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Latest comment: 3 years ago by Pelagic in topic Lambada

Translingual

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@Denny: I wonder if "translingual" would be better than "abstract" as a name for what we are doing. This is because "abstract" is used in linguistics to refer to words that talk about complicated concepts without a physical representation, in an "abstract" vs "concrete" distinction. Example:

  • Concrete - tree, water, hill, sound
  • Abstract - resolution, legitimacy, motive, assumption

This isn't the sense of "abstract" being used here, but I suspect it's the image that many readers will conjure up when they see the name Abstract Wikipedia. In my opinion "translingual" is a better description of this project and I like Wikirosetta / Wikisetta too. But as I wrote before, I'm still unconvinced that this project should be given sister project status with its own 2LD (same level as Wikidata, Wiktionary, Wikipedia etc) rather than feature status (same level as VisualEditor, WikiLove, Lexemes etc) so I'm not too fussed about the name.

I don't know how "lambda" is used in computer science research in relation to what we're doing, but my first thought is if "lambda" isn't already accepted computer science terminology, we should consider "Wikiprogram". Although this name might lead to confusion about where mw:global templates should sit amongst Wikimedia projects. Deryck C. 13:33, 28 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

Translingual is a great word! Thanks! I added that to the page. I think it has many advantages over multilingual, as one could rightfully say that the current setup is already multilingual, and thus ask, "What's the difference?". On the other side, 'translingual' is rather uncommon. Thank you for the suggestion!
Talking about uncommon terms, regarding lambda, the reference is to the Lambda calculus [:wp] , and the idea is that all functions can be defined in terms of the lambda calculus as its foundation (and in fact, the abstracttext demo does that). But it also recognise the relevance of lambda in linguistics. But yeah, whereas I start liking the name "Wikilambda", I really am not sure it is a good name. We'll see how the community process will go, I am quite looking forward to that. --denny (talk) 14:56, 28 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Denny: I was thinking Wikifranca as in lingua franca, which is a language used to bridge dialectal gaps. Seemplez (talk) 09:56, 3 June 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Seemplez: nice! And it really seems very pronouncable. Thank you! Added to the list of suggestions. --denny (talk) 14:54, 3 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
WikiFranca is already a collaboration of francophone Wikimedians. GoEThe (talk) 17:30, 2 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

Omnilingual or Panlingual come to mind. They are a bit of a mouthful though. GoEThe (talk) 17:38, 2 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

@GoEThe: They refer, like "multilingual" mentioned above by Denny, to a set of multiple languages, whilst "translingual" means it is understandable across languages; that the language spoken is irrelevant. Therefore, I like Deryck Chan's suggestion more. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 18:56, 20 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Lambada

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"Some people keep misreading it as Wikilambada"

Well, I didn't until I read that. Thanks. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:16, 2 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

"Um momento que fica no ar" --Deepfriedokra (talk) 09:08, 22 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
I too can’t un-see that now. Also, despite greater spelling difference, the tune of La Bamba keeps springing into my head. Pelagic (talk) 03:11, 10 October 2020 (UTC)Reply

Babel

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What about Wikibabel? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:17, 2 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Pigsonthewing: frightening, cause... God overturns the tower with a great wind :-) Lotje (talk) 06:25, 21 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
I think Wikibabel is an excellent suggestion. The Tower of Babel is where everyone spoke the same language until God intervened, and the Babel fish was a fictional fish that could instantly translate languages. The word Babel is already used by Wikimedians to denote communications across language barriers. To be consistent with other Wikimedia projects, the name of the new project should begin with "Wiki". So the combination of "Wiki" and "babel" seems right. Also, I think babel is relatively easy to spell and pronounce, and it's neither Euro- nor Anglo-centric. Bahnfrend (talk) 12:01, 7 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

Omnipedia

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… or is that taken already? – --Brevity (talk) 13:47, 3 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

Really a bad name

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"Abstract" is a polyseme and somebody just translated it (to Chinese) as "Wikipedia summary".--GZWDer (talk) 13:54, 3 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

lambda is too 'Western'

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Lambda is too 'Western'.'(Encyclo)pedia, data, news, voyage, source, such words all have a meaning, so Chinese wikipedians can easily choose a name for the project, meta is a quite abstract name, however, the Chinese scholars have a concensus already, but lambda is a hard thing to have a name in Chinese, so Chinese wikipidians still have to choose an alternative name themselves if the final name is lambda. not a user:慎言慎行老法师寫維基?寫個屁! 14:24, 3 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

