Possible Names
I built this proof-of-concept design using the name goalstriving.org, because I already owned that domain. Before I build the production system, we need to pick a name, register the domain, and form the nonprofit. Realistically, that could all happen within two or three months.
Domain Ideas
I am open to name suggestions. Here are a few of mine:
- myknowledgetree.org
- everknowledge.org
- goalstriving.org
- KnowledgeGarden.net
- knowledgetree.wiki
- gardenofknowledge.net, gardenofknowledge.info, gardenofknowledge.wiki
- LifeAndLearning.wiki
- Mywiki.life
- Lifenotes.wiki
- myKnowledge.org (available for $4,000)
- webOfKnowledge.wiki
- wokwiki.org (wok = web of knowledge)
- wok.wiki ($150/yr)
- mywok.org
- mywok.wiki
- wikiwok
Branding
The following brand elements will be strongly influenced by the name and should be taken into consideration.
- Tagline: a memorable phrase associated with the brand (The happiest place on Earth)
- Elevator pitch: imagine the conversation between a user and potential user
- Character(s): similar to Duolingo, character(s) will be used in advertising, tutorials, reminders; much less so in the actual product
- Gamification: similar to Duolingo, users will be encouraged to regularly make meaningful improvements to their wiki
- Leaderboards, compare your stats compared to averages
Options
I am leaning against having the words knowledge or goal in the name.
WikiWok
Tagline: Build your web of knowledge.
Character: WoK - a small round robot-like character with two antenna-like arms. When it encounters two related wiki pages, it grabs one with each arm and connects them. Occasionally it becomes tangled in all of the links. Its personality can be described as child-like, enthusiastic, and eager (perhaps too eager) to connect ideas and entities (wiki pages) together.
WikiGarden
Tagline: Grow what you know.
Perhaps the richest concept for gamification, although somewhat less distinctive because "digital garden" is already an established term.
LifeNotes
Tagline: Everything worth remembering.
Prompt
I am thinking about ideas for naming the wiki farm project. The target audience is university students and goal-oriented knowledge workers. It is tempting to describe the project in the name, e.g., webOfKnowledge.wiki, Lifenotes.wiki. Because the product category (note-taking platforms) is fairly boring and note-taking, in general, is often considered to be laborious, I might want to use some light humor whenever possible. And that could even work for the name. I like incorporating "web of knowledge", and if we abbreviate it as "wok", we could use wikiwok.org or mywok.org. When said fast, it sounds like a made-up, slightly silly-sounding word. The tone of our marketing could be similar to that of Duolingo. The characters are cute and sometimes they do silly things, but they are a minor part of the overall experience. I also love the gamification of Duolingo and we could incorporate stats like edits per day, interlinks per page, etc. Also, we need a Tag Line (I think that is the correct word for it). The brief, catchy response we will give to someone who casually says "What is __<our_org>__?". I might choose one name over another, just because we can come up with a witty tag line for it. Please offer advice and suggestions on the name and also potential taglines, characters, and gamification opportunities that might fit with each name.
ChatGPT Response
Yes, tagline is the correct term, although you are actually describing two related things:
- Tagline – the short, memorable phrase associated with the brand. Example: "The happiest place on Earth."
- Elevator description / one-liner – the brief answer to someone asking, "What is WikiWok?" Example: "It's a free personal wiki for organizing everything you want to remember."
For this project, the name, tagline, and one-line explanation should be designed together. A less descriptive name can actually be an advantage if the tagline immediately supplies the meaning.
The instinct to move away from names like WebOfKnowledge is probably a good one. The project itself is serious; the brand does not necessarily have to sound serious. For university students in particular, something slightly strange, memorable, and easy to say could be much stronger.
WikiWok
Of the ideas considered so far, WikiWok is particularly promising.
Advantages
- Short.
- Easy to spell after hearing it.
- Obviously connected to "wiki."
- Sounds playful without sounding childish.
- "WOK" can stand for "Web of Knowledge."
- The word also creates a secondary visual metaphor: putting many different ingredients together in one place to create something useful.
- It lends itself well to a mascot and light humor.
- wikiwok.org sounds like an organization or community rather than a commercial SaaS product.
One disadvantage is that WOK does not naturally mean "Web of Knowledge" to anyone until it is explained. That does not necessarily need to be a problem. Discovering what WOK means could become part of the branding.
Potential Taglines
- WikiWok – Build your web of knowledge.
- WikiWok – Everything worth remembering.
- WikiWok – Your knowledge. Connected.
- WikiWok – Where your knowledge comes together.
- WikiWok – Don't just take notes. Connect them.
- WikiWok – Put your brain somewhere safe.
"Build your web of knowledge" is particularly strong because it immediately explains the otherwise unusual name.
"Put your brain somewhere safe" may work better as occasional humorous marketing copy than as the permanent tagline.
One-Line Description
If someone asks: "What is WikiWok?"
A simple answer could be: "It's a free personal wiki for organizing everything you want to remember."
This is probably more useful than attempting to put the entire product description into the project's name.
Mascot Ideas
Rather than making the mascot an anthropomorphic cooking wok, which could cause the cooking joke to overwhelm the Web of Knowledge meaning, Wok could be a small creature whose defining characteristic is connecting things.
For example, imagine a small round character with two antenna-like arms. When it encounters two related wiki pages, it grabs one with each arm and connects them. Occasionally it becomes tangled in all of the links.
Potential appearances could include:
- Wok asleep when you have not edited anything recently.
- Wok buried underneath hundreds of unorganized pages.
- Wok triumphantly connecting two pages.
- Wok trying to carry an absurdly large stack of pages.
