One of the challenges we are facing now at the Open Development Effort, is dealing with the possibility of changing the editor name. We like its name, but there are some motivations for this to happen.
What is your opinion about that?
Vote, and participate!
What is your opinion about that?
Vote, and participate!
Changing names is a tough call once you've established a certain reputation for your product. Just take the GAIM -> Pidgin switch as a recent example.
FCKEditor has managed to establish a good reputation and I believe that FCKeditor is the best editor out there and so do others,too. Changing its name will only confuse users and make them uncertain as to wheather $NewEditorName is still coming from the same dedicated developer-team and of the same quality as FCKEditor.
I never thought that the title "FCKEditor" was particulary witty, but quality is not measured by the wittyness of the products title. Most products with fancy titles actually suck. So, better have a great product with an established, unfancy title than the other way 'round, no?
By the way, the competition also lacks witty product-names: TinyMCE for example just sounds like a really lousy firecracker!
I suppose you do not use something if you are disturbed by it's name; and you have so many users...
How many english users - how many other language speaking people? It would give you a ratio that you could also consider !
There are so many languages on earth; it could be very difficult to find a name that does not mean something negative in one of them !
Personnaly, I had never thought of the meaning you think about , just because one U is missing. So I think many others do not think about the meaning others laugh about.
FCKEditor: sounded a bit like JFK (american president) to me.
FCK letters are used by it's owner. I know some artit's do not use their real name. I' m proud of Mr FCK , THE man who made the editor I'm using on my web site!
For me the name doesn't have any special meaning. I understand that in some situations there are some "special" people that might be upset, just as well as there are people that get upset when they see a tit on tv, but they don't care when they see dead people on the news.
Finding an alternative name that doesn't have the possibility to me misunderstood and that sounds nice isn't easy. Because if you say: Hey, we are going to call it SuperDuperNiceEditor, then I think that people might not take it seriously (when I saw a "superantispyware" I inmediately thought that it was in fact a fake product, like all the others mega downloaders and the like)
To avoid losing all the current recognition the change could be very subtle, for example, like you did with CKFinder drop the initial F, people will easily understand that it's the same product, and evil minded people won't find any bad word that resembles CKeditor.
On the other side, a whole new name could help understand that the code for V3 will be quite different to the original FCKeditor.
And I think that this poll is biased because it's placed in the forums of FCKeditor, so if someone really hates the name, he might not be around here for too long.
1. FCK resembles a bad word
2. More importantly, the name FCKeditor is too hard to remember. The FCK part isn't meaningful at all if you don't know FCK as a person.
This is not a disaster, however.
Reason number 1 has already been discussed by others, so I'll elaborate on number 2:
A name change is only useful for a project if the following critera are true:
- The name is important for the project
It may be enough with the fear that FCK rings the bad word bell in some people. But the name is not only important for giving a feeling (or aura) to the project for developers and users. It is also key to keeping various parts of the project together. A new name could facilitate keeping a consistent brand for several products, or for branching off some products. (E.g. why is CKfinder called CKfinder and not FCKfinder?)
The new name is advantageous in some respect
A new name can be advantageous in at least these respects
- The name can (should) reflect the the product. "FullEdit" would be very different to "QuickEdit" or "EasyEdit".
- Easy to remember. Try the names WymEditor, NicEdit, TinyMCE and FCKeditor. Which one would you remember after 10 minutes if you had never heard them before? Low points for FCKeditor (and even worse for TinyMCE).
- Easy to spell correctly at the first attempt so it's found with search engines. Good points for FCKeditor.
- Available top level domain addresses. Good points for FCKeditor. May be difficult with other meaningful names.
- Comes up in the top 10 in alphabetical listings. Many choices are made from listings of competing products. There are too many editors to review all of them, so it's important to be in the top 10.
The "cost" of a name change is less than the benefits of the new name
The cost for a name change of FCKeditor is not very high, relatively seen. It is not a end-user product in the same way Thunderbird or GAIM is. With current search engines, searching for FCKeditor would easily bring up the renamed editor on top.
Now or never?
A name change will always be tested against the argument "It's too late as the current name is too well-known". The truth is that if the name change is good for the project, it's better to do it as soon as possible. The longer you wait, the more cemented it will be. If there's something wrong with the name, it will still be wrong in 10 years.
What should the new name be?
(Off-topic)
A new name/identity should ideally reflect the profile of the FCKeditor project, or indicate the direction the developers want to take. Think about where to position FCKeditor in terms of
- Fully featured or lightweight
- "As is" or plugin capable
- Cross browser/server platforms
- HTML/XHTML code generation (strict, compliant, custumizable etc)
These are some points where competitors are positioning themselves.
I think, because the author name Frederico Caldeira Knabben has choosen the name of FCK as a short cut for initials of his name, he has the right to give the editor his name. It is something make any one of us feeling proud to make very well software.
On the other hand the confilict of FCK which may be regarded as a bad word, but with ouy u
Personally, I don't see anything wrong to keep the current name. However, if there's a new name, I recomend Frederico Caldeira Knabben Editor FCKE, just adding the upper case E to the end of FCK which may facilitating the implementation of the new name.
I think the best thing might be to describe version 3 as:
...... (formerly known as FCKeditor)
and then phase out the bit in brackets in a later release.
It's the only way that I can see in order to rename the project successfully.
The name is already well established and because of the possible English meaning it makes it easy to remember.
