Define the brand name of the project

[zlatanvasovic]

I noticed many names are used for this project, so I think it should be clarified. For example, you can find TL;DR pages, tldr, tldr pages and TLDR pages in various documents and website.

My suggestion is to use and tldr for the name of npm package and TLDR pages or tldr pages for everything else. How does that sound?

[waldyrious]

I normally don't like when brands attempt to enforce specific capitalization styling of the brand name, so I'd prefer if we avoided the capitalized version, and the pedantic version with the semicolon. I suppose I'd either go with tldr pages or tldr-pages, but I'm open to hear other arguments.

[zlatanvasovic]

Agree @waldyrious, I like that version more. TLDR pages sounds a bit too administrative. tldr-pages sounds cool in the dev matter of cool.

[leostera]

tldr has my vote.

[agnivade]

I like tldr pages. Contrasts nicely with man pages.

[waldyrious]

If we are willing to deviate a little more from the current name, we could consider rebranding as tldr.sh (which is akin to how many projects nowadays now use .js to indicate their context), or even go as far as ditching the hard-to-pronounce (and somewhat jargon-y) "tldr" altogether and pick something like "miniman", "shortman" or... "lil' man" :P just some fresh/wild (crazy?) ideas to spice up the discussion, not something I'm advocating at the moment.

Getting back down to earth, I suspect that "tldr-pages" may be better than "tldr pages" as it clearly identifies as a single word, even in the absence of capitalization or formatting. But it's not a super-strong preference.

[zlatanvasovic]

I agree with @waldyrious. tldr-pages seems the best at this moment.

[zlatanvasovic]

Any news on this? Branding is an important part of the project.

[waldyrious]

I'd like to hear @agnivade and @ostera's responses to my previous comment.

[leostera]

I reeeeally need to setup tldr.sh

[agnivade]

My preference is still "tldr pages", but I am okay with "tldr.sh" too.

[waldyrious]

If tldr.sh is ok with you guys, I'd vote for it too.

@agnivade any thoughts about my arguments for using a hyphen? Besides those, we must also consider that using a space makes it awkward to refer to a single page. Is it a "tldr page" (which would mean the project identifies as "tldr" alone)? Using "tldr-pages page" would be consistent but admittedly kinda silly, so we could instead recommend something like "tldr-pages entry" for that case (that's one of the ways a branding guideline can be useful).

[agnivade]

Referring to a single page is indeed an issue. My vote is for tldr.sh then.

[waldyrious]

@zdroid, @ericbn, @Leandros, @fluxw42 what do you guys think? Any change since your last reactions?

[Leandros]

My vote is for "tldr pages". The dash is overly verbose and doesn't fit well with how the english language is constructed.

[waldyrious]

@Leandros what about the issues I mentioned here and here?

[zlatanvasovic]

tldr.sh seems perfectly fine to me.

[Leandros]

tldr.sh suggest that it's a program, library or is otherwise related to the linux shell, which is not the case? Do we want that?

[ericbn]

I have split thoughts here. On one hand I agree with @waldyrious that since we want to think about rebranding, we could consider something different than "tldr" (I always have to think about "too long didn't read" when typing, because I cannot think of a pronounceable form of "tldr"). On the other hand I like the name and the idea behind it, and then I would go with "tldr pages" (no hyphen)...

[leostera]

For the record I meant the domain www.tldr.sh, which we have registered but haven't setup yet.

[waldyrious]

So... shall we make a decision? The options raised here have been: (1) tldr-pages, (2) tldr pages, (3) tldr.sh, (4) tldr, and also (5) miniman and (6) shortman.

I would be OK with (1), (3) and (5).

(3) depends on @ostera's feedback -- what kind of setup are you planning for the domain? Would you like help keeping the domain registration? (Not sure how expensive it is.) I was thinking maybe we could start by simply making it a custom domain for http://tldr-pages.github.io, which is easy enough to setup, and later we could work on something more involved, to avoid delaying this much further.

