Proposal talk:.WIKI. and .WK. top level domains

Clarification

Given that the "/wiki/" portion of the URL is not related to the top-level domain, I don't understand what this is meant to improve. "en.wikipedia.wk" would only be one character shorter than the current domain, and "en.wikipedia.wiki" actually makes it longer. Can the author clarify what his proposed URL form would be? Austin 20:24, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

While I certainly cannot speak for the creator of the proposal, my assumption is not for it to benefit Wikipedia itself that much, but rather other specific topic wikis, which are forced to rely on the nature of the TLD systems today. Not that this is necessarily that bad, specific topics with a TLD describing exactly what it is, would not be entirely un-nice. --Svippong 20:32, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

The intent is that something like http://en.wk/Article , http://en.wiki/Article or perhaps http://en.wk/w/Article etc. would shorten urls and end up saving large aggregate amounts of time. 75.55.199.5 23:16, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

What about Wikibooks or Wikimedia? Or other wikis outside of the Foundation? --Svippong 23:23, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps http://en.wk/b/Book and http://en.wk/m/Media.png ? 75.55.199.5 23:32, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

That is what i imagined at proposal:brand name consolidation however opting to drop .org and retain .wikipedia The examples would be http://en.wikipedia/b/Book and http://en.wikipedia/m/Media.png. That would be longer, but the wikipedia brand name would be recognized. Dedalus 17:52, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Ambitious, but worth it?

I love the ambitiousness of this proposal. Aiming for the stars -- I like that. While not entirely unfleasible, would the Foundation control the .wiki domain (.wk seems unlikely, as two letter TLDs are reserved for countries) or would it be controlled by ICANN or some other entity? And who would eligible to get a .wiki domain (e.g. could a Futurama wiki get "futurama.wiki")?

In addition, the /wiki/ is added for other technical reasons, which cannot be resolved by a different TLD. You think .org prevents this? /wiki/ is added to avoid certain root level files, such as /robots.txt and /favicon.ico, so they are not confused with real Wikipedia articles, e.g. /wiki/Robots.txt and /wiki/Favicon.ico. I realise that the capital R and F respectively are enough for the machines to tell the difference, but bad usability, I'd say. --Svippong 20:30, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Can existing MediaWiki URL re-write rule technology address those problems? 75.55.199.5 23:32, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

It can be done, surely, but you need to be aware of it. If you do have a root directory thing going, you can simply use Wikipedia's tactic of capitalised articles. e.g. /Favicon.ico is an article, while /favicon.ico is the icon itself.

This ain't exactly pretty for a wiki that tries to contain all general knowledge, such as robots.txt and favicon.ico, but also might be a problem for Wiktionary, which does not capitalise its articles. --Svippong 11:59, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

icann doesn't need more power

....and the internet is already too cluttered as it is. FAIL. 01:13, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Honestly, they've never not had this power. And what is internet clutter? Just trying to save human time and short message space, here. 75.55.199.5 01:17, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

how about ...

... a .wp instead ? Darkoneko 17:02, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

... a .wikipedia instead, say, dropping .org from wikipedia.org? See Proposal:Brand name consolidation Dedalus 17:48, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

that one would only reduce the URL length by 4 letters. Darkoneko 13:10, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

The point is that "wikipedia" would become a fully qualified URL, thus typing in wikipedia in the URL bar of your browser should automatically transform that into http://wikipedia/ which would coincide with what http://wikipedia.org/ is now. You might think it is insignificant by saying it is onlys 4 letters less, I can't stress enough such a change to be highly revolutionary in nature. Dedalus 13:33, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Reducing the "amount of typing" seems a red herring to me. I use Firefox. If I type "en" then en.wikipedia.org immediately pops up in my address bar as the top choice, so I just press down and enter. Similarly, I have a keyword search for en:wp, I type in my address bar "wp Example Article" and it takes me straight to the article provided an article exists, otherwise it takes me to the search page. If you're trying to squeeze out four less characters typed when you could already have reduced it to just two long ago, you're using the internet wrong and deserve to get RSI. --Bodnotbod 13:14, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

why ICANN ?

A less direct approach could involve using w:OpenDNS (or a similar group) and hosting a DNS that people would add to their hosts config file.

After all, these TLD will only be an alternate (and shorter) access to (lang).wiki(projet).org . You really don't want to make all links pointing to us (along with the search engine results) by dropping the main address.

Darkoneko 13:16, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

As far as search engine results, we do not need to drop wikipedia.org domain name to do this. We can keep both domains pointing to the same servers. This is quite easily done.--72.181.103.95 13:43, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I love OpenDNS, and have loved it since it started. Too bad none of the root servers or any major ISP I've ever heard of couldn't care less about it. 99.60.0.22 17:03, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Impact?

Some proposals will have massive impact on end-users, including non-editors. Some will have minimal impact. What will be the impact of this proposal on our end-users? -- Philippe 00:04, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

dot WIKI - why and what can be gained?

Hello all,

I may be of help, since I am one of the few people who actually submitted a generic TLD proposal to ICANN (in year 2000 the dot.travel) and know about the ICANN process and its workings. Currently I work on dotBANK and other financial TLDs.

Why .wiki

Wikimedia is in itself a "brand" and known for its content. If you like to keep, protect or improve the brand name and goodwill created you MUST act.

You SHOULD ask ICANN for the .wiki extension. Simply, because about 500 to 1000 new extensions will be created by ICANN over the next 5 years, and consumers will be lost in finding the old "wikipedia". Who will remember it was ".org" if there is a .work, a .dict, a .shop, a .lex and 997 other "top-level identifiers". If you do not act, you become "second class" sublevel identifier.

ICANN itself reckons that this new gTLD program is the biggest change to consumers since the invention of the internet 40 years ago. You do not believe me? Just look at your new browser capabilities (e.g., Google Chrome) and compare to an Internet Explorer version from 3 years ago. This is the pace of change you will see continuing. Find out more at http://www.icann.org

What can be gained?

So, what can Wikimedia achieve? I believe you can gain to

• