a trademark question

Hello. I have a question regarding trademark. Can we use the name 
"wikipedia" on some mailinglist or web site? Should we better ask for 
permission?

As some of you might recall, Japanese wikipedians have been using their own 
BBS, hosted and operated by one of japanese wikipedians. That's explained, 
linked, and used as if that is important part of Japanese Wikipedia. The 
name of the BBS is something like "Wikipedia village pump BBS." I hope this 
is okay. (The BBS was created partly because we felt the Village pump was 
too small to discuss all the important matters. The other reason was (and 
still is) that mailinglist was not fully functional - Japanese characters 
are not archived properly somehow.)

Also, now we are discussing creating some mailinglists for japanese 
wikipedia.

One is a list for outsiders to ask deletion of a page. This is because some 
deletion request would be sensitive so that making a request on Wikipedia 
(on VfD) would cause some damage to the person. (Privacy and defamation are 
among the expected issue here).

Another mailinglist idea is for press contact. Some people (including me) 
have been concerned about the fact that journalists contact to me via email 
to ask permission, do an interview, etc. Of course, I explain to the 
journalists that I am not the representative or a leader of Wikipedia (but 
Jimbo is), and that I am not in the position of giving any permission or 
official statement about Wikipedia. I bring some questions and requests 
(from journalists) to appropriate place on wikipedia (or the above mentioned 
BBS), and solicit opinions from others. Then tell the journalist that he can 
take a look at the page or even participate. But our hope is that by having 
a somewhat official contact email address (a mailinglist), the communication 
becomes more open to multiple wikipedians. That's more in line with 
wiki-philosophy. (Some even went on to say that any press coverage focusing 
on any individual is against wiki and wrong.)

Again, for those email lists, I suppose we (japanese wikipedians) would like 
to use the name "wikipedia," but I wondered if there is any potential 
trademark issue here.

And I suppose I could just email Jimbo on this matter, and ask permission if 
necessary. But I thought others may have similar situation/ question on 
this, so decided to send this to the list. And it is good for japanese 
wikipedia, again, that I communicate on this matter publicly rather than 
just privately with Jimbo.

Regards,

Tomos

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