- Wok discovering an old page with a magnifying glass.
- Wok wearing graduation attire within the University section.
- Wok carrying a camera within Photography.
- Wok carrying a suitcase within Vacations.
The humor becomes a layer around the product rather than the product itself.
Prompt: Please create an image of a character that can be used as the mascot for the wiki farm project. A small round robot-like character with two antenna-like arms. When it encounters two related wiki pages, it grabs one with each arm and connects them. Occasionally it becomes tangled in all of the links. Its personality can be described as child-like, enthusiastic, and eager (perhaps too eager) to connect ideas and entities (wiki pages) together.
MyWok
MyWok emphasizes that this is your Web of Knowledge, which is valuable, but without context it sounds more strongly like a cooking product or restaurant.
Potential taglines include:
- MyWok – Everything you know. One place.
- MyWok – Your web of knowledge.
- MyWok – Feed your curiosity.
The last option could support an entire food metaphor:
- Feed your Wok.
- Add an ingredient.
- Your Wok is getting stale.
- A healthy Wok has lots of links.
That could be amusing, but it risks pulling the branding too far away from knowledge management.
Overall: WikiWok > MyWok
Wok
Another possibility is to go even shorter and simply call the project Wok, assuming trademark and domain considerations work out.
Potential tagline:
- "Wok – Your web of knowledge."
That is remarkably compact.
The primary problem would be discoverability. Search engines and users will overwhelmingly associate "wok" with cookware. WikiWok creates a much more distinctive semantic identity.
WikiWeave
WikiWeave provides another interesting direction. The metaphor is that individual notes are useful, but their value increases when they are woven together.
Potential Taglines
- WikiWeave – Weave what you know.
- WikiWeave – Turn notes into knowledge.
- WikiWeave – Your knowledge, connected.
- WikiWeave – A place for everything you learn.
Mascot
A friendly spider would be an obvious possibility and would bring the concept directly back to the "web of knowledge."
The spider could continually build connections between pages.
Potential achievements:
- First Thread – Created your first link.
- Web Builder – Created 100 links.
- Well Connected – Average of five links per page.
- Untangled – Fixed 10 broken links.
There is considerable branding and gamification potential here.
WikiNest
Another possibility:
"WikiNest – A home for what you know."
This emphasizes safety and permanence rather than connectivity.
Potential Taglines
- A home for what you know.
- Keep what matters.
- Your knowledge has a home.
Mascot
A bird mascot could collect little scraps of information and bring them back to its nest.
For example, after adding several pages, the bird might appear carrying another note and say:
"This seems important. I'm keeping it."
That matches the "lifetime of knowledge" message particularly well.
The disadvantage is that "Nest" does not communicate interconnected knowledge as strongly as WikiWok or WikiWeave.
WikiGarden
WikiGarden offers another metaphor with considerable depth.
"WikiGarden – Grow what you know."
It also connects to the established concept of a "digital garden," which some members of the target audience may already recognize.
Gamification Opportunities
The metaphor lends itself naturally to gamification:
- Pages = plants
- Links = branches
- Sections = garden beds
- Old untouched pages = plants that need tending
- New knowledge = seedlings
Potential achievements include:
- First Seed – Create your first page.
- Taking Root – Create 10 pages.
- Branching Out – Create 25 internal links.
- Knowledge Grove – Reach 100 pages.
- Well Tended – Update 10 older pages.
The system could occasionally suggest:
"You haven't visited this page in two years. Want to tend it?"
The metaphor could therefore teach good knowledge-management behavior rather than merely decorating the application.
The disadvantage is that "digital garden" is already an established concept, so differentiation could be more difficult.
Gamification
The project could borrow some of the principles of Duolingo without copying its specific mechanics.
Raw edit count probably should not be the principal score. That creates the wrong incentive because making 20 trivial edits could become "better" than thoughtfully improving one page.
Instead, gamification should reward behaviors associated with developing a useful personal knowledge base.
Potential Measures
| Measure | Behavior Encouraged |
|---|---|
| Active days | Regular use |
| Pages created | Capturing knowledge |
| Pages updated | Maintaining knowledge |
| Internal links created | Connecting knowledge |
| Links per page | Avoiding isolated notes |
| Old pages revisited | Long-term usefulness |
| Categories/tags used | Organization |
| References added | Source quality |
| Templates used | Structured information |
| Consecutive active weeks | Sustainable habits |
Knowledge Web Score
Rather than using a generic XP score, the application could present a "Knowledge Web" dashboard.
For example:
Your Knowledge Web Pages 143 Connections 527 Average links/page 3.7 Pages revisited 68% Active this month 14 days Longest streak 23 days
This is preferable to something arbitrary such as:
"Matthew has 17,482 XP!"
Instead, the application could say:
"Your knowledge web has 527 connections."
That reinforces the purpose of the application.
Knowledge Web Visualization
A particularly interesting feature could be a visualization of the user's knowledge network that grows over time.
For example, a new user might initially have:
5 pages 3 connections
Six months later:
300 pages 1,400 connections
That could become intrinsically satisfying. The user is not accumulating arbitrary points; the user is watching a personal knowledge structure grow.
Using Mascots
The project could follow some of Duolingo's approach to characters, but use them considerably less frequently.
The primary audience includes university students as well as professional knowledge workers. A 19-year-old student may enjoy a mischievous mascot, while a professional maintaining research or career notes may prefer a more restrained interface.
Characters could therefore primarily appear in:
- Onboarding
- Empty states
- Achievement notifications
- Tutorials
- Community communications
- Error pages
- Occasional humorous messages
They would not need to appear continuously throughout the application.
The underlying application should remain clean and professional.