5 ms·
Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030
- Wowfunhappy 8y agoWikipedia is well known as an encyclopedia. Changing that name to encompass a project which is quite different will be detrimental.
- evandev 8y agoThey are talking about changing the company's name behind Wikipedia to have the same name as the product.
- zapzupnz 8y agoIndeed, no more different than the company Google having the search engine also called Google. (yes, I know it's technically called Google Search, but no, for all practical uses, it isn't)
- painful 8y agoThis seems like a narrowly thought out proposal. Contrary to what Wikimedia may think and see today, Wikipedia is not the future. The future is something closer to robotopedia or machinepedia or autowikipedia, if you get what I'm saying. The name Wikimedia is fine. I have seen the future, and there is no place for human writers in it.
- untog 8y ago> The future is something closer to robotopedia or machinepedia, if you get what I'm saying Can't disagree with that enough. Wikipedia owes its incredible quality to the human editors doing thankless work behind the scenes. A machine-driven alternative would be awful.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- vokep 8y agoAs long as machine writing is below human level quality, yes. But that won't be the case for too many more years.
- untog 8y agoI'm not convinced of that. It feels very much like self driving cars: people look back 5 years, see X amount of progress, and assume that at least X amount more will be done 5 years from now. Reality rarely tracks that way.
- CM30 8y agoSee Cpedia, Cuil's hilariously awful attempt at building just that. https://marco.org/2010/04/12/the-mechanized-madness-of-cuils-cpedia https://marco.org/2010/04/12/the-mechanized-madness-of-cuils...
- MrLeap 8y agoHe's probably right about nlp robot garbage being the future. Same as how we don't build pyramids anymore. Brick buildings have given way to toothpicks and foam. Quality seems to decay when the tide of novelty recedes. Robo-wikipedia probably costs 1/10000th the price get content quality about 60% as good. People will try to sell people on burning the modern library of Alexandria yet again. Good thing we can backup offline copies! I've been in the woods for the last few months and offline simple english wikipedia has been awesome. Some of the articles on more serious subjects are comedy gold mines in simple english.
- QuercusMax 8y agoI feel like every phone should include an offline copy of wikipedia. That way if you're off the grid for a long time (or the grid goes down) your device isn't totally useless. Or for that case when you get transported back in time...
- chrisseaton 8y ago‘Wiki’ doesn’t mean person - it means quick. An automatic authoring system would be even more ‘wiki’ than before.
- svachalek 8y agoWhat is the future where there is no need for human writers, but that still has human readers? A world where we all happily accept The Truth from machines is hard to envision, and not going to happen while this generation still lives.
- pastor_elm 8y agoi think you meant to say facebookpedia or googlepedia
- c0l0 8y agoThe thing that depresses me the most about Wiki[mp]edia is that the US$ 100 that I donated to them a few years ago (presumably,) predominantly went into creating material like this. Given how incredibly well-funded Wikimedia is, their yearly extort^Wdonation-drive with 50%+ viewport-sized banners plastered all over Wikipedia, claiming that the encyclopedia you're viewing is in dire need of your money to barely sustain itself for the rest of the year, actually makes me rather angry every time I see it. Recommended reading for those unaware of how (and what) Wikimedia is actually doing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2017-02-27/Op-ed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...
- stoops 8y agoThank you for this comment. I will withhold any future donations until I do further research.
- 51lver 8y agoYeah, no kidding. I donated (a few times actually) to cover hosting costs, not to make wikipedia into some kind of lifestyle brand. This is wasteful.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoWikimedia has sufficient assets to host Wikipedia in perpetuity ($91 million @ 4 percent withdrawal rate = $3.64 million, ~$1 million above their current hosting tech and people costs). As long as Wikipedia text and media dumps are archived in the Internet Archive, it's not going to disappear even if Wikimedia Foundation goes defunct. No further fundraising is required, ever, if properly managed.
- dddddaviddddd 8y agoProvided continuing funding for the Internet Archive, of course.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- microcolonel 8y ago> while shortening “Wikimedia Commons” to its nickname “Wikicommons” Literally never seen anyone write "Wikicommons", in all the years I've heard people talk about Commons, but heh. I don't really understand how they manage to (in my opinion) waste time on nonsense like this. The services run great, the contribution volume is immense, and the quality of the tools is improving constantly. I want the Wikimedia Foundation's treasury to keep more funds to deal with conditions which may arise, and seek donations when they expect the most success (rather than the most desperation). I want the Wikimedia Foundation to make it as attractive and convenient as possible for all interested persons to contribute to, and access, this immense cultural resource, but basically nothing else; and I just don't see how messing about with the names is an efficient way to carry out that job.
- CharlesW 8y ago@Wikicommons is their Twitter handle, so it tends to get talked about as Wikicommons there. https://twitter.com/search?q=wikicommons&src=typd https://twitter.com/search?q=wikicommons&src=typd
- microcolonel 8y agoAhh, that makes sense. The idea of interacting with WMF through Twitter seems oddly neo-quaint.
