Friday, December 23, 2005

Is a rose by any other name as beautifull ?

Ultimate Wiktionary is the name of a project. The initial goal was to improve on the exisisting Wiktionaries. This would bring cooperation between the people that are interested in specific languages but choose a different language for their user interface. When adopted, it would mean that we can concentrate our effort in one resource.

The name for the project does not determine that the eventual project will be found at "http://ultimate.wiktionary.org". There are reasons for it and, there are reasons against it. It is cheap to name it like this as the domain wiktionary is already owned by the Wikimedia Foundation. The second reason is that a fair number of people already know this name and finally it does link the old with the new. A big argument against is the use of this "ultimate" label. The functionality of the software will grow but at first there will not be much that deserves this accolade.

Now there is this opportunity; what name to pick and, what arguments to use
  • Wiktionary2
  • WiktionaryZ
These are the two contenders at the moment that people came up with. Personally I like WiktionaryZ best. When pronounced it is "wiktionaries" and it reflects that we will include all the content of the current Wiktionaries and also it really links into the past. Given the way it is written it also reflects modern times and the approach that we take with Ultimate Wiktionary is an exponent of our time.

Wiktionary2 is another great name it. It also gives a great link to the current Wiktionaries and it symbolises well the big technological step that it represents. One thing that is problematic that some people suggested that it could be seen as a version number; this would mean that the future might bring us a "http://wiktionary3.org". This is not a sensible way of doing things as you do not want to reflect version numbers in your domain name.

I hope that people will like these suggestions, and there is room for many more.

Thanks,
GerardM

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