Forum:Sitename discussion

Hello, fellow Straw Hats! I'm just a random lurker who wants to get something off his chest. Let's just get started, shall we?

Sitename inconsistency
I'm not terribly smart, so something as minor as this has actually confused me for quite some time now. Just what is the name of this wiki? One Piece Wiki? One Piece Encyclopedia? "One Piece Wiki, the One Piece Encyclopedia"? Or perhaps "One Piece Encyclopedia, the One Piece Wiki"? I've seen all of those thrown around at some point; there doesn't seem to be a real consensus on what the name of this wiki is, from my narrow POV that is.
 * "One Piece Wiki" vs "One Piece Encyclopedia"

On one hand, the wiki wordmark/logo, as clear as day, says "One Piece Wiki", and that's typically what us viewers refer to the wiki as. On the other hand, the project namespace and wiki sitename are both under "One Piece Encyclopedia". Maybe I'm missing something, as I'm not an editor here, but those seem like two different names used inconsistently in all kinds of contexts. I reckon this inconsistency isn't much a problem, so much as it is a nitpick, but it was something I wanted to highlight, nonetheless.

I'd also like to note that, in my opinion, "One Piece Encyclopedia" is an awfully long name for a wiki or Project namespace.

Proposal
Look, I know I'm just a random fodder with no credibility here, and I realize what I'm about to say is a bit... wide in scope; i.e., this will likely be shot down in an instant and that's fine, but... #YOLO, and I truly feel this would be refreshing, and give the wiki more uniqueness/distinction and prestige in a way, if you get my drift. Let's just cut to the case.

This idea was spawned from the Project:Overview page. I'll be honest, I like endeavors like the one the Overview page alludes to -- the ultimate goal of this wiki, as stated on that page, seems to be providing fans with a reliable and informative repository of One Piece information, helping to raise a deserving series to the status of other great franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek, Muppets, etc. I can dig that.
 * New sitename

It got me thinking: What do some popular wikis pertaining to other highly acclaimed and popular franchises have in common? Most wikis follow the template of "x Wiki", where x is simply the name of the franchise a wiki pertains to. That's cool and all, and "One Piece Wiki" does have a sort of sting and simplicity to it that I like, but a good majority of the really notable wikis are so because of their distinctive names. For example:
 * DC Database/Marvel Database, the respective DC and Marvel encyclopedias
 * Bulbapedia, the Pokémon encyclopedia
 * Wookieepedia, the Star Wars encyclopedia
 * Memory Alpha, the Star Trek encyclopedia
 * Tolkien Gateway, the Lord of the Rings/J.R.R. Tolkien encyclopedia
 * The Vault, the Fallout encyclopedia
 * Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages (UESP), the Elder Scrolls encyclopedia
 * Combine OverWiki, the Half-Life encyclopedia
 * Wowpedia, the World of Warcraft encyclopedia

They are all big-name wikis pertaining to series as wide in scope as One Piece (... okay, save for maybe Combine OverWiki, but you gotta' admit "Combine OverWiki" is more original and unique than "Half-Life Wiki") and are easily distinguished throughout the interwebs by their distinctive names. As a random scrub who wants to see this wiki thrive, I feel the wiki would only benefit from a new name.

But these are all just the ramblings of a bored One Piece Wiki lurker. Hope I don't stir up too much trouble and maybe provided some kind of food for thought for you Straw Hats. 184.6.46.63 05:44, August 10, 2016 (UTC)

Discussion
I personally think we should ditch "One Piece Encyclopedia" and just stick with "One Piece Wiki", as that's what most site viewers refer to us as. As for the new sitename proposal, that's really just food for thought, as I know it'll likely be turned down, but I did come up with a few ideas: Just a few ideas. I'm sure someone has a much better, more original and fitting name idea than I do... though I am kind of feeling the first one. /sarcasm 184.6.46.63 07:36, August 10, 2016 (UTC)
 * Monkey D. Wiki
 * Grand Line Wiki
 * Gomupedia
 * Gomu Gomu Wiki
 * Oharapedia
 * Something using "Poneglyph", maybe?
 * Poneglypedia
 * Poneglyph Wiki

