Forum:What's in a name?

Forums: Index → Community Proposal → What's in a name?

Back on Halopedia, Subtank pointed out that there's already a Wikia equivalent of this wiki, and it is also called Destinypedia. She also argues that our name needs to be something a little more unique, like Memory Alpha for Star Trek's wiki. I agree, but currently don't see anything topical enough to change this wiki's name to; there's just not enough canon yet. However, I'd agree with a name change later. What do you guys say?

Or we could make them change their name! To war!!! >:C Tuckerscreator (talk) 02:53, 18 February 2013 (EST)

I'll copypasta my response: I'm open to ideas I can get the .com domain for. I reached-out to them and got mostly no response and one nasty response, and that didn't make me feel sympathetic or anything. I figured it would just be something like minecraftwiki.net and minecraft.wikia.com - just live our lives separately even if the name is the same. Also, their SITENAME is "Destiny Wiki" (as is destiny.wikia.com). If I changed Destinypedia's SITENAME to Destiny Wiki then there would be three with SITENAME Destiny Wiki, and two with a Destinypedia URL. I like that we own the .com and our stuff matches. Wikia's got two Destiny wikis and their legit ones are usually "game-name".wikia.com AKA destiny.wikia.com. I wouldn't be surprised if they end up with just one called "Destiny Wiki" at destiny.wikia.com somehow. Anyways, I say keep an open-mind to new names and if I can snag a good domain name for it then that's something to consider. --Porplemontage (talk) 03:00, 18 February 2013 (EST)

Maybe Travelerpedia? But then we would probably cofuse people who want to go hiking...(btw not kidding) Guardianpedia? What other things have been named that are important to the series? Also, I just had a "Samus is a girl?!" moment about subtank :) CraZboy557 (talk) 07:23, 18 February 2013 (EST)

I think we should keep it at Destinypedia for the moment. Not having the name of the game inside the wiki/pedia name is weird. It will also take allot more SEO skills to get us listed correctly in Google since the name doesn't contain 'Destiny'. We also need to make sure that if people search "Destiny Wiki" they get us, which is not the case at the moment. Sgtfrankieboy (talk) 07:35, 18 February 2013 (EST)

[copy-paste] Might I suggest destinywiki.net as the domain name: .net because the game is described as a MMORPG-FPS title and it requires constant network for the game to work... get it? Hah... guess not... never mind. Anyway, with the suggestion in mind, we could also have some unique wiki name, maybe Ad Astra, to distinct ourselves from the rest of the "competing wikis" (the two wikis in Wikia are competing with one another). It would definitely stick in the minds of players when they see the motto "Per Audacia Ad Astra"... plus, we can even use that as our wiki motto (and wiki logo). Double win! Also, make sure to get better article enforcement given what we've experienced these past few years as an independent wiki. Quality over Quantity, Accuracy/Concise over Speculation/Rumour, and of all thing... CITATIONs! Wouldn't want to repeat the ancient issues this wiki has experienced in the early days. Good luck with the wiki! — subtank 02:30, 19 February 2013 (EST)

I don't know that Adastraian or whatever is much better, plus we'd be fighting for Google space with a lot of other companies/organizations named Ad Astra (as opposed to just one other site named Destinypedia). I just thought of Destipedia/Destipedian, but I'm not sure about it. We could keep Destinypedia but call ourselves Destipedians... --Porplemontage (talk) 04:06, 19 February 2013 (EST)

You don't necessarily have to call the users of a particular wiki after the wiki name. Since we're aiming for uniqueness (and simplicity in so far that it clicks in reader's mind), we could simply refer ourselves as "Guardians" since we're playing as one in the game (unless we can play as one of the enemy factions). To clarify in bulletpoints:

• Domain name: either destiny-wiki.net, destinywiki.org (which redirects to destinypedia.com), or destiny-wiki.com. I would prefer the first one but the second one would work out well.
• Wiki name: either Ad Astra, Destiny Wiki or {whatever stands out in the game}
• Title for users of the wiki: Guardians (unless the game/someone-else provides something better)