- morpheuskafka 8y agoIf this were to go through, they should just make WC be called "Wikimedia." Wikipedia is a wiki encyclopedia, Wikimedia should be a wiki of media. What is a wiki of a commons?
- shawnz 8y agoSo you're suggesting reusing a brand they've already used in the past except with a totally different meaning? And that will be less confusing?
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- 51lver 8y agoI get the distinct feeling this is from some busy body with too much free time looking to make an impact... Change for change's sake is bad. Think of the tech debt.
- YjSe2GMQ 8y agoThis is essentially about cleaning up debt (though brand debt, rather than technical). Read atdt's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19259543 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19259543
- spac 8y agoContrarily to the negative sentiment expressed so far in the comments, I find branding an important question: If a foundation does good work, you’d want the foundation to receive more money to do more good work. For example, Wikipedia would benefit from many more tech investments, for example in the excellent wiki data and wikimedia research initiatives; or think of wiki vandalism and fake news. It’s well known in the non-profit world (and intuitive) that spending money in marketing does indeed help achieve larger goals in terms of deployed funding. Beyond funding, the fact that people (hacker news is not a representative sample) don’t recognize Wikimedia and the fact that it’s responsible for something that is used daily is a problem. It detracts from the project and removes visibility. Edit: made it more readable
- Mizza 8y agoOkay. Makes sense to me. Now what are you going to do about busybody deletionists with power driving away every single new contributor - and most of the old ones?
- currymj 8y agoWhat is the appeal of getting them to cut costs down to nothing? It seems weird to me that people resent a budget of $70 million/year for the most useful website in existence. What would you rather the money be spent on?
- Macha 8y agoThe two issues I have are: By having a high expense situation and constantly begging for donations, it puts wikipedia, the main venture, at risk if other wikimedia ventures don't pan out. If it was a struggle to keep wikipedia's lights on, I'd consider donating myself, but if it's for wikimedia to expand other projects with questionable benefits, I'm not inclined, and portraying the latter as the former rubs people seriously the wrong way.
- vanderZwan 8y ago> If it was a struggle to keep wikipedia's lights on, I'd consider donating myself Isn't that kind of problematic too though? The idea that donations may only go to organizations that would struggle otherwise? (I know I'm inferring something you didn't explicitly say, but I do think that is a fairly common sentiment as well)
- Retra 8y agoThen it wouldn't be a charity donation. Giving money to successful projects is better done as an investment (or maybe purchase.)
- vanderZwan 8y agoI see no logical reason why being successful as a project implies that investing with a profit motive is the best option for guaranteeing continued success.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dependsontheq 8y agoThis is a very nice brand research project, based on this they obviously had problems. “Wikimedia is a Social Media Video site” is a quote from the research. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Global_Wikipedia_and_Wikimedia_Brand_Research_Report.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Global_W...
- titanix2 8y agoHow much researchers should they hire to understand writing everything in blue is ugly? You can create and maintain a brand image without going ridiculous like that.
- d33 8y agoBy the way, I feel like I should underline that I consider the technology behind Wikimedia a nice idea, but terrible execution. Apart from it being completely not standardized and having only one implementation, just compare it to Stack Overflow: both have the goal of gathering valuable knowledge and one manages to use gamification to build a healthy and transparent community, while the other has the least intuitive system possible, based on "voting" by editing Wikipedia pages only to end up being reminded that this is not a democracy. I feel that if the process was easier to grasp, people would edit more and we would have even more access to knowledge. Also, not integrating with Wikias sounds like a lost opportunity as well. I know that they vary by scope, but this would better solve the problem of deletionism vs inclusionism than what we have right now - criteria of "notability" in order to... reduce noise? Reduce maintenance cost? Neither is convincing to me.
- atdt 8y agoI spent over four years as an engineer at the Wikimedia Foundation, which trained me to expect the double-take most people do when they hear the name for the first time. They either think they misheard you, or worse: they think you represent a knock-off entity that is trading on a misleading brand similarity, and they squint at you with suspicion. It's as if you told them you work at "AmaZone". So you can immediately forget about any bragging rights. The conversation has barely started and you are already at a trust deficit. It's almost worse when the other party has heard of Wikimedia, because then your (by-now rehearsed) introduction comes across as wooden and weirdly defensive. And if you think all that is bad... the annual conference for the Wikimedia community is called Wikimania. Try explaining that to passport control.
- perfmode 8y agoThat’s a shitty situation. Sorry to hear that. You were doing the lords work. did you ever consider saying that you work at Wikipedia?
- benjaminikuta 8y agoThat might be pragmatic, but it would unfortunately just contribute to the misconception.
- uranusjr 8y agoI have a friend working at Canonical, and whenever he introduces himself he always includes a brief mention that Canonical makes Ubuntu. I felt it’s very strange (and certainly felt it a little offensive when I first knew him), but came to understand it after a while. It is not common for people to make connection between Canonical and Ubuntu (even IT people!). He needs to establish himself, otherwise many people won’t take him seriously when he talks about Linux stuff. It’s quite unfortunate.
- mprev 8y agoWhy did it feel offensive?
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- largehotcoffee 8y agoThis is a great idea! It's honestly long overdue