As far as the English problem goes, the letters FCK do not mean anything unless you add a little imagination or a vowel. If that is how the persons imagination works, then anything can be twisted into a "Bad word."
I didn't want to leave my impressions about it previously, to not influence your opinions. But let me now add a few words, which would possibly justify the need for the change.
Personally, the main motivation of it is: I'm tired.
I'm tired of facing comments like "The F*CK editor is now working for me", "I prefer X over the F*CKeditor, but don't know why" or "I have a problem with the F*ckEditor" (many times, the "u" replaces the * there). That simple joke over the editor name throws all our efforts, seriousness and dedication to the bin. And I've been seeing those things around for years.
Then, apart my personal reasons, those same reasons impact in the project too. You have people ignoring FCKeditor just because its name. And, as I've said before, the NY Times will never print our name in huge at their cover page.
So, it is not working.
I know the English language and English speakers are not alone in the world, but it is a fact: our project is based on that language, and more than 25% of our editor users are native English speakers (based on our site visitors... 50% have browsers set to English). So, let's consider these statistics too.
Another point... I've run this same poll in another context (you can find a link at our home page). You can check the results of it here.
As you can see in the above results the overall impression is quite evident. We have different results there because in that poll you don't have links explaining things, nor a discussion about it that could influence it. So, it is just moved by feelings.
So things are indicating that this change is needed, we are late on it, and this is the last moment for it.
Frederico Knabben
Project Lead for CKEditor
CEO at CKSource
@Sansblog: that's for the nice words.
@alfonsoml: CKEditor is on the list... but I still think that it will be easy to the current F*CKeditor guys to add a "FU" in front of it.
@alfonsoml: As you have pointed out, a completely different new name would also help identifying the completely new editor. Nice observation.
@alfonsoml and @tallyce: Be sure we'll be working to make this transition as smooth as possible.
@alfonsoml: the new name would be applied to V3 only. FCKeditor 2.x will continue to be FCKeditor. We'll definitely have dedicated migration docs from 2.x to V3, even if there would be no name change.
@fredrikv: nice post. We'll keep your ideas in mind. And definitely, this is the time for it.
@saidbakr: using my initials was a mere coincidence, really. Thanks for your impressions.
@tallyce: you got the point.
@flattery: unfortunately that's definitely the way people imagination works... so, we should just minimize the problems with it.
Frederico Knabben
Project Lead for CKEditor
CEO at CKSource
I would keep the name and stop worrying about being too Politically Correct.
*thumbs up* keep up the good work!
I've been thinking about this issue for a while. Whilst FCKeditor is a fantastic and memorable name, it is unfortunately a bit unpresentable. I'd recommend changing it, some people can be so sensitive about things like that
As for an alternative, how about just: FredEdit. (Or Freddit...) That way the name still pays homage to the creator, as it were, whilst becoming a bit more family-friendly
/serializer
I am looking on this site for the first time because I need an editor for two websites that I'm building, for a law firm and a child-advocacy non-profit. I am impressed by your technology, but I'm hoping I'll find another product elsewhere that does a comparable job, because I'm afraid that delivering your editor would embarrass me. My clients assume I have a choice of components that I can deliver, and they don't want one with an offensive name.
I would suggest to change its name, because f*ck-editor came to my mind upon reading the name even before I knew of this discussion. And I'd think it doesn't have to be a drastic change. Just change it to FCeditor or FredEditor.
- Frank
The name is in the title of the filemanager window. It's all over the administration pages. There's no practical way to hide the name. And in places such as directory paths, it is written as fckeditor, so there is not even a typographical hint that the name is based on the author's initials and is not just a slight variation of a very vulgar word.
Ok, one html file to edit. Doesn't seems a big deal. Or you can write your own filemanager, after all it's not linked to the editor and many people use different filemanagers instead of the one included by default.
What administration pages are you talking about?
Previously the base folder was named by default FCKeditor, but due to the Unix way of treating filenames it seems that it's easier to tell the people to just use it all in lowercase in every place.
But anyway, as I said before you can rename that base folder anyway you like. You don't have to show the name in any place, it doesn't take even 5 minutes to hide it.
It seems there are at least a few places to change the name. That's fine for advanced users. However there might be some more basic users, possibly using the FCK in a pre-packaged plugin with a ready-rolled CMS or similar, who should avoid editing source files wherever possible (since they'll most likely balls something up and be straight onto the support forums). And, it makes it harder to update to new versions of the software, since you'll have to go through renaming/configuring everything again, and it's so easy to miss one place, especially if we are talking months or years after the original install. (Yes, I could make the changes in a working copy, and just update to get new versions. I can do that... but realistically, how many users of FCK have any idea about SVN?)
Also to consider: many users of FCK might like to add a link stating "powered by FCK". This gets the FCK more well-deserved publicity. The same goes for the "about" button. If the name of the editor is putting people off spreading the word, to the extent they are even seeking ways to rename other more hidden references, then surely something is wrong?
This IS all about branding, and unfortunately if something is branded in such a way that it might offend some people, it's probably best to change it; particularly when it can tie in nicely with the launch of an all-new super-shiny version.
(Although, to counter that, Sir Richard Branson has been doing very well for some years running a company with a sex-related name
/serializer
How about Kreditor? Keeps the majority of the letters and includes "Kred" i.e. credible?
Anyway, nice work and good luck with the choice!
(Also, Kreditor might sound too much like some kind of financial software...)
I think Freditor has a really nice ring to it.