Or.... Destiny's Child... really like this one. — subtank 04:35, 19 February 2013 (EST)

Being a Guardian would be cool. Always use the DMR. This is craZboy557, signing off. 12:25, 19 February 2013 (EST)

Hi guys, i'm just wondering why we called the site Destinypedia in the first place. I mean in the 'Destinypedia's about page' it says that they've been using the name since December 2011? -DarkKnight

Because the owner of this site is also owner of http://halopedia.org. Thus its pretty logical for the site to be called destinypedia. Sgtfrankieboy (talk) 17:13, 20 February 2013 (EST)

I can confirm that destiny.wikia was the first (created on May 23, '12), followed by destinypedia.wikia (created on September 19, '12) and now this wiki (domain registered on November 28, '12). As for why "destinypedia", it's a common naming convention to use "{GAME}pedia". I've made several suggestions with regards to changing the wiki name to something of unique identity in my previous comment but no one has replied yet. — subtank 21:17, 20 February 2013 (EST)

destinypedia.wikia moved from destinypedia.net. Sgtfrankieboy (talk) 21:19, 20 February 2013 (EST)

Well, that domain (.net) was registered on December 22, '11. So, the original destinypedia came first, followed by destiny.wikia and now this wiki. — subtank 21:31, 20 February 2013 (EST)

Destinypedia was chosen because 1) it matches the Halopedia template as the sister-site and 2) destinypedia.com was available. I'd prefer that the domain name matches the wiki name, and I'm not sold on "Ad Astra". Using "Destiny Wiki" doesn't help with originality because there's another Wikia named that. I don't want to rush into a change, so we'll stick with this for now. First I want to wait until we get more Destiny info. If we learn of a super-intelligent race or some kind of book of knowledge in the series, those types of things would be cool names to look at. In the meantime, people can realize that we're the independent Destinypedia and they're the Wikia one. As I said, it's the same way with minecraftwiki.net and minecraft.wikia.com and I think people get the difference. I'd also like to keep the name for a little to see how things progress--having the .com name counts for something. I understand they had destinypedia.net and later created destinypedia.wikia.com (after destiny.wikia.com btw), but I personally don't view that as a huge deal because creating a Wikia site takes two seconds and requires no effort. If they had an independent wiki at destinypedia.net already, I wouldn't have used the name. I already saw a Wikia staff member poking around about merging the wikis. Is there a history of two huge/popular Wikia sites covering the same series? I don't see that in 5 years destiny.wikia.com and destinypedia.wikia.com both being huge sites with tons of articles each covering the same topic. I imagine either a merge or one will be much smaller. Wikia has an interest in having only one site, and to match the pattern, it would be destiny.wikia.com. When they analyze that we're destinypedia.com, they'll want to use the "Destiny Wiki" name for their site. So if we're persistent, we may get to solely use the name that matches Halopedia and the ideal .com name that goes with it. Worst case, it's the Minecraft Wiki scenario and people figure out there's an independent one and a Wikia one. But don't get too caught up in that rant, because like I said if there's something fitting from the Destiny universe, we'll definitely think about using it for a name. P.S., we're on friendly terms with destiny.wikia.com. They approached me and said hey, no need for hostility between Destiny fans. destinypedia.wikia.com was nasty to me when I approached them with the best intentions, and I guess they also kind of bucked destiny.wikia.com a little by creating destinypedia.wikia.com after destiny.wikia.com was already created--a second Wikia site to serve the same purpose as one that already existed. I don't mean that to be ironic about what we're doing: the point of this wiki is to be the independent Destiny site and an alternative to Wikia, so the number of Wikia sites didn't really factor in because they're not alternatives to Wikia. We still serve the purpose of being independent so we don't have to deal with the imposing Wikia staff, theme, and extreme number of advertisements--things Halopedia has a history of knowing about. --Porplemontage (talk) 22:20, 20 February 2013 (EST)

Hopefully people will come here instead of the destiny wiki. It's already got a "speculation" section which is something that caused Halo wiki to fail. Also they're not sourcing their stuff so we'll win in the end. --JoshuaGregory (talk) 05:20, 10 March 2013 (EDT)