Hi user:慎言慎行老法师 and User:GZWDer,
It's a shame this didn't get any responses for such a long time, and I should actually take some responsibility for it, because my comment is right below this one and I should noticed it.
I do like the name Wikilambda, but I want to explore every suspicion for translation difficulty.
I see that the article about Lambda calculus is called "λ演算", with the Greek letter. If you say it out loud, how would you pronounce it? Is it possible to write this is in Chinese characters?
In the article about the letter Lambda, I see that the name of the letter is spelled as "蘭布達". Could that be an acceptable spelling? Is something like "维基蘭布達" totally unacceptable? --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 20:46, 5 October 2020 (UTC)Reply
This does not tell what the project is about.--GZWDer (talk) 21:06, 5 October 2020 (UTC)Reply
Has this been discussed by other Chinese-speaking Wikimedians? --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 06:43, 6 October 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Amire80: not a user:慎言慎行老法师寫維基?寫個屁! 06:54, 9 October 2020 (UTC)Reply

Name principles

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I'd actually say that the name and the logo are not that important, and development work can start without them.

Nevertheless, if people are proposing names, there must be some principles in these proposals.

So, Abstract Wikipedia doesn't quite need a name at all, according to what the current page says, because it's just the development project, and eventually the name will be gone and the project will be merged with Wikidata. (My understanding is that in one way or another it will be merged with all the Wikimedia wikis, actually.)

So let's talk about Wikilambda.

Here are the principles I can think of, although there are probably more, and everyone is welcome to propose something different:

  • It shouldn't have a "-pedia" element, because even though the project is targeted mainly at Wikipedia, its output will be usable in all wikis.
  • It must be reasonably translatable. Either as a brand name that is just transliterated, or as a totally translatable name. The "wiki" element in our projects is usually not translated, but the other part sometimes is. The "-pedia" part in "Wikipedia" is usually not translated, although maybe it is translated to some languages. "-data", "-source", "-voyage", "-species", "-books", "-news" and "Commons" are usually translated, at least to some languages.
    Added clarification on September 13: This means, among other things, that the name should not include wordplay that only works in English or any other particular language.
  • If it will be more on the transliteration side, then it must be at least easy to transliterate.
  • It must be copyrightable, which means that it must be unique and not too generic.
  • It doesn't have to begin with "wiki", but most of our projects do begin with "wiki", so maybe this one should, too.
  • While it doesn't have to, it should be at least partly obvious what does the project do from its name.

In this regard, "Wikilambda" is perhaps not perfect, but not bad either. It's not very good with the last point, because most people are not familiar with Lambda calculus, but perhaps this project is not really for most people in the first place. Or maybe it is, I'm not sure. With the rest of the principles it's pretty OK: easily transliterable (many written languages have standardized names for Greek letters), unique, begins with wiki. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 19:34, 3 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

+1 to all of this. --Yair rand (talk) 06:35, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
@Amire80: I agree with most points; however, concerning "the name should not include wordplay that only works in English or any other particular language", I think it is okay if the wordplay is not the main characteristic of the name. For example, "Wiktionary" is a wordplay, but is translated like "Wikidictionary" into German and Russian, which is not a problem. Also, with "[i]t must be copyrightable", you probably mean it could be registered as a trademark. Names like "Wikipedia" are not subject to copyright, they are just words. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 18:27, 20 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

More suggestions from Aharoni

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So, as I wrote above, I think that Wikilambda is not bad. But I can think of a few other names:

Wikicode
Advantages: Let's be real, most of the content in this project will actually be code in Lua, JavaScript, advanced wikitext, and perhaps other languages.
Disadvantages: May scare away people who aren't developers.
Wikiglobal
Advantages: It is clear that this wiki provides global functionality. Probably easy to translate.
Disadvantages: There are at least three more global wikis: Commons, Wikidata, and Meta (user pages and user scripts). Also, "global" is an adjective, and may sound not too nice in translation.
Wikiglobe
Advantages: Similar to "Wikiglobal", but not an adjective (see above).
Disadvantages: Sounds like it's about geography.
Wikitemplates
Advantages: Clearly expresses at least one of the intended functionalities—"A cross-wiki repository to share templates and modules between the WMF projects", and close enough to the other functionalities. "Template" is already translated to a lot of languages.
Disadvantages: Modules are related to templates, but distinct. And constructors are even more different.
Wikirepo
Advantages: Clearly expresses what it is: a repository. Unique.
Disadvantages: Sounds a bit too techy. In some languages, may be too similar to the name of Commons.
Wikiuniverse
Advantages: Probably easy to translate Expresses the universality, even beyond the globe :)
Disadvantages: Can make people think it's about astronomy.
Wikishare
Advantages: Clearly expresses that it's a shared place for lots of things.
Disadvantages: Will be a nightmare to translate to Hebrew because that's how we translated "WikiCommons" long ago. But we'll deal :)