I think complex wikia names really beat the purpose. It's supposed to be an encyclopedia (or in the case of this site a wikipedia) which by definition is a site where knowledge and information about a certain subject are gathered. So you could consider it a more "formal" site and not a "casual" one. Renaming it to a weird name just to be "unique" is the least of the concerns of a wikia site since we need a name painfully obvious explaining in the site's title 100% of the content the reader will find in this site: "One Piece Wiki" ---> a wikipedia for one piece. Givin it a name like Chopperpedia for example would make no sense since the title gets to something really special and not something general. The fact that other sites made a mistake doesnt mean we need to do it as well just to be "unique". A wikia is not a fashion show, to compete for the most fabulous name :D Dinosel (talk) 07:41, August 10, 2016 (UTC)
 * Haha, you do make a sound point. This ain't no fashion show and "One Piece Wiki" does do a better job of being general. Can't really argue there. I wouldn't call the unique names of other highly popular, acclaimed wikis a 'mistake', though; they all seem to be doing very well in their spheres, in spite of their unique, more specific names. 184.6.46.63 07:54, August 10, 2016 (UTC)

Technically speaking, everything that doesn't contain "One Piece" is a bad choice in terms of SEO. All those big wikis you listed were founded long ago when people didn't really care/know about these things and now they are so big and well known that doesn't really matter anymore. You can argue that applies to us as well, but my point is that if you search "one piece" on google you will find us, while if we were called something like "Oharapedia" I wouldn't be so sure we would be in the same top results.

The current "sitename" is what  is, currently "", and it's what defines the   namespace (like One Piece Encyclopedia:Guidebook). So you can say "One Piece Encyclopedia" is the name of the wiki while "One Piece Wiki" it's what we are, meaning the common name. We could change it to simply "One Piece Wiki" for consistency, but I don't think makes too much of a difference.

How about One Piecepedia? Or Arlong Park Wiki like I tried to name it as such 10 years ago?

Joekido (talk) 09:42, August 10, 2016 (UTC)

Help:Sitename. -pedia naming is generally advised against. Personally I'll leave it as it is or at best change it to One Piece Wiki.

One Piece Encyclopedia or One Piece Wiki Meshack (talk) 10:00, August 10, 2016 (UTC)

"Arlong Park Wiki"... The day I officially resign from the Wiki business. Anyway, we're "The One Piece Wiki, the One Piece Encyclopedia". 12:17, August 10, 2016 (UTC)

We're forced to be One Piece Wiki because every single one of these sites is a wiki.

If we had to change - which we don't - then I suppose One Piece Wiki is fine to be the official name instead of One Piece Encyclopedia. But none of these nonsense names.

14:15, August 10, 2016 (UTC)

If "Kaidopedia" is out of the question then changing it all to just "One Piece Wiki" is fine with me. Kaido King of the Beasts (talk) 14:59, August 10, 2016 (UTC)

Then let's just call it One Piece Wiki then

Joekido (talk) 15:29, August 10, 2016 (UTC)

As supernova said, we don't really have to change tbh...

Well, it seems most of the other Straw Hats here would prefer that the sitename be changed to "One Piece Wiki". If -pedia naming really is advised against, from an SEO standpoint, then I can't help but think that this sitename inconsistency is at least having some adverse effect on the wiki's SEO ("One Piece Encyclopedia), even if only a minor one. From that POV, "One Piece Wiki" would be more stable, in a way, IMO, as that really is what most people think of when they think of this site; not "One Piece Encyclopedia", in my experience at least; short, general and sweet. ... Like Ryuzaki said, "One Piece Wiki, the One Piece encyclopedia" would be nice.

The new sitename thing was just a secondary proposal. I knew it would probably be shot down, because all of the alternative names I came up with were so awesome awful lol.

