Mollom: What’s in a Name?

Tom Arah — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:25:56 +0000

Regular readers will know that I am a major fan of Belgian developer Dries Buytaert, the man behind Drupal. Drupal is the most powerful open source content management system and IMHO deserves to replace Dreamweaver as the web designer’s tool of choice. In fact, as far I am concerned, the major factor holding it back from world domination, apart from its precipitous learning curve, is its name. Let’s face it “Drupal” (pronounced “droople”) sounds old, ugly, gloomy and deflating. It’s almost perversely uninspiring. “Dreamweaver” it ain’t.

Now I’ve come across a brand name that’s possibly even worse…

Mollom. Mollom is an interesting new online service designed to help cut down the amount of spam comments and content that Web 2.0 sites have to deal with while avoiding putting off genuine contributors with unnecessary captcha barriers. The technology might be cutting-edge but the name certainly isn’t, in fact it sounds medieval. Moreover, like “Drupal”, “Mollom” manages to pull off the difficult trick of being pathetically comical and seriously depressing at the same time.

Astonishingly the man behind Mollom is none other than… Dries Buytaert.

Surely this has to be too much of a coincidence? And I think I’ve found a clue to what’s going on. While selecting a language for Mollom to operate in, I was rather surprised to be offered the choice of Old English and Middle English (I’m not joking, take a look at the screenshot).

Mollom's language choice

Two obvious possibilities spring to mind. Does anyone know if there’s a thriving community of Old English speakers that has somehow lived on in Belgium? Alternatively, does anyone know if there are a pair of ugly giants or dwarves in Beowulf or Tolkein called “Drupal” and “Mollom”?

And does anyone have any suitably uninspiring suggestions for Dries’ next project?

PC Pro blog » dries

Mollom: What’s in a Name?