I am not particularly attached to any of these names. Feel free to use them or reject them. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 07:01, 4 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

I'd be concerned that Wikicode would be confused with Mediawiki. --Yair rand (talk) 06:35, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

Some other names

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Here's a couple of names i thought might be good:

  • Wikisum - As in 'sum of all knowledge'
  • Wikibabel - Referring to the Tower of Babel[:wp] , and also to the babel fish in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
  • Wikiversal - A portmanteau of 'Wiki' and 'universal'
  • Wikitolk - 'tolk' means 'interpreter' in Dutch, and is pronounced like 'talk', which refers back to the multilingual aspect of the whole project
  • Wikiglot - As in 'polyglot'

From all the proposals i've read i like 'Wikirosetta' or 'Wikisetta' the most, because it refers to the Rosetta stone, which is a lovely metaphor for the project. 'Wikilambda' is too nerdy in my opinion and will undoubtedly lead to many misspellings. 'Abstract Wikipedia' and a couple of other proposals (like 'Multilingual Wikipedia' or 'Translingual Wikipedia') are a bit too descriptive, and don't have the 'wiki' prefix. Husky (talk) 21:55, 4 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

WikiWords and WW

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Visually I am strongly for WikiWords and WW (as short version). It also makes sense in terms of meaning I think... Advantages:

  1. WORD is the single distinct conceptual unit of language.
  2. this is what is likely easy to translate across languages.
  3. Written with capitalized W is adding focus to CamilleCase writing of historic WikiWiki
  4. short version would be WW which is just aWesome as a sign :-)

Disadvantages:

  1. WikiWord (singular) is already used since the dawn of Wikis https://wiki.c2.com/?WikiWord
  2. WWW is fairly similar and already well established since the dawn of WorldWideWeb

Not sure, but maybe with WikiWORDS and wW writting style issues could help with distinctions being resolved visually. Zblace (talk) 09:43, 5 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

Category:Lambda calculus (Q8581097)

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Seriously, though (?)... How can a project named after anonymous function have a name? It can only be project goal (Q4503831). Curiously, if you segment 4503831 as follows: 450-3-83-1 (und warum denn nicht?), Wikidata will give you: mind life MediaWiki Universe.--GrounderUK (talk) 14:54, 12 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

WikiMaplet (wiki ( Q171)maplet ( Q6754055))?

As I have said elsewhere, by analogy with infobox, I might call the concrete delivery of MediaWiki wikitext for a given Wikidata item infotext. If infoboxes are the remit of WikiProject Infoboxes, then infotext would be the remit of WikiProject Infotexts (I feel the plural is necessary here). There is, of course, always a risk that someone hearing of such a project would guess what it is supposed to deliver ( goal), but I could live with that.--GrounderUK (talk) 01:29, 8 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

Wikirosseta is my pick

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@Denny: @Deryck Chan: @Seemplez: @GoEThe: @Pigsonthewing: @Brevity: I believe that Wikirosseta is the best name because it is the easiest to pronounce in all languages and serves as the rosseta stone for wikipedia (one text for all languages!) Therefore I have created a draft logo for it here I wanted to boil down the concept of wikirosseta down to its basic components. It features 3 different patterned lines, each representing very different languages, each on one single tablet. Hope you like it Eltomas2003 (talk) 15:13, 9 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Eltomas2003:In some languages, WikiΖeta might link the Rosetta Stone ( Q48584)[:wp] to the Greek letter for ΖID and ΖObject. You could easily rotate your red line... Pretty stylish logo!--GrounderUK (talk) 14:54, 12 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
@GrounderUK: Thank you for that comment, well my logo is a draft/concept that could be refined by the community. Wikizeta is just a nickname, Wikirosseta should be official because it is easy and quick to pronounce in all languages. Eltomas2003 (talk) 17:14, 12 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
@Eltomas2003: but clearly spelling of "Rosetta" is a problem for many! @GrounderUK: WikiΖeta actually sounds pretty good to me. Maybe we could have two parts, a WikiLambda for the underlying functions/modules/templates wiki, and WikiZeta for the place where people create actual multilingual encyclopedic entries? ArthurPSmith (talk) 14:16, 14 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
@ArthurPSmith: @GrounderUK: That's cool but let's compromise, let's spell Wikiroseta without the extra t for wikiroseta!Eltomas2003 (talk) 19:18, 14 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

