[ckan-discuss] Renaming ckan.net to thedatahub.org

Thu Jun 23 02:58:09 BST 2011

I think renaming CKAN.net would be beneficial. The "how do you spell that?"
question is unrelenting. There's something clearly offputting to some of the
target audience. But, it's probably true that "datahub" and close variants
would be fairly poor trade marks. It's heavily overloaded and would lead to
poor SEO. However, it's clear that CKAN.net's aim is the be the connection
point for the world's data.

The good aspects of CKAN are its high distinctiveness. The best trade marks
don't mean anything when they're created.

I'm having a difficult time thinking of variations of hub, data, centre,
etc. Here are some pointers for others if/they like names. Rather than a
network analogy, here are some other ways of thinking of ckan.net's role:

 - as a catalyst or an accelerant. We speed analysts' jobs by making things
easier to find. The lubricant for turning data to information.
 - as infrastructure. We're the scaffold behind data analysis.
 - as a connector. We're acting as a diplomat/courier between providers and
consumers
 - as a democratiser, providing everyone access to the world's data.

I have started thinking of other marks at
http://okfnpad.org/CKAN-net-renaming

On 23 June 2011 09:14, Jason Kitcat <jason.kitcat at okfn.org> wrote:

> +1 on rename, for all the reasons you suggest.
>
> All the best,
> Jason
>
> On 21 Jun 2011, at 22:47, Rufus Pollock wrote:
>
> > Hi All,
> >
> > I'd like to suggest renaming ckan.net to thedatahub.org. Reasons:
> >
> > 1. Reduce confusion between software and the site/community. People
> > frequently tell me they get confused on this and at the moment one has
> > to constantly qualify to say something like "CKAN Software" or the
> > "CKAN site". This is made worse by having software at ckan.org and
> > primary community site at ckan.net.
> >
> > 2. CKAN is completely opaque as a name to most people. Talking with
> > people, especially people not that familiar with CKAN and associated
> > ideas, it's clear that CKAN is a poor name (people explicitly say
> > this): a) it's not clear how to spell it b) it's not clear what kind
> > of site it is.
> >
> > NB: this second issue could also be true of the software (which we
> > don't plan to rename). However, having 'odd' names for software isn't
> > such a problem as opaque names for software are common and the target
> > community is much more specialized and comprehending of the background
> > (CPAN, CRAN etc). But it is a problem for the site where we hope
> > general users (or at least data wranglers) will come.
> >
> > Please let me know your +1 / -1 / +0 / -0 ...
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Rufus
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > ckan-discuss mailing list
> > ckan-discuss at lists.okfn.org
> > http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/ckan-discuss
>
> --
> Jason Kitcat
> Foundation Coordinator
> The Open Knowledge Foundation
>
> +44 (0) 7956 886 508
>
> http://www.okfn.org
> http://twitter.com/jasonkitcat
>
>
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>
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