up vote 10 down vote favorite
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I've got this comment from Jan Beyer, Community Operations Manager for the LEGO Group:

Regarding the website - it should not be called LEGO Answers - this imply that the LEGO Group answers but perhaps "Answers regarding LEGO bricks".

Now I have to admit I can't really find the part of the site which says "LEGO Answers", as everywhere I look I see "LEGO® — Stack Exchange" which may be OK; but if it does exist, can it be changed somehow?

Edit to add:

The site still has <title>LEGO® - Stack Exchange</title>, and so appears as "LEGO® - Stack Exchange" in Google results, and the mobile site also still has the main page heading as "LEGO®"

Follow-up:

LEGO Legal Affairs reviewed LEGO Answers and did not cite any problems with the name. They made a few suggestions about improving the site description to bring it into compliance. So, unless we hear otherwise, the site name does not need to be changed.

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The giant logo on the top left of the page reads "LEGO Answers" – antony.trupe Nov 2 '11 at 19:24
Then that's probably what he was talking about. No idea why I still don't see it — I just see a blue "LEGO®" with a small red "beta" above. – Joubarc♦ Nov 2 '11 at 19:52
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It was changed last week, you may need to refresh in some fashion. – Grace Note♦ Nov 2 '11 at 20:28
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I'm still not sure why it's not "Brick Overflow" or "Brick Exchange"... – Joe Wreschnig Nov 2 '11 at 21:05
@Grace: I was seeing the old logo until sometime today (and on meta before the main site - very strange!) so I think there's some sort of staggered rollout, or a stale CDN cache. – Joe Wreschnig Nov 2 '11 at 21:16
@Grace actually, I see "LEGO Answers" with Safari, and just "LEGO" with firefox... any idea why? Which one is the current one? – Joubarc♦ Nov 3 '11 at 5:10
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@Joubarc: SE's caching behaviors continue to veer towards nonsensical in my experience - I just saw "LEGO" again now. But I'm pretty sure "LEGO Answers" is the current one. – Joe Wreschnig Nov 3 '11 at 13:04
@Joe thanks, I tried to hit refresh in IE and saw "LEGO Answers" replace "LEGO" so you're certainly correct. – Joubarc♦ Nov 3 '11 at 14:08
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Could someone re-title this question so its more obvious it is the "name this site" question? – antony.trupe Nov 3 '11 at 22:45
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I love the fact that we can't have "LEGO" anywhere in our title, yet some upstart pop-boy can release a single called "LEGO House", without the capitalisation or anything ;) youtube.com/watch?v=c4BLVznuWnU – Zhaph - Ben Duguid♦ Nov 7 '11 at 14:30
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Jan referred me to someone from LEGO Legal Affairs who took a look at the site and did not cite a problem with the name of the site. He made a few suggestions about improving the site description to bring it into compliance. So, unless we hear otherwise, the site name does not need to be changed. – Robert Cartaino♦ Nov 30 '11 at 14:39
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Good to hear! Out of curiosity, did they comment on the content of the site so far? – Joubarc♦ Dec 1 '11 at 7:59
@Robert Am I correct in hearing that the Lego bricks community is discouraged from discussing/voting/choosing the site's name? I seem to remember other communities getting to pick their name. What's different with this site? – antony.trupe Dec 6 '11 at 17:04
@antony.trupe: Sites have not picked custom names for a very long time. See blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/domain-names-the-wrong-question – Robert Cartaino♦ Dec 6 '11 at 17:06
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@Robert Fair enough, however, lego<-answers>.stackexchange.com doesn't exist, so I'm seeing inconsistency in the SE team's position. According to the blog post, the site name should match its domain, which in this case is bricks, right? – antony.trupe Dec 6 '11 at 17:10
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12 Answers

up vote 14 down vote

Brick Overflow

This has been brought up time and time again. The main reason for not calling the site Brick Overflow is that it's an in joke, and people who don't know about Stack Overflow will be confused, and hence not participate on the site, or something.

I disagree, I think it has a clear meaning in context to the site ("I have so many brick-related toys that they're overflowing everywhere!"). If you do know about Stack Overflow, there's an added bonus. Serenity was a great film, and I have friends who enjoyed watching it who had no idea Firefly existed. It still made sense on its own.

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It sounds perfect – Ambo100♦ Nov 4 '11 at 13:50
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up vote 5 down vote

Well, to this specific questions, Jan answered:

I would like to see anything without LEGO.