Portmanteau Explorer

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I’ve made good experiences naming a few things using this pun generator. Haven’t been quite as successful for this specific task so far, but please give it a try.

WikiZinfo

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WikiΖinfo is easier to read and easier to say than Wikiinfo (epenthesis ( Q878035) [:wΖ]). Here, I am using a capital ζ, but any Z will do.

@GrounderUK: Not necessarily - the pronunciation of Latin Z / Greek Ζ is unstable between languages. Also, many languages have a phonemic glottal stop (making Wiki'info possible) but no Z-S distinction. Deryck C. 11:14, 15 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
@Deryck Chan: Thanks, those are good points. I was certainly focusing on readability. I am aware of variabilty in pronunciation of Z but it's not something that troubles me as much as the prevalent (?) aversion to successive identical vowels. So... "Wiki?info", generally, where the ? could be any string that is not null and does not end with i, l or other essentially vertical character.

Wiki+Ζ+info

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Wiki+Ζ+in+f+o

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Abstract Wikipedia will just be part of Wikidata?

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This is asserted in the text, but I don't see how that would work. Wikidata emphasizes structured content in statements that can be translated (roughly, or precisely with some reifications) as semantic web "triples" - "subject" "predicate" (property) "object". The purpose of Abstract Wikipedia though is to generate encyclopedic narrative text (independent of language) and I don't see that being able to be shoehorned into the Wikidata model. Narrative text may have individual sentences that resemble Wikidata statements, but it also has an overarching structure: sequencing and grouping statements in a logical order, providing headings and paragraphs, including images and tables, etc. I guess we still have a lot of detail to work out here, but it seems to me this will require its own UI for display and editing that's different both from the existing Wikipedias and from Wikilambda, and is not how Wikidata works. ArthurPSmith (talk) 14:28, 14 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

@ArthurPSmith: I tend to agree. This is not really about the name of the thing, so perhaps this is not the right place to discuss it. Please feel free to move my reply with your comment if you find a better place for it.
This looks to me like "architectural overlap"; there are shades of grey and the boundary is fuzzy but that doesn't look good on a diagram. Since the Architecture assumes Wikidata as the solution, let's do the opposite. In any Wikipedia (or, more generally, any language-specific Wikimedia project), there shall exist the capability to collaborate on generalised forms of expression for Wikidata Content. I call these "InfoTexts", and you might like to think of them as "narrative infoboxes". To me, it is an open question whether InfoTexts are monolingual, multilingual or translingual (language neutral). I expect we will have all of these and more; these are our shades of grey. As things develop, progress may be made by specialisation of the more general or by generalisation of the more specific, which is what already happens with templates and modules.
That said, the first phase of the project aims to provide a global repository for functions. Even project-specific functions could find a home there, and it is not an unreasonable assumption that cross-project and multilingual functions would be expected to reside there (we'll see). The implementation details are still unclear, but Wikidata would provide a catalogue for these functions and probably support their multilingual facets, just as it indexes all Wikimedia projects in a multilingual way. Functions will be handled differently from Wikidata Items, just as Lexemes already are. So I suppose the question comes down to this: if the encyclopedic claims are in Wikidata and the functions are in Wikidata and the lexemes are in Wikidata, what isn't? And where could it be?
This comes back to your "overarching structure". It seems entirely plausible to me that different projects will have different models for the sort of articles (or sections) that they would want to be supplied by default for non-existent articles (or sections). (I would call these "templates" if that didn't already have a more particular meaning here; elsewhere I referred to them as "ArticleSkeletons".) That means that the community is defining a content-free framework for the presentation of Wikidata content. Maybe these would be owned and controlled by the projects (which seems inevitable, to me) and how we choose to do this is up to us. Perhaps the true sign of the success of this project is that we naturally choose to compose model articles (or sections) using the capabilities provided by this project. I think we will because even fairly simple InfoTexts have a nested structure; if you carry on nesting InfoTexts within more and more overarching structures, you end up with an InfoText for a whole section (or article, or suite of articles, or...)--GrounderUK (talk) 13:25, 21 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
We came back to this topic when discussing Hybrid article.