You gotta' admit, Monkey D. Wiki would be nice, though. (I kid, I kid; it's an awful name, I know) 184.6.46.63 16:42, August 10, 2016 (UTC)

So, we done here?

20:25, August 10, 2016 (UTC)

"If -pedia naming really is advised against" - you are misunderstanding, it's not "something that ends with -pedia" the problem, it's the keywords used. If you use "One Piecepedia" the name does not contain "One Piece", therefore bot crawler (google and such) don't understand the "pun". They see a site named something that talks about something else. "One Piece Encyclopedia" is fine. Basically any "One Piece something" should be fine, as far as I understand. If you want to further investigate, ask w:User:SEOkitten (a staff member).

Hmm, that makes sense. I still think the uniformity of being recognized solely as "One Piece Wiki" would only help with SEO, though. There would be no inconsistence and the name would be shorter (in regard to the project namespace and ). Plus, it seems quite apparent that even the users of the wiki refer to the it by what seems to be its secondary name of "One Piece Wiki" atm, rather than "One Piece Encyclopedia" (going by the user pages I've perused). Based on that, and the fact that the general consensus seems to be "One Piece Wiki", I think a change is quite warranted.

Even the Italian One Piece Wiki you edit at, among most other interwikis, goes by "One Piece Wiki Italia" rather than "One Piece Encyclopedia Italia". 184.6.46.63 20:52, August 10, 2016 (UTC)

http://onepiece.wikia.com K. Guess we're done here. SeaTerror (talk) 22:51, August 10, 2016 (UTC)

Doesn't seem like a sitename change'll take place. I figured as much. Yupperdoodles, we're done here. 184.6.46.63 23:13, August 10, 2016 (UTC)

That's because what you're saying now is already the site name. So of course no name change is going to happen. SeaTerror (talk) 00:42, August 11, 2016 (UTC)

"One Piece Encyclopedia" is the current sitename. "One Piece Wiki" is currently only the common name. I'm proposing that "One Piece Wiki" be both the sitename and common name. For example:
 * returns.

It should reasonably return the common name, "One Piece Wiki", in my opinion. "One Piece Encyclopedia" is a bit lengthy and isn't even the name the wiki is referred to as; that's merely what the wiki is, not the actual common name of the site -- in the same sense that Avatar Wiki is an Avatar encyclopedia; Nukapedia a Fallout encyclopedia; Wookieepedia a Star Wars encyclopedia, etc. This is the only wiki I know of that uses "encyclopedia" in place of "wiki" in its sitename. It's not a serious problem or anything; it's just divisive and weird, IMO. ... But that's just little ole me.

Tldr: The sitename of a wiki, in my experience, has always been its common name. This wiki is literally the only wiki I've come across with two different names.

But what do I know lmao? I'm just an anonymous scrub. 184.6.46.63 01:01, August 11, 2016 (UTC)

I just literally linked the URL. SeaTerror (talk) 01:14, August 11, 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I saw that. The URL and sitename aren't quite the same thing, though. Whether the wiki's sitename remains One Piece Encyclopedia or changes to One Piece Wiki, Gol D. Wiki, Chopperpedia, Trafalgar LaWiki, or whatever, the URL will remain http://onepiece.wikia.com; it'll always remain distinct from the sitename.

A good example of this distinction is Wookieepedia (the sitename) being situated at http://starwars.wikia.com (the URL). They could change the sitename to Lightsaberpedia if they wanted, and the URL would remain the same. 184.6.46.63 01:36, August 11, 2016 (UTC)

If it ain't broke, don't fix it 05:58, August 11, 2016 (UTC)

This is precisely why I proposed this anonymously, rather than actually logging in and contributing to the wiki; you all have a slight aversion to uniformity and utmost correction, honestly no different than most wikis; a more lax and "good enough" mentality that I simply am not used to. That's okay, though. You all are right -- there really is nothing broken warranting a fix, per se. The wiki's I've edited at are simply much more 'strict' with issues even as minute as this one -- perfectionist/OCD, in a way (which is arguably as bad as it is good lol), so things like this really do peeve me.