IMO (2) would make it hard to distinguish when we're talking about the project and when we're talking about individual pages, and (4) would be too ambiguous with other uses of the term (and would make googling this a nightmare).

Thoughts?

[leostera]

Hey! The domain is still good :) should I configure the DNS to point to the github pages?

[agnivade]

Cool, I am good with tldr.sh. I have a concern though - the org name is "tldr-pages". Are we going to change the org name too ?

[waldyrious]

should I configure the DNS to point to the github pages?

Sure :D at the moment, I don't see any downside of doing that.

Are we going to change the org name too ?

It would make sense, I suppose, and I'd personally be fine with that. We'd keep the primary identifier in our name, the "tldr" part, so that doesn't bother me too much.

[leostera]

@waldyrious domain's A record pointing to Github -- http://tldr.sh -- you can take it from here 👍

[waldyrious]

Annnd, it's working already :D that was easy :)

So now, tldr.sh is a viable option for the project name. Is everyone on board with that? Pinging @rprieto, @rubenvereecken, @igorshubovych.

[agnivade]

If I try https://tldr.sh, I get a NET::ERR_CERT_COMMON_NAME_INVALID. Something we can do about it ?

[waldyrious]

Hm... acording to this GitHub help page:

HTTPS is not supported for GitHub Pages using custom domains.

There might be alternatives, see here and here.

[agnivade]

Ah .. going the cloudflare way. @ostera - is this something that you can do ? The nameserver change has to be done from your side.

[leostera]

@agnivade @waldyrious Cloudflare setup done 👍 it'll take a few hours to work according to their website.

[agnivade]

Works now. Can you enable HSTS also ?

[rprieto]

I'm a little late to the party but I like "tldr pages", akin to "man pages". A single page is then a "tldr page" (man page). I think the name is still compatible with tldr.sh which is a cool domain name!

If we choose to go with that, I've heard people pronounce it as tilder so we could do as many open-source projects do and mention it in the README tldr pages (pronounced "tilder pages").

That being said I'm also happy with tldr.sh as the main branding or coming up with a newer fancy name like miniman too :)

[rubenvereecken]

miniman just cracks me up

[waldyrious]

I haven't pushed for miniman much, as I was the one to suggest it, but gotta say I really like it, too, for multiple reasons:

• It's self-descriptive and memorable
• Unlike tldr, it's very easy to pronounce: it kinda sounds like "minimal" and "minivan", which are already-existing words; not to mention it's deliciously consonant!). It also evokes a popular fictional character :stuck_out_tongue:
• Importantly, it doesn't include a jargon term/acronym (TL;DR), which makes it better align with the project's ethos of being beginner-friendly.

It really seems to tick all the boxes for a good project name -- the only reason I haven't advocated adopting that name yet (but I'm tempted), is because "tldr" has definitely become sort of the main element of the project's "brand". But name changes have occurred for projects before, and large ones at that (e.g. IPython --> Jupyter comes to mind), without serious issues other than nostalgia of the old-timers, so it might well be a valid choice.

[mflint]

Interesting thread! Would you want the various clients to start using the "tldr.sh" name?

[waldyrious]

@mflint I think we already have enough problems form all the clients calling themselves simply "tldr", so I wouldn't recommend going down that road. Of course, once we pick a definitive name for the project, the clients ought to refer to it (the project, not themselves) by that name, yeah.

@rubenvereecken I couldn't figure out whether your reaction to "miniman" was neutral, positive or negative. Would it be something you'd consider? (Just trying to tie up loose ends here.)

[rubenvereecken]

Let's say I'm neutral about it.

[waldyrious]

@rprieto, @agnivade, @ostera, @sbrl, @zdroid, @Leandros, @ericbn: I'd like to hear your thoughts on renaming the project miniman so we can make a decision here. I've already listed a bunch of reasons that compel me to favor it above tldr / tldr.sh; @rubenvereecken is neutral about it per the comment immediately above, and @rprieto said he is open to the idea.