So there. I'm in favour of "Brick (anything)". Even "overflow", while an in-joke, has a nice ring to it - who wouldn't be like to be overflown by bricks?

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up vote 4 down vote

Bricks

clean, simple, vague, open-ended.

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Not to mention "bricks" is already in the URL and so it seems to make sense to include it in the site name. – aedia λ Nov 7 '11 at 16:34
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up vote 3 down vote

Brick Stack

Sort of associates itself with the stack exchange network

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up vote 3 down vote

This isn't really a crowd-sourcing type of situation. We will talk to the folks over at LEGO® to see what, if anything, needs to be done to bring the site into compliance. But we're not really in search of a branded or customized name apart from LEGO® Bricks or LEGO® <something>… whatever will bring the trademark use into compliance.

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I think contacts should indeed better be had at an admin level. Do you have any contact person already? If there are talks in progress, maybe this question ought to be closed. – Joubarc♦ Nov 7 '11 at 14:55
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Choosing a site name is not something the community does? – antony.trupe Nov 7 '11 at 15:19
@Joubarc: My next task was to get in touch with you to get the contact you mentioned above. Would it be possible for you to forward an email to me to facilitate an introduction? community@stackexchange.com. Thanks. – Robert Cartaino♦ Nov 7 '11 at 17:28
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Yeah I'm still not clear on why we can't just pick a site name. I started a question about this during closed beta and got shut down too. Is it because it's too early? – Joe Wreschnig Nov 7 '11 at 19:45
I imagine the community can't pick a site name because there could be legal ramifications if the owner of the Lego trademark doesn't like it. – Michael Todd Nov 8 '11 at 0:20
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Robert, while I think it might be great to have "LEGO" in the title, how would that impact us answering questions on non-LEGO brick toys on the site (minority though they may be)? Equally, if the community is happy without the "LEGO" doesn't that make this moot? – Zhaph - Ben Duguid♦ Nov 8 '11 at 0:26
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@user341: The community by and large seems to have a good clue what they're doing. As far as I know it was SE staff who changed the name to "LEGO® Answers", with no feedback to us on why. "Brick Overflow" has had community support since pre-beta. Robert is the one insisting the site have "LEGO®" in the name... – Joe Wreschnig Nov 8 '11 at 12:26
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@JoeWreschnig That's the problem with jumping into a conversation late in the game. I assumed it was the other way around. Thanks for the info. – Michael Todd Nov 9 '11 at 17:05
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@Robert: I would appreciate some public update on this. I know SE is trying to consolidate branding more to reduce confusion, but "Brick Overflow" and "Brick Exchange" definitely fits within that framework, and naming the site "LEGO®" while the URL is "bricks.se" seems like a major step backwards from that goal as well. – Joe Wreschnig Nov 13 '11 at 12:14
Agreed - is there any news on this one way or another? – Zhaph - Ben Duguid♦ Nov 21 '11 at 18:00
Still nothing to report? – Zhaph - Ben Duguid♦ Nov 30 '11 at 10:04
LEGO's legal department didn't have a problem with the name of the site, but they made some suggestions to improve the wording around the various descriptions and such. With these minor changes, we are in compliance. – Robert Cartaino♦ Nov 30 '11 at 14:35
Cheers for the update :) – Zhaph - Ben Duguid♦ Nov 30 '11 at 15:34
disappointed we don't get to talk about it :( might even say disenfranchised with the SE team. – antony.trupe Dec 6 '11 at 17:05
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up vote 0 down vote

Brick Answers

It is what it is.

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up vote 0 down vote

Brick Q&A

Pretty clear its a Q&A site.

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up vote -1 down vote

Brick Smarter

LEGO and other SAR toys

Trying to keep the tagline underneath from being really long like the following example:

Brick Smarter

Unofficial answers regarding LEGO bricks and other SAR toys

See how just trying to keep the tagline shorter helps the logo seem more coherent? I realize that the point is to "not be associated with LEGO", but then again I presume that other toys, such as DUPLO (another LEGO property) and K'Nex, fishertechnik, Mega bloks and similar toys are going to be asked here.

But yes, the LEGO brand is the most popular and is going to be the point of the most traffic for that reason.

