting
into the technical details which are often not relevant.

Wikipedia is a general purpose encyclopedia, not directed towards any
particular group of people. But many articles are written towards people that
are highly-educated in the field the topic is in, which kind of misses the
point.

------
neilk
I see no inherent problem of confusion if this is well managed. Coca-cola has
Coke Zero and Dasani in their family of products. Yet nobody confuses Dasani
for Coke. Nobody even confuses Coke Zero for Coke. Sometimes it makes sense to
have a strong association with the "flagship" brand and sometimes not.

Also, I suggest that maybe one should think about branding from the
perspective of a naive user. Is it true that there is a well-understood
distinction between Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikinews? I think not.
We can't even get people to understand that Wikileaks isn't associated with
Wikipedia. For the general public, if it has "wiki" in the front it's
Wikipedia.

Given that, the main problem is using words that are _almost_ , but _not
quite_ , Wikipedia. If you work at the Foundation, and have to explain what
you do to anyone else, it's pretty annoying. I worked for the Wikimedia
Foundation on MediaWiki software on a project primarily for Wikimedia Commons
which is a backend for Wikipedia. It sounds like you're just doing permutation
rounds of several syllables.

I'm not sure what the argument is about, other than the various wikiprojects'
disdain for each other and the Foundation itself. Which I admit is sometimes
earned, in every direction. The WMF isn't always the best partner. The
standards for some wikiprojects are abysmal and for some they are quite high.

But when you get right down to it, that's true of all the language variants of
Wikipedia too, and they literally do share the exact same name. Has that been
a problem as well?

------
surround
This seems reminiscent of Mozilla’s decision to rebrand “Firefox” as “Firefox
browser” and put it together with their other products under the parent brand
“Firefox.”

[https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/files/2019/06/FX_Design_...](https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/files/2019/06/FX_Design_Blog_Logos_Family-1000x550.jpg)

I thought this was a poor move. Everyone know Firefox as a browser. The other
products which got included under the Firefox umbrella are just unoriginal
browser extensions. If they came out with another, non-browser related
product, it ought to be under the Mozilla brand.

~~~
SllX
The fact that I had no prior knowledge of this shows just how useful their
exercise in rebranding was. Firefox is a browser. Saying “Firefox browser” is
mere tautology.

------
MultusSalus
> The outreach and feedback KPIs were satisfied. The consultation was shared
> to 122 affiliates, of which 52 responded. While it's impossible to
> accurately measure the number of community members that were contacted, the
> consultation was presented on email lists and web pages with thousands of
> readers, and 144 community members replied. > A key performance indicator
> was that over 20% of affiliates support this change, and that was met, with
> 38% of the 63 affiliates that responded supporting the change, and 10%
> opposing. > There were two KPIs that measured community support, which
> required less than 20% of the community oppose the change, and over 20%
> support it. Neither performance indicator was met, as 40% of the community
> opposed the change and 14% supported it. From:
> [https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/Wikimedia_bra...](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/Wikimedia_brands/2030_movement_brand_project/FAQ)

Does <40% of respondents, where most polled don’t care enough to respond, seem
like an awfully small show of support to anyone else? And that’s on the metric
which seems stronger.

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
It’s still three times more than oppose it.

If most don’t care, there’s no reason to lump them in with the opposition.

~~~
microcolonel
I just don't get it either way. Why bother?

------
IfOnlyYouKnew
I‘m pretty active on Wikidata and don’t have a problem with this.

People here are arguing to stick with Wikimedia for reasons that are logically
and ontologically flawless, but do not in the least matter for the purposes of
branding.

When the foundation calls a politician only vaguely familiar with the
internet, they will still know Wikipedia, and might be more willing to do
whatever it is the foundation wants. The same is true for almost anyone except
maybe their most active users.

Community opposition, even though I disagree with it, is the only valid reason
not to do this. I can’t really tell how represent this letter is for the
community, many of whom are likely to be at least indifferent to it. But the
foundation will have a better idea and certainly consider it.

------
lelandbatey
Can we get a little bit of a title change on this? It seemed at first glance
like this was people asking to rename Wikimedia into Wikipedia. Instead it's a
community letter asking to _cease_ renaming Wikimedia into Wikipedia.

Can the title be changed to something like "Community open letter on ceasing
renaming Wikimedia to Wikipedia" ?

~~~
bpierre
That’s better indeed, thanks!

~~~
dang
"Ceasing renaming" seems awkward so I reworded it. If someone suggests a
better wording we can change it again.

~~~
Noumenon72
Your wording is better than the letter's, from which I couldn't tell which way
they were proposing to go.

------
leetrout
I didn’t know they were doing this but I agree with the sentiment of the
letter. It’s no different than any other social technologies... the community
builds it then the company co-opts it (and usually monetizes it AND the
quality degrades).

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raleighm
I found the News section of this article helpful in understanding the context.
See the recent board and execute statements.
[https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/Wikimedia_b...](https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/Wikimedia_brands/2030_movement_brand_project)

There seems to be a gap between board and executive team as to whether a
rebrand has been decided.

------
hkai
The encyclopedia seems to have been written, the mediawiki engine is working
fine, so now they either have to rebrand, or work on a dark theme.

~~~
metasj
Dark times indeed.

------
glaive123
This reminds me of when 37Signals rebranded to Basecamp. Except at the same
time they dropped all other projects until now with the release of HEY.

------
bitwize
Tandy started circling the drain when it renamed itself to RadioShack.