Let's seize the 10,000th star event (#1464) to make a final call on this :)

[zlatanvasovic]

I really support miniman. Never thought about it before, but it's pretty descriptive. :1st_place_medal: :+1:

[ericbn]

Besides the "brand change" factor that @waldyrious mentioned before, I like miniman. Easier to remember than tldr...

Although the creative use of the TL;DR jargon gave the project something we can instantly attach to, maybe the way it's not easily pronounceable or beginner-friendly also lead to all the discussion above... Sad (but necessary?) to see the name go...

[agnivade]

Sorry to be "that" guy here 😛 , but I don't like miniman. Strong negative on that. I would really like to keep some part of "tldr" in the name. Losing that feels like losing the core identity of this project.

[rprieto]

What about howto? Then on the CLI you'd type howto tar, howto du etc.

[Leandros]

I like howto! It's descriptive and short.

[waldyrious]

howto is descriptive and potentially even more self-explanatory than miniman (both are better than tldr IMO), because it subtly conveys what to expect (usage examples).

My only fear is that it's too generic and thus basically ungoogleable. Here's a table based on the nominology post I linked above:

Property	Description	tldr.sh	miniman	howto
Evocativity	Conveys at least a hint of what it’s naming	★☆☆	★★☆	★★★
Brevity	Shorter = better	★★★	★★☆	★★★
Greppability	Not a substring of common words	★★★	★★☆	★★☆
Googlability	Reasonably unique (and domain name available)	★★☆	★★☆	☆☆☆
Pronounceability	You can read it out loud when you see it	☆☆☆	★★★	★★★
Spellability	You know how it’s spelled when you hear it	☆☆☆	★★☆	★★☆
Playfulness	Catchy and memorable (e.g. a play on words)	★★☆	★★★	☆☆☆

(I've excluded the "verbability" property, which all 3 score zero, to reduce visual noise, and added a "playfulness" property, which IMO is important for a good name to stick. /cc @dreeves, who authored the original post.)

It looks to me that objectively (to the extent that my scores are agreeable — happy to adjust them to reflect consensus), "miniman" is the most balanced option, as it basically ticks all the "good project name" boxes.

[waldyrious]

I don't like miniman. Strong negative on that.

@agnivade can you clarify whether you dislike "miniman" in particular, or dislike anything that doesn't include "tldr" in general?

[agnivade]

The latter.

[sbrl]

Nice table! I'm inclined to say no to "howto", since it not only is difficult to google, but is additionally awkward to say - since it sounds like the beginning of a sentence.

[waldyrious]

Good point @sbrl: the natural sentence would indeed be "how to use gcc?", not "how to gcc?". That said, most command names are pretty short and I could kind of see them used as a verb, e.g. "how to gcc " as a stand-in for "how to compile a file with gcc". This doesn't work in all cases, though.

That's true @waldyrious, I think it probably be the case with every name we have: it's hard to form a valid sentence on the command line :smile:.

The only thing I dislike about miniman is that it doesn't sound very serious. Will that put off part of the target audience? (although it might be hard to please both novice *nix users, and people who are command-line fans but need the occasional reminder).

[waldyrious]

The only thing I dislike about miniman is that it doesn't sound very serious. Will that put off part of the target audience?

While "miniman" certainly has a playfulness to it, I also find it to be quite a good objective description of what we provide: compact manuals for the commands.

Yes, "mini-" is often used in a humorous/child-like context, but it is also used without any diminutive conotation (besides its literal meaning) in many common words, such as "minibar", "miniskirt", "minidisc", "miniseries", "Mini SUV", and many more.

Even if that weren't the case, I think a user-base that readily adopted a project called "tldr pages" will have no problem embracing a similarly playful (IMO) name :smile:

(although it might be hard to please both novice *nix users, and people who are command-line fans but need the occasional reminder).

I'm tempted to suggest that old-timers may be even more receptive to such half-serious, half-playful names -- just look at all the recursive acronyms and wordplay-based names that have spread over the Unix landscape, from "GNU" to "git" to "markdown"... you get the idea :)

[rprieto]

Never realised that Markdown was wordplay on Markup 😲 D'oh!