925396 - Stop using "awesome" and "army" in one sentence

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(support.mozilla.org :: Army of Awesome, task)

Description

[Jannis Leidel [:jezdez]]

I'd like to humbly point out the discrepancy between the positive message the "Army of Awesome" should communicate and the use of a military term in its name that is throughout history connected with less awesome things like fighting wars and killing people. There must be other alliterations that we could use instead.

What about:

Assembly of Awesome
Association of Awesome
Wizards of Wonder
Fans of Firefox
League of Lovers

Comment 1

[Jannis Leidel [:jezdez]]

FTR, as a background: https://twitter.com/mozilla/status/388335671649525760

Comment 2

[Ricky Rosario [:rrosario, :r1cky]]

I am pretty sure the whole "Army of Awesome" concept started in the summit of 2010. After that we created the twitter app that was named after it. I'm pretty sure it is used elsewhere in engagement materials or it once was.

I'm not sure who is the right person to look at this from a content and branding point of view.

Comment 3

[Ibai Garcia [:ibai]]

I've spoken with William R. (the original owner of the tool, AFAIK) and he mentioned that some voices were raised when the tool was branded.

My take: The brand is already well recognized and it may be a "too little too late" type of thing. 

Keep in mind that we are pushing the SUMO Warriors and Superheroes as our latest and greatest definition for those of us who work at Mozilla helping users. Taking it from there we may want to push for something like the League of Awesome.

I'm adding Matej for additional thoughts from a wordsmithing perspective.

Comment 4

[madalina]

+1 on Ibai's comment.

Also I would like to ask if this is also related to localization. We had some concerns raised at the summit regarding the way we translate "Army of Awesome" in other languages. It might sound ok in English but literal translation can sound extremely weird in other languages. In that case it\s just a matter of agreeing on what terms make more sense for each language/culture.

Comment 5

[Matej Novak [:matej]]

Thanks for opening this bug. I wasn't around when this was named, but I think it's a fair concern. On the other hand, the word "army" has a well-established meaning as a group of people working for a common goal or really any large group. Words have different connotations and associations for different people. In this case, I'm sorry it has a negative one for you.

Personally, I find it an empowering name. I think of an army as a group of people who defend something, who stand together for something they believe in and fight for it when necessary.

Regardless of that, the name has been in use for some time now and is pretty well established. That's not to say we can't change it, but that's also not my call.

As far as localization is concerned, my recommendation would be to avoid a literal translation if it doesn't work. Try to come up with something with a similar structure or that also uses alliteration rather than trying to translate the individual words. It's the overall idea that matters, not the specifics.

Comment 6

[Replica @ModReplica]

Thank you all for jumping into this conversation - especially you Jannis for bringing it up on channel. 

I added myself to this bug and will keep apprised of any changes - especially since I'd LOVE to recruit more people into this...er...Enterprise...Aggregation...Ombudsmen of Awesome!

Comment 7

[Kadir Topal [:atopal]]

I was the one who raised the original issue with the "Army" theming, but I'm not sure it turned out to be much of an issue within the last 3 years. As Matej says, localization is not the same thing as translation, so it might make more sense to localize it completely differently.

Comment 8

[Jannis Leidel [:jezdez]]

Hi there! I stumbled over this ticket again while looking through tickets that I've opened but haven't made progress in a year and figured this seems to go nowhere, so I'm closing it as wontfix.

Feel free to reopen if you think there is a chance to rebrand the term. I really appreciate your responses even though I hoped to have a more concrete result. But as always I bow to the wisdom of the community :)