Name choice

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Excuse my impatience, but is there any timeframe defined for the choice of the name for the project, since it's the first task of the project? Is it too soon? --Luk3 (talk) 03:32, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Name suggest

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Wikidatabs
Tractwiki
Wikitract
Abswiki
Wikiabs
Wikisod(wiki support of wiki data(sod))
Tbiw (talk) 22:13, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

Wikipedia also can't be translated into some other languages.Tbiw (talk) 21:30, 29 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Name idea: Wikipedia Zero

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I'd like to propose the name Wikipedia Zero for a few reasons:

  • It reflects the fact that it is, ultimately, Wikipedia stripped down to the raw data.
  • It notes that it is a wiki, so anyone can edit it, and that it is an encyclopedia, containing knowledge.
  • It reflects that all of its information is taken from Wikidata, which is licensed under CC0.
  • It allows it to be thought of as Wikipedia #0, if English Wikipedia is Wikipedia #1 et al.

Let me know what you all think. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 19:39, 13 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Brainulator9: Ah, that name was already used for something else: wmf:Wikipedia Zero. --Yair rand (talk) 22:34, 13 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
@Yair rand: Thank you for telling me about that. Oh, well. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 01:13, 14 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Wikipedia Zero no longer exists. Still, it is a bad idea to reuse the name.--GZWDer (talk) 04:41, 14 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Yes, there was a thing called "Wikipedia Zero", which no longer exists. Fun fact, however: When Wikidata started, there was another project called "Wikidata", which was still active! In fact, it is still somewhat active in 2020, although under a new name: mw:Extension:WikiLexicalData. And no, it's not the same project as mw:Extension:WikibaseLexeme, although the functionality is kind of similar.
Naming things is hard. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 11:14, 13 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Suggestions by GH

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How about one of the following:

  • Structural Wikipedia
  • Structure Wikipedia
  • Structuralpedia
  • Wikigenerator
  • Wikistructure
  • Wikiinfo
  • Wikibasic
  • Wikibase (as in database, methinks?)
  • Wikipedia Generator
  • Basic Wikipedia
  • WikiAI

That's all for now. George Ho (talk) 22:30, 15 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

@George Ho: These seem to be proposals for names for the wrong thing. The process is seeking a name for the wiki of functions ("Wikilambda"), not the "Abstract Wikipedia". --Yair rand (talk) 22:57, 15 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
After looking at mockup images, and looking at the word "Wiktionary", I guess I should be a little more general then. BTW, struck down most suggestions. George Ho (talk) 23:32, 15 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Wikibase is also unfeasible, because that's already used for mw:Extension:Wikibase (part of the software that drives Wikidata). There is a conflict with https://wikiinfo.toolforge.org but that's not insurmountable. I'll migrate these (minus Wikibase) into the new system tomorrow. Thanks, both! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:08, 16 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Naming process - details

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Hi all. The details of the Re-naming process for the project currently known as Wikilambda are now at Abstract Wikipedia/Wiki of functions naming contest. I'd appreciate your feedback! I've added some additional notes on the talkpage there, too.

I've created subpages for each of the proposals in order to enable the voting gadget to work, and to enable random-order shuffling once voting begins.

I'll copy across some of the comments from above, into those subpages, over the next few days. Or you are welcome to do so yourselves! And of course please add new comments there in the future.

I've hesitantly left out a few entries. Specifically, any proposals that included the word "Wikipedia" because those ideas don't fit the criteria that was implied at the top of Abstract Wikipedia/Name and now more clearly explained at Abstract Wikipedia/Wiki of functions naming contest#Name proposal criteria. I've also left out the joke entry ("'Pedia McPediaface") and the unfeasible proposals regarding re-use of existing or prior project names ("Wikifranca", "Nupedia", "Wikimedia Library", "Wikipedia Zero"), and the combination name that applies more to Abstract Wikipedia ("Wikidata Abstract Content"). If you think we should still include any of those anyway, please comment here with details.

Thanks as always for your brainstorming, insights, feedback, and collaboration. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:20, 15 September 2020 (UTC)Reply