Nearly all of the interwikis for One Piece use the sitename "One Piece Wiki", rather than "One Piece Encyclopedia". All of the social media accounts for the wiki use "One Piece Wiki(a)". Nearly everyone on the wiki refers to the wiki as "One Piece Wiki". Yet the sitename is "One Piece Encyclopedia", for no real reason other than, as far as I know, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

But, I'm just repeating myself like a dumbass at this point. A beta cuck like me never stood a chance, I guess. It seems a change--even if as minor and inconsistency-correcting as this one--won't take place. That's what you all have seemingly decided, and I can't really argue with a community decision. It is what it is. ;) 184.6.46.63 02:29, August 12, 2016 (UTC)

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." - that means nothing and it's a terrible rule of thumb to follow. @ST: Sitename and URL are two different things that has nothing to do with each other.

I suppose what the anon is trying to say is that it's "One Piece Wiki, the encyclopedia about One Piece" rather then "One Piece Encyclopedia, the wiki about One Piece". It's definitely makes more sense after all, I would be ok with a renaming. I mean, even our logo says "One Piece Wiki" rather then Encyclopedia.

I guess we could just make "One Piece Wiki" the sitename, since no one calls it "One Piece Encyclopedia", not even our logo. 18:57, August 12, 2016 (UTC)

I'm all for changing the sitename to "One Piece Wiki" for consistency, since no one ever use "One Piece Encyclopedia", not even ourselves, and even our logos reflect that.

I'm also open to other suggestions as well (I'm sorry AWC, but I gotta shoot all of your suggestions down, although something with "Ponegylph" is admittedly a good idea.), but since we've been around so long and we're nearly unanimously called "One Piece Wiki" among the fans, I doubt whatever else we change to will gain traction. 19:21, August 12, 2016 (UTC)

The most that would need to be done is adding the word the after the word to since it is an encyclopedia so removing the word encyclopedia would be dumb. Also "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." is always a valid comment. SeaTerror (talk) 19:40, August 12, 2016 (UTC)

That's kind of like saying, "Wikipedia is a stupid name; with it being an encyclopedia and all, it should totally be named 'Encyclopedia' instead."

'Wiki' is used to designate Internet encyclopedias specifically. It conveys the idea of a "digital encyclopedia" just as well, if not better than, 'encyclopedia', so changing the sitename of a wiki to something including 'wiki', instead of 'encyclopedia'--as has been done with most credible Internet encyclopedias in existence--wouldn't be dumb at all, IMO. "LyricWiki" is named as such, rather than "LyricEncyclopedia", for a reason; "Runescape Wiki" instead of "Runescape Encyclopedia"; "Disney Wiki" instead of "Disney Encyclopedia"; "Avatar Wiki" instead of "Avatar Encyclopedia"; "Harry Potter Wiki" instead of "Harry Potter Encyclopedia", etc.

What's done here isn't common practice at all, and while there's nothing wrong with being different, there are reasons for the use of 'wiki' in place of 'encyclopedia' -- the shortened length of the sitename for one.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is a valid argument, but it's very rarely a good one. It only creates stagnancy tbh. There would be no kind of advancement on the wiki if that was the deciding argument against every potential change. There's nothing broken, true, but something doesn't need to be broken to be improved upon.

@Jademing: Dinosel gave a pretty good reason why it's probably a good idea to stick with "One Piece Wiki" (if you guys even change to that). Something with 'Poneglyph', or anything original really, would be nice, in my honest opinion, but it would take some time to gain traction. ... Though, I honestly think this problem would remedy itself pretty fast, because you guys are being hosted by an SEO powerhouse to begin with.

