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Howdy all, Bringing a discussion I’ve already run...
# general
a
Howdy all, Bringing a discussion I’ve already run past a few maintainers into public view: I think we should consider adopting Pantsbuild as one of the acceptable names for Pants. I’ll post further discussion in the thread below, and would love to hear thoughts from the broader Pants(build) community!
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I think the name “Pants” on its own does us a disservice when talking about the project to people unfamiliar with it, and we’ve been trying to solve that by saying “Pants Build System” a lot, which is just awkward. When we post in public we have to deal both comments about “pants” being a silly name (I’m personally fine with it, it’s whimsical), but more importantly, it’s hard to know what to search Google for when you’re looking for Pants The Build System. I’m wondering if we should start saying Pantsbuild occasionally as well as Pants. We already use pantsbuild as our name in a bunch of places, and it already has really good SEO — much better than “Pants” alone (it shows up our Github, Twitter, Reddit, and .org, as well as several “doing X with pantsbuild” blog posts). In terms of precedent, it seems very similar to the “golang” vs “go” tradeoff (which serves that community VERY well), and would give us a reasonably short meaningful, and easy to search name when we need to go into places where “Pants” isn’t well understood. To be clear, I’m not advocating for renaming our runner script, repo name, or even dropping Pants as a name, just that we should be OK with referring to Pants as Pantsbuild when we need to go out into the world where people are unfamiliar with what Pants might be.
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b
FWIW I've come to simply accept googling for tools may yield funny results: • "running black" oops, "running black python" • "poetry new" oops, "python poetry new" That being said, if SEO likes "pantsbuild" or equivalent, couldn't hurt --- Also "Pants" might still be better to search for than please. ---
dropping Pants
hehe
a
> dropping Pants
hehe
1. 🤦 2. My point exactly 🙂
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h
I personally think maintainers should get in the habit of saying Pantsbuild and using that in docs etc, even 
help
strings when we say phrases like "Pants will do x" But we keep the repo name and the runner script still as 
pants
, and we don't police people saying Pantsbuild rather than Pants. Pants is still totally valid as a shorthand, like Go vs Golang. But we consistently use Pantsbuild and encourage it where possible
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h
I'm not sure this will avoid many of the downsides of the name. Wouldn't people who tend to fixate on such things continue to do so by focusing on the first syllable?
It will be better for SEO only if people searching for us use that name, which they presumably won't be
a
if we start saying pantsbuild, we get the SEO that we’ve already built up organically for that term
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which we don’t have for pants
h
We don't have trouble being found by navigational queries, our challenge is coming up for relevant searches that don't use either name...
a
https://pantsbuild.slack.com/archives/C046T6T9U/p1638820414495800?thread_ts=1638817238.494000&cid=C046T6T9U dropping pantsbuild definitely doesn’t have the same ring as dropping pants 👀
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b
My outsider's hot take would be "Pantsbuild" for prose, but still use 
pants
when directly referring to the tool (if any change at all)
h
which they presumably won't be
Why would they not be? If we are consistently using Pantsbuild ourselves, newcomers will presumably start to think of the tool as being called "Pantsbuild" and will thus search for it Now, they might also think of it as being called "Pants", just like "Go" and "Golang"; vs. right now people only think of "Pants" and "Pants Build System"
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b
The difference in quality for searches is stark today even before starting to intentionally develop Pantsbuild as a brand. In fact, Pantsbuild is the unintentionally-established branding of most accounts. Domain name, GH, Twitter, PyPi, Reddit, HN, etc all use Pantsbuild then dilute that branding by saying a mix of "Pants" and "Pants Build System". Pantsbuild streamlines and reinforces the version that SEO already favors. See for instance the difference in quality between search for: 
pants tailor
pants AND tailor 
pants build tailor
pants AND build AND tailor 
pantsbuild tailor
("Pants Build" OR Pantsbuild) AND tailor
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a
The difference in quality for searches is stark today even before starting to intentionally develop Pantsbuild as a brand
I think this is really really important. We already have brand equity in pantsbuild, and we don’t lose “Pants” as a name. We just get something that’s easier to search for, and might be less likely to make people giggle in public
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b
There was a fantastic discussion on Reddit about the Bazel post that was nearly drowned out by having to scroll past several screenfuls of weak "pants" jokes to discover the meaty comments. If the post title had had Pantsbuild instead of Pants, I do believe it would have garnered more of the attention that it merits.
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h
I suspect the weak jokes will continue
a
“Pants adds support” is a hilarious pun. “Pantsbuild adds support” is not
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h
And when talking about SEO, let's be clear that finding us when you know the name "pants" (or "pantsbuild") is easy. Our SEO challenge is to be high in the ranking for "build system" or "python testing" or whatever
That said, I do really hate constantly being grammar-corrected by Google Docs because we use "pants" as a singular noun.
I'd be more inclined to find an entirely new name (one that is an evolution of Pants, for example, so it hints to those who know about Pants that this is its new name)
h
I'm open to a new name for sure. That sounds like a very ambitious undertaking tho?
a
I think the suggestion here is whether we lean into a name that we already have, or not, rather than “should we put all of our effort into a new name”, which is a totally different question
h
Fair point
Yeah, new name is not for now
pantsbuild is something we can do right now
To be clear, adopting 
pantsbuild
as one of the acceptable names for Pants is totally good to do, sorry if that wasn't clear from my forward musing
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But I did want to put our SEO challenges in perspective, they mostly don't relate to our name...
Or anything we can easily control
That is a whole project...
But to the extent that this helps reduce the lame jokes even by half, that alone is a win
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Sadly I fear the lame jokes will continue, but hopefully there will be fewer of them
a
that’s definitely the hope
h
panbuild
- we build everything
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Or we build kitchenware, or Spanish bread
h
./pan test
. I kind of like it 😂
a
pandoc is a thing in the perl world (and the much-larger perl-adjacent world)
but 
./pan fry
would be funny
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h
It sounds like we think using Pantsbuild is an improvement over Pants and Pants Build System? Even if that's temporary because we'd rather have a better name If so, what are the next steps? Probably an audit of our docs?
h
Let's hold off on that, but try out using it going forward in our communication
b
Much as I think we'd benefit from a different name altogether, this is not good timing. When we're looking at 3.x, we should revisit that. For now, we can start with the accounts that have pantsbuild username and update the name field to Pantsbuild. Then give that a couple weeks to settle in before making harder changes. That way if we find that there's an unexpected downside to Pantsbuild, we don't have a ton of work to unwind.
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h
Exactly this
h
Sg, @busy-vase-39202 can you please take lead with the social media accounts?
b
Will do
@hundreds-father-404 would you do likewise for GH and readme? I'll take care of the blog and newsletter as part of the social media list.
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h
I don't have permissions to update GH description, only the readme. Carina any suggestions for wording?
b
I went with "Pantsbuild Open Source Project" and "Pantsbuild Open Source Community" for the social media accounts, but ymmv given that on GH the oss part is kind of a given.
@happy-kitchen-89482 would you update the GH profile description?
h
Done
b
I was thinking about this randomly and submit my proposal: 
mona[build]
. • "mona" is shortened from "monadic" because the build tool is monadic. Which makes it much safer to use/maintain • It's like "mono", which is short for "monobuild", because of obvious reasons • The logo/puns/etc... could use the Mona Lisa as it is public domain ◦ And bonus points for using mona-related puns/play on words/etc...
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mona
is also one-letter shorter 😤
h
I like that a lot! Maybe share to channel?
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