COMMENTS REQUESTED: Changing the name and branding of this website

[sporkme]

thing is, i am not sure everyone wants 50,000 microsoft lovers on here telling us how gay we all are....

mixed feelings

[CommonSense]

Hrm.  So basically, it's a mixed bag of responses.

I'll tell you all a story, which might shed a little light on why I asked this question in the first place.

A few months ago, I was on IRC (as I am basically every damn day), and one of the people I regularly chat with was having a few drinks and was a little . . . well, drunk.  This made him chatty, and he started /msg'ing me, saying I'm "sitting on a goldmine" with this site, and if I just tapped into its potential, I'd really have something.

He ended up convincing me that getting a G-rated name for the site, and reshaping some of the more strident, militant content, taking out the profanity, etc. would make this site appealing to more people.  Then, on top of that, adding some services and features -- some of which would require some real money and time to do -- could actually lead to a revenue-generating operation.

So then I started thinking about it, and came up with the name FreeMyPC.com, which was miraculously available -- along with the .net and .org (you'll notice those URLs all point to this site now).  It fit the whole concept rather well -- the site could become a clearinghouse of information and resources to people trapped in an M$ world and wanting to learn about what else is out there, and how to go about switching to it.  I even started looking into getting funding for the idea.

But reality gradually set in -- well, that and a couple of conversations with people in the industry (hell, I even drove up to Silicon Valley to meet with a friend of the family to get his input) -- and I ended up concluding there's really no way to make this thing generate any significant money.

It's only lately that I started wondering . . . yeah, I can't do all the big plans I had for a totally NEW site, but . . . is it worth looking at changing the name over anyway?  (As for the forums, it's a simple flick of a switch in the UBB control panel to make it block out profanity.)

I dunno.  To be honest, I think I'm too lazy and kind of short on time to really put in the time.  At least right now, anyway.  I have to finish a couple of freelance projects, and do the Public Internet site itself (FYI, The Public Internet is the "parent company" of this site) before I can really contemplate spending big amounts of time on any kind of major reshaping of this site . . .

Hrmph.

[Chooco]

well the site can't make money because it's not selling anything, it's just promoting alternatives.

just get rid of the profanity and this site will actually be credible and people will not be ashamed to link to it from some place like anandtech

freemypc sounds good  
btw doesn't it get costly to register all these names? domain names are like 15 USD each.....this place has like 10 domains lol
fuckMicrosoft.com|.org | fuckWindows[2000|XP].com | fuckBillGates.com|.net|.org | windows-sucks.com

it's a shame you'll have to get rid of that beautifuly done F***Microsoft.com logo, that looks so well done it's insane  

[Aaron Ni]

www.microsoft-eradication.com/.org/.net would be more appealing.  And the FreeMyPC.com sounds good.

[Kintaro]

freedom.org ?  Maybe MicrosoftFreedom.org i think we should buy these before a domain investor does it first. My cousin is into the whole domain real-estate thing... Did you know you can rent domains...

[Calum]

i think you could easy make at least a bit of money here, you'd have to sell stuff big time though...

I like the non-profanity new domain name idea, but i think that all "fuck microsoft" searches and current URLs should still be active, and i also think that the logos should stay as fuckmicrosoft if it was a fuck URL that got the person here in the first place. I like the whole fuckmicrosoft.com concept, but i think some people are a bit 19th century about it, or they have kids or whatever.

[willysnout]

Some suggested names:

dumpmicrosoft
microsoftstinks
overthrowmicrosoft
nomicrosoft

I think your idea of removing the profanity is excellent. Some things to focus on:

- Privacy
- Linux for Dummies
- Microsoft's business practices
- Shareware, freeware and alternatives

Section off a part of the website for the wild comments, and focus the rest on non-Microsoft alternatives.

And one more thing: Do it for love, not money. In that regard, stay away from Silicon Valley and especially the venture capitalists. Take it from someone very experienced in that side of things: Silicon Valley is a nest of criminals at the top. The minute you start coveting those BMWs you are sliding into oblivion right with them.

Sun and Oracle are every bit as bad as Microsoft. Keep your independence. If you're good at what you do, eventually the money will come.

[psyjax]

Please! Webmaster!! Don't ever turn off the profanity in the forums.

That is just unfair and contrary to the sites motive of freedom from opression and censorship. That which M$ stands for.

I want the right to say Fuck whenever I fucking please  

[Master of Reality]

they might mistake us for a charity fundraising research for multiple scerosis

[sporkme]

::head explodes::

ok...  so we pull off an about.com-style anti-ms angle, loose the fuck-face of the site, and pull in more open exchange of ideas where profanity is a concern.  i think we just may reach the masses~~~

this will take help (volunteer work) from fuckmicrosoft people if you ask me...

oh, and i like the freemypc addy

keep it looking like the ms site for sure, the irony is not lost on anyone who has been there.

[Calum]

actually, back when the forum started, a lot of dumbasses did come on here and say that obviously the webmaster had no sense of originality since the site looked so much like Microsoft!

i disagree with willysnout about the profanity. Maybe a suburbanite middleclass asshole would want profanity filtered out, but i think that FREE SPEECH should prevail, and people should be allowed to swear on the forums. However, i think that removing profanity from the url and the masthead is a great idea, also maybe there should be some mirror where all the profanity get's turned into fu*king cu*nting son of a bit*h and so on, so it can get past the filters and be suitable for kiddies (still, if kiddies don't know what 'fu*k' means then i despair for them, and if they do, then what's the point of filtering it?)

edit - oh yes, and before willysnout has a coronary about me deigning to disagree with him, i agree with him about all that other stuff he said about Sun et c being as bad as Microsoft. Actually, they are a smaller company so they cannot be just as bad, but you know.

How do you like that, Mr Snout? you know i was perfectly ready to welcome you onto the board until that puerile reply of your in the "MS to manage our computers" thread. You raised some good points, i took them up with you, and you then turned into a raving reactionary child. I expected better of you, oh well....

[ June 27, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]

[sporkme]

the most important thing is that this website exists until the end of time