6 ms·

Community open letter against renaming Wikimedia to Wikipedia

126 points by bpierre 6y ago

leetrout 6y ago
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).
romwell 6y ago
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_brand_dilution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand#Brand_extension_and_bran...
- romwell 6y ago
  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 Wikipedia should only stand for the encyclopedia, make your voice heard by either of the means. [1]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Communications/Wikimedia_brands/2030_research_and_planning/community_review https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Communications/Wikimedi...
  - microcolonel 6y ago
    Seems like the discussion is marked closed.
    - metasj 6y ago
      Ongoing discussion here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Communications/Wikimedia_brands/2030_movement_brand_project https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Communications/Wikimedi...
  - joshuaissac 6y ago
    There is also an RfC on the matter with a majority of voting editors opposing the change proposed.[1] Considering that the WMF has allocated $800k for rebranding efforts for this year,[2] and has already signed a contract with Snøhetta,[3][4] all with no consent from the community, I wonder how willing they would be to walk back on their position. 1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Requests_for_comment/Should_the_Foundation_call_itself_Wikipedia https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Requests_... section "Comments" 2. Ibid, image/PDF in the section "Joint strong opposition to the branding process from the Catalan Wikimedia projects & Amical Wikimedia (WMCAT)" 3. https://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/i/mRd1pp/snoehetta-skal-skape-en-ny-visuell-profil-for-wikipedia-eier https://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/i/mRd1pp/snoehetta-skal-sk... (in Norwegian) 4. https://brandingwikipedia.org/ https://brandingwikipedia.org/
- mmanfrin 6y ago
  This is Wikimedia changing to the name that a majority of people know it from, this is not them going from Netflix to Quikster. If I tell my mom to look up something on Wiktionary, I don't tell her it's the same group as Wikimedia, I tell her it's part of Wikipedia, even though the former is correct and the latter is not. In her mind, and in the minds of practically everyone outside of tech, Wikimedia is Wikipedia.
  - microcolonel 6y ago
    > If I tell my mom to look up something on Wiktionary, I don't tell her it's the same group as Wikimedia, I tell her it's part of Wikipedia... Why say either? Not only is it untrue and misleading, but it is entirely pointless, far as I can tell. Does anyone except a certain type of contributor, or staff, care that Wikimedia is an organization? Conversely, is anyone going to pay enough attention to understand the subtleties of "Wikipedia Encyclopedia" where "Wikipedia Dictionary" is somehow not part of an encyclopedia?
lelandbatey 6y ago
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 6y ago
  That’s better indeed, thanks!
  - dang 6y ago
    "Ceasing renaming" seems awkward so I reworded it. If someone suggests a better wording we can change it again.
    - abdullahkhalids 6y ago
      Stop renaming Wikimedia to Wikipedia, says community open letter The Ce of cease rhymes with Re and Wi, making it awkward.
    - Noumenon72 6y ago
      Your wording is better than the letter's, from which I couldn't tell which way they were proposing to go.
x32n23nr 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    >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 6y ago
      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.
raleighm 6y ago
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_brands/2030_movement_brand_project https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/Wikimedia_b... There seems to be a gap between board and executive team as to whether a rebrand has been decided.
surround 6y ago
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_Blog_Logos_Family-1000x550.jpg https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/files/2019/06/FX_Design_... 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 6y ago
  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.
bitwize 6y ago
Tandy started circling the drain when it renamed itself to RadioShack.
hkai 6y ago
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 6y ago
  Dark times indeed.
neilk 6y ago
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?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
MultusSalus 6y ago
> 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_brands/2030_movement_brand_project/FAQ https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/Wikimedia_bra... 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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    I just don't get it either way. Why bother?
IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
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.
glaive123 6y ago
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.

126 points by bpierre 6y ago

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).

romwell 6y ago

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_brand_dilution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand#Brand_extension_and_bran...

romwell 6y ago
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 Wikipedia should only stand for the encyclopedia, make your voice heard by either of the means. [1]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Communications/Wikimedia_brands/2030_research_and_planning/community_review https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Communications/Wikimedi...
- microcolonel 6y ago
  Seems like the discussion is marked closed.
  - metasj 6y ago
    Ongoing discussion here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Communications/Wikimedia_brands/2030_movement_brand_project https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Communications/Wikimedi...
- joshuaissac 6y ago
  There is also an RfC on the matter with a majority of voting editors opposing the change proposed.[1] Considering that the WMF has allocated $800k for rebranding efforts for this year,[2] and has already signed a contract with Snøhetta,[3][4] all with no consent from the community, I wonder how willing they would be to walk back on their position. 1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Requests_for_comment/Should_the_Foundation_call_itself_Wikipedia https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Requests_... section "Comments" 2. Ibid, image/PDF in the section "Joint strong opposition to the branding process from the Catalan Wikimedia projects & Amical Wikimedia (WMCAT)" 3. https://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/i/mRd1pp/snoehetta-skal-skape-en-ny-visuell-profil-for-wikipedia-eier https://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/i/mRd1pp/snoehetta-skal-sk... (in Norwegian) 4. https://brandingwikipedia.org/ https://brandingwikipedia.org/
mmanfrin 6y ago
This is Wikimedia changing to the name that a majority of people know it from, this is not them going from Netflix to Quikster. If I tell my mom to look up something on Wiktionary, I don't tell her it's the same group as Wikimedia, I tell her it's part of Wikipedia, even though the former is correct and the latter is not. In her mind, and in the minds of practically everyone outside of tech, Wikimedia is Wikipedia.
- microcolonel 6y ago
  > If I tell my mom to look up something on Wiktionary, I don't tell her it's the same group as Wikimedia, I tell her it's part of Wikipedia... Why say either? Not only is it untrue and misleading, but it is entirely pointless, far as I can tell. Does anyone except a certain type of contributor, or staff, care that Wikimedia is an organization? Conversely, is anyone going to pay enough attention to understand the subtleties of "Wikipedia Encyclopedia" where "Wikipedia Dictionary" is somehow not part of an encyclopedia?

lelandbatey 6y ago

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 6y ago
That’s better indeed, thanks!
- dang 6y ago
  "Ceasing renaming" seems awkward so I reworded it. If someone suggests a better wording we can change it again.
  - abdullahkhalids 6y ago
    Stop renaming Wikimedia to Wikipedia, says community open letter The Ce of cease rhymes with Re and Wi, making it awkward.
  - Noumenon72 6y ago
    Your wording is better than the letter's, from which I couldn't tell which way they were proposing to go.

x32n23nr 6y ago

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 6y ago
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 6y ago
  >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 6y ago
    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.

raleighm 6y ago

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_brands/2030_movement_brand_project https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/Wikimedia_b... There seems to be a gap between board and executive team as to whether a rebrand has been decided.

surround 6y ago

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_Blog_Logos_Family-1000x550.jpg https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/files/2019/06/FX_Design_... 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 6y ago
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.

bitwize 6y ago

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

hkai 6y ago

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 6y ago
Dark times indeed.

neilk 6y ago

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?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

MultusSalus 6y ago

> 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_brands/2030_movement_brand_project/FAQ https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/Wikimedia_bra... 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 6y ago
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 6y ago
  I just don't get it either way. Why bother?

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago

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.

glaive123 6y ago

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.