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

[Rufus Pollock]

This is the pad from last discussion of this:

<http://ckan.okfnpad.org/meta>

May wish to reuse (but may not).

Rufus

On 23 June 2011 02:58, Tim McNamara <paperless at timmcnamara.co.nz> wrote:
> 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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