On Mon, Feb 25, 2019 at 10:14 PM Zack McCune <zmcc...@wikimedia.org> wrote:
> :: Apologies for cross-posting to multiple mailing lists. We want to ensure > we spread the word about this opportunity to as many people as possible. :: > > Hi all, > > We are writing today to invite you to be a part of a community review on > Wikimedia brand research and strategy. > > Recently, the Wikimedia Foundation set out to better understand how the > world sees Wikimedia and Wikimedia projects as brands.[1] We wanted to get > a sense of the general visibility of our different projects, and evaluate > public support of our mission to spread free knowledge. > Dear all, I haven't weighed in before. But it seems to me there's a simple question underlying all of this: do we actually want, or need, to increase public awareness of the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia chapters/affiliates (as opposed to the projects themselves)? Having Wikimedia be a more recognizable entity or brand does not seem to me like it would help us in our core goals, of recruiting editors and content to the *projects*. We do not typically use the Wikimedia name to do outreach, or to talk about the projects; the handful of us that are insiders and give presentations about the WMF is small, relative to the number of educators and librarians and editors talking about Wikipedia. (I give many trainings on editing Wikipedia every year; talking about Wikimedia is irrelevant for this purpose). Perhaps a rebrand would make fundraising easier -- but we already use the project brand for that, as most fundraising is directly off the projects, and the fundraising that isn't (grants and large donations) has a lot of communication around it. So I'm not sure how a rebrand would help here either. The premise of this whole exercise is that people knowing about Wikimedia as an entity will somehow help us. But we are not trying to recruit contributors to the Foundation, or to the chapters; we are trying to recruit them to the projects, and if the infrastructure of our network is invisible, I am fine with that. I think to increase the centrality of the *organization* is a distraction that misses the point of both our mission and the role of the organization, which is to provide infrastructure. We're not selling shoes here; more brand awareness of the Foundation does not translate into a direct furthering of our mission, and more focus on the organization is at best a distraction for overworked volunteers. Like Andrew, I might have been excited about naming it the Wikipedia Foundation ten or fifteen years ago. But now, I think there is a wide world of free knowledge that we want to imagine -- including a future of our projects remixed into something new, beyond Wikipedia. So for that reason too, I am skeptical. regards, Phoebe (former WMF trustee) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