When The Vault left Wikia and moved to Curse, Nukapedia was born -- I guess they wanted to come up with a unique name of their own, rather than sticking with plain ole "Fallout Wiki". This was in 2011, so it's not a really long-standing name. You would think this would negatively affect Nukapedia's SEO, especially after going by "The Vault" for so long, right? Nope. Nukapedia still dominates in the Google results, not necessarily because the name is universally known, but because Wikia's SEO alone is really, really good (which is why that Mugiwara Franky guy who left and made onepiece.wikkii.net ultimately failed). And that's just the success of a wiki with direct competition. One Piece Wiki, on the other hand, has no real competition, as far as I know. I'm no expert on this at all, but a completely new sitename would still result in the wiki being the top Google result, because this is the only site on the Internet providing such content to begin with; the site's traffic wouldn't be directed anywhere else or anything, and the new name would begin to stick with time, just like with Nukapedia.

Tl;dr: Wikia's SEO is crazy good by default, and a name change only negatively affects a wiki if the wiki's traffic is directed somewhere else. With this being the only wiki of its kind--the only One Piece Wiki--I honestly don't think that would be a problem at all.

But, I'm really just rambling. I still think a new, unique name would be awesome, but at the moment, a change to at least "One Piece Wiki" in place of "One Piece Encyclopedia" would be much, much better, IMO. Plus, thinking of a unique name for this wiki seems pretty difficult, as "One Piece" already has so much meaning. 184.6.46.63 21:09, August 12, 2016 (UTC)

Sure, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is always a valid comment.

^ At least you tried. SeaTerror (talk) 23:55, August 12, 2016 (UTC)

I'm totally undecided about whether or not we should change the name. But right now, my question is do we even have the man/bot power that we even could rename it? So many articles fall under the OPE heading that would all need renames, every link hunted down and replaced. And would we have to worry about checking every template/template use that uses the  code?

Because I'm more worried about breaking a lot of stuff while trying to fix than arguing about "if it ain't broke don't fix it". 01:38, August 13, 2016 (UTC)

You all wouldn't have to rename those OPE articles. If you all change the sitename to "One Piece Wiki", the "One Piece Encyclopedia" heading in those articles should replace itself with "One Piece Wiki" on its own, as the Project: namespace heading is the sitename. (Thank God for inheritance.)


 * "The current "sitename" is what  is, currently "", and it's what defines the   namespace..."-Leviathan


 * The  namespace being all articles falling under the "One Piece Encyclopedia" header you're talking about.

The most you would have to do is change all in-text instances of "One Piece Encyclopedia" to "One Piece Wiki", and that wouldn't require much bot/manpower. I'm sure someone has a bot that could be commissioned to change every instance of "One Piece Encyclopedia" to "One Piece Wiki" or whatever, which wouldn't be as hard as it might initially seem, since you guys already refer to yourselves as "One Piece Wiki" quite a bit anyhow.

I doubt a bot run would result in any more than 30 edits, depending how the bot owner goes about achieving this. 184.6.46.63 03:17, August 13, 2016 (UTC)

If name suggestions are still open, I think "Mugiwarapedia", "Straw Hat Pe D. Ia", or "Condorianopedia" would all make for excellent sitenames that no one would ever make fun of.

Jokes aside, I'd mostly unironically support the name "Kaizokupedia" or "Poneglypedia" - failing that, I'm down for making "One Piece Wiki" our official name.--Xilinoc (talk) 20:58, August 13, 2016 (UTC)


 * Lots of words, nothing really being said. So we've got three choices here.


 * Keep it as it is.


 * Change it to One Piece Wikia


 * Change it to something new


 * Now I've made my stance clear, but should we just poll this?


 * 16:59, August 14, 2016 (UTC)

"One Piece Wiki" not Wikia.

Same difference. 17:04, August 14, 2016 (UTC)

Wiki is what our logo calls it. Anyway might as well poll since this'll go nowhere otherwise. 17:07, August 14, 2016 (UTC)

Sounds good. I'll set up a test poll.