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I don't know what SAR stands for so that's not very helpful. K'nex and Fishertechnik are not on-topic here. – Joe Wreschnig Nov 2 '11 at 21:34
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That's funny, they look just like (ok, not quite, but assume the eyes of an eight year old) Technik. So Technik is OK but K'Nex isn't? Interesting isn't it? And if K'Nex is permitted, then so should be fischertechnik. Anyways, that's not my quibble. My point was "this site won't just be for LEGO brand toys will it?" – jcolebrand Nov 2 '11 at 21:37
PS: SAR = Some Assembly Required. The "Brick Smarter" and the LEGO reference should help people figure out this isn't just for random toys that have to be put together when you get them home. I mean, I could see where there are people that slow in the world, but .. the title as "Brick ________" should help them figure it out. – jcolebrand Nov 2 '11 at 21:38
I think I'd prefer "Brick Smarts" to "Brick Smarter" - other SE names are all nouns - but otherwise I like it. Still not sold on the blurb. – Joe Wreschnig Nov 2 '11 at 21:46
Brick smarts is cute too. – jcolebrand Nov 2 '11 at 21:52
@jcolebrand see this question here: meta.bricks.stackexchange.com/questions/38/… – Zhaph - Ben Duguid♦ Nov 4 '11 at 9:11
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up vote -1 down vote

Brick Pile

Sounds like a sales site's name.

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up vote -2 down vote

The title should be:

Constructive Q&A

...or someting else with "constructive" in ;-)

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this doesn't really flow for me personally, and could be about construction, as in not with toys. – antony.trupe Nov 4 '11 at 19:26
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up vote -2 down vote

Mega Bloks

And other building block systems

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Heh. Is that the sound of sharpening pitchforks I can hear? ;) – Zhaph - Ben Duguid♦ Nov 11 '11 at 8:43
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Hang on, I think I can hear it too! – Kalamane Nov 11 '11 at 15:19
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up vote -3 down vote

Name alternatives:

  • Answers regarding LEGO bricks
  • Bricks
  • Brick Overflow
  • Brick Exchange
  • Brick Pile
  • Brick Answers
  • Brick Q&A
  • Brick Stack
  • Stack Brick
  • Stack OverBrick
  • MegaBlok Answers
  • Unofficial LEGO Answers (Unofficial answers regarding LEGO bricks)
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The last one is unacceptable, it must be "Unofficial answers regarding LEGO bricks". – Joe Wreschnig Nov 2 '11 at 21:15
@JoeWreschnig can I ask why? – jcolebrand Nov 2 '11 at 21:20
@jcolebrand: I have no idea, you should be asking the LEGO® Group. – Joe Wreschnig Nov 2 '11 at 21:21
I thought maybe you had a more firm reason why the last one was unacceptable in the shorter form. All LEGO wanted was that the name not imply that they were answering questions – jcolebrand Nov 2 '11 at 21:30
@jcolebrand: What they actually said was "Also LEGO needs to be written always in capital letters and should never stand alone". – Joe Wreschnig Nov 2 '11 at 21:33
@JoeWreschnig It has Answers as a friend. – Pubby Nov 2 '11 at 21:35
what does that mean? I'm confused. "should never stand alone" ... huh? – jcolebrand Nov 2 '11 at 21:36
Again, you are asking me to explain the LEGO® Group's request. I can't do that. (You should edit your comment while there's still time, so you don't take their name in vain!) – Joe Wreschnig Nov 2 '11 at 21:37
@jcolebrand Referring to LEGO bricks as legos hurts their trademark. The term could become generic which would allow MegaBloks to refer to their product as legos. – Pubby Nov 2 '11 at 21:37
@Pubby8 ooooooh, thanks. what about "LEGO products" do you think, since we would ostensibly have DUPLO and etc on here. – jcolebrand Nov 2 '11 at 21:39
@JoeWreschnig I wasn't asking you any further to explain that. I only said "what does that mean, I'm confused". – jcolebrand Nov 2 '11 at 21:40
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Incidentally, SE is covered in registered trademarks - Apple, Google, Android, Ubuntu, Linux, Facebook, nearly every question on Gaming. Yet the only ® I see anywhere is here. – Joe Wreschnig Nov 2 '11 at 21:58
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Note, the problem with "LEGO Answers" seems to be that "Answers" can be taken as a verb, so "Unofficial LEGO Answers" may actually be OK. I've sent some of the suggestions to Jan to have a definite answer. Anything without "LEGO®" in it is bound to be OK, but I think it would be a bit sad. – Joubarc♦ Nov 3 '11 at 5:07
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"Brick Exchange" sounds like a market for bricks. – Kramii Nov 3 '11 at 8:11
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This shouldn't be a CW answer, we should have each option as a separate answer to vote on. – Zhaph - Ben Duguid♦ Nov 4 '11 at 9:10
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