Should FCKeditor change its name?

Hi!

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!

English is not the only language on earth, so we (non english speaking people) are not concerned by it's english meaning.
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!

There isn't an easy answer.

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.

I think that the name FCKeditor is not good and should be changed. There are two main reasons as I see it:
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 would contest the 2nd reason posted by fredrikv IF Mr. FCK decides to develop other products using 'FCK' in the name.

Hi,
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 agree with the points made by fredrikv, especially the point that now is the time to do it. It's sadly not the most professional-sounding name to many english-speakers, and in some way unfortunately trivialises the high quality of the product (with all due respect to Fred whose initials these are and whose work is highly appreciated by many).

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.

I thought that it was obvious that if any name change is gonna take place then all the current pages will be still alive, but just will redirect to the new project, and that the new project will need an introduction (don't you like to know where does any project has its origins?) pointing that this is the new version of FCKeditor and the differences and migration path from the previous code to the new one (at least change the refereneces from new FCKeditor() to new OMGeditor()

It's the only way that I can see in order to rename the project successfully.

I do not think that it should be changed...

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 think the name is cool. and the product is cool. it means Fantastic Cute Kit don't you think so

I've never called it "fuckeditor" - always "eff - see - kay - editor".

I would keep the name and stop worrying about being too Politically Correct.

If you must change, can you keep a similar name, something with a three syllable prefix + editor?

I showed this editor to my boss.. AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING product! ive been tolling over how to get nice formated things into our databse.. but when he ask the name i didn't even think twice i just said its calls f c k editor. And he gave me a weird look but once he saw it in his one words "it could have been call the Antichrist and i still would wanna use it" The name is a it hard to say in corporate setting but once you get past that who cares.. no ones going to know the name of the editor just going to know you have an editor.

*thumbs up* keep up the good work!

I laughed when I saw the poll!

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

It's not just the FCK. The following "ed" is a verb ending in English, which reinforces the unintended meaning. When I started reading about FCKeditor a few months ago, the name looked to me like Fcked-itor, and I assumed it was created and named by a bright but immature student.

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.

You don't have to put a "Powered by FCKeditor" in the page, you don't even have to keep the fckeditor name for the folder, and you can rename it as htmleditor, even it's possible for you to don't show the about button, so if you want to use another editor, then that's fine, but don't say that it is due to the clients because they will never know the name of the editor that they are using.

Hi,

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

keep the name!

alfonsoml wrote:don't say that it is due to the clients because they will never know the name of the editor that they are using.

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.

rbiffl wrote:

alfonsoml wrote:don't say that it is due to the clients because they will never know the name of the editor that they are using.

The name is in the title of the filemanager window.

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.

rbiffl wrote:It's all over the administration pages. There's no practical way to hide the name.

What administration pages are you talking about?

rbiffl wrote: 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.

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.

alfonsoml wrote:
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.

Needs to be changed to increase broad appeal.

How about Kreditor? Keeps the majority of the letters and includes "Kred" i.e. credible?

Anyway, nice work and good luck with the choice!

Combining that and my previous suggestion, we have... The Freditor!

(Also, Kreditor might sound too much like some kind of financial software...)

I think Freditor has a really nice ring to it.

I like Freditor, but Kreditor sounds like Creditor, and many people have unpleasant associations with them!

I was just introduced to FCKeditor yesterday. When my manager mentioned your product, I repeated the name in a surprised tone. I'm on your web site today and am amazed at the features you offer. I admit that I didn't take the product seriously, because of the name. Based on the content of this forum I believe it would be a good idea to adopt a name more descriptive of its robust feature set.

I'd like to see it changed. It matters less now that the pop ups are gone (the full path would show up in the address bar in IE7 and others). I'd prefer my customers didn't even have to consider that we named something so close to an offensive word. They have no idea and don't care what FCKEditor is. So for me, it's a PR issue.

@alfonsoml sometimes customization isn't feasible. i don't want to have to customize it every new version or risk breaking the software. the risks and time costs to customize aren't worth it for many people.

Definitely, the name is bad news in the English speaking world. Have confidence in your product, it will easily carry itself through a name change on its own merit. Thank you.