Geekdo
"Geekdo" (variously known as "GeekDo", "Geekdō", "GeekDō") is the brand name decided upon several years ago and launched 2009 to deal with the expanding scope of boardgamegeek.com to rpggeek.com and other types of ...geek.com due to many ...geek.com sites already being taken and to help secure a common brand. Geekdo was first publicly alluded to on 11 February 2009, and officially went live on 31st July 2009.
The "do" part is pronounced as in TaeKwonDo, Judo and other Asian martial arts. It often appears with the subtitle "The way of the geek" which emphasizes this notion. A Dō (道, Dō?) or "Way" is any one of a number of spiritual, martial, or aesthetic disciplines that evolved in Japan and Korea.
In Japanese, a Dō implies a body of knowledge and tradition with an ethic and an aesthetic, and having the characteristics of specialization (senmonsei), transmissivity (keishōsei), normativity (kihansei), universality (kihensei), and authoritativeness (ken'isei). (source: http://tinyurl.com/yensbf4)
Controversy
It is controversial among many BGG users primarily due to:
1. The perception that it is breaking an existing established popular brand ("boardgamegeek.com") and community identity as boardgamegeeks. Will "boardgamegeek.com" go away and we have to use "boardgame.geekdo.com"?
2. "Geekdō" not being obvious how to pronounce ("doo"? "doe"?) or spell, or even what it means.
3. It was announced with virtually no discussion or request for brainstorming or feedback. (On 2009-07-08 there was a passing mention of "geekdo" with a request for alternate ideas buried on page 7 of a thread calling for web designers.)
For additional forum discussions, see:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/442289
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/tag/geekdo_dont
Alternate versions
Some alternate sincere misunderstandings and joke/parodies seen in the forums...
- "Geek do" (as in "what geeks do", or "monkey see, monkey do")
- "Geek do" (as in "geek hairdo" or "geek hairstyle")
- "Geek dao", "Geek tao" (rhyming with "cow", as in how the original Chinese root is pronounced in many languages)
- "Geek dough" (as in bread dough, or dough as slang for money; possible joke slang for GeekGold)
- "Geek d'oh" (as in Homer Simpson's famous exclamation "D'oh!")
- "Geek-Doh" (as in the children's modeling compound "Play-Doh")
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