17:18, August 14, 2016 (UTC)

It's not the same thing. Anyway, I specified in the poll it's about  because "official name" seems something abstract. We are talking about a specific variable here, which is.

Can I make one request? Once it finished, if something new wins, let's set up a time for the change to happen when some people can help monitor everything. Let's not just instantly start changing stuff all over with whoever gets their hands on it first. I think a smooth transition should be valued over an instant one. 14:03, August 16, 2016 (UTC)

I should stress more that any "new name" (something different then "One Piece Wiki/Encyclopedia") is objectively a bad choice.

I agree entirely with Levi on that last point. What about wiki vs. wikia? Is there any logical argument to prefer wiki? 14:33, August 16, 2016 (UTC)

"Wikia" is the company's name. "Wiki" is what we are. Would you use, for example, "One Piece Wikipedia"? No? Then you wouldn't use "One Piece Wikia" for the same reason. Wikia tried to promoted the use of "Wikia" as synonymous of wiki (many users already do that), but I'm not sure if they are doing that anymore and most importantly they surely not forcing it on us.

Exactly what Leviathan said (in regard to wikia vs wiki). A "wikia" is just Wikia, Inc.'s poor attempt at creating their own synonym to "wiki". "x Wikia" wikis are just terribly named and redundant, IMO; for example, the site would literally show up as "One Piece Wikia - Wikia" in the Google results. It's like the fact we edit on their platform and bring traffic to them isn't enough. So, is there any logical reason to prefer one over the other? No, not really. It's more of a rule of thumb that everyone follows, rather than law... It's why the social media name for this wiki ("One Piece Wikia") gives me a bowel movement every time.

Ultimately, "One Piece Wikia" is simply not the name of this wiki. It's very blatantly "One Piece Wiki". I've honestly never witnessed so much inconsistency in a site's name in my life.

I was going to argue that "any new name is objectively a bad choice" is an overstatement spawned from paranoia on Wikia's end and one proven wrong before (that wiki is doing just fine), but whatever. With two notable users already directly opposing the idea, I feel the new name option has pretty much already been ruled out. Uniformity under the name "One Piece Wiki" would be just as nice, but I do still feel a new name would be fresh and more memorable. Kinda' sucks that it's already pretty much been ruled out.

I honestly don't see why the name form ", the One Piece Wiki" wouldn't work. It works swimmingly for Nukapedia (e.g. "Nukapedia, the Fallout Wiki"). You still keep the "x Wiki" name for SEO purposes while also using a unique name; Nukapedia still shows up on Google as "Fallout Wiki - Wikia".

/rant. Figured I'd post again, seeing as how I won't be participating in the voting process lol. 184.6.46.63 16:02, August 16, 2016 (UTC)

Well I didn't say how much bad that would be so I could argue that mine wasn't an overstatement (it can be something small as well big). I'd like to argue that those "famous wikis" are bad/misleading examples since the fact that those wikis are "successful" has nothing to do with the fact they have an "unique name" or rather you cannot say how much that influenced (in a good or bad way) their success. Most likely, as already stated, it's just relevant for SEO. You can argue that a better SEO "speed up" the growing rate of wiki, but it's not like we or them are "growing wikis"... you get my point. Ultimately the main point of the discussion is that a "unique name" is more functional to attract people that search for us while a generic name work best for people who search for One Piece and find us. That's the main difference and I do not think the majority of people search for us but rather search for information about One Piece and ultimately find us since we are one of the best sources of information.

The only case where I think a "unique name" would a very good idea if not a necessity would be if you want to distinguish yourself from others. For example, that's the case for a forum: since there are many One Piece forums a "One Piece Forum" wouldn't exactly work, that's why a name such as "Arlong Park Forum" could have build a "reputation" for itself. But in our case we are the only One Piece wiki, or rather any other wikis (be on Wikia or somewhere else) are a non-factor. We have basically the monopoly.

There is also the issue that with a unique name you are tying yourself with a specific character/thing and therefore you bring in a lot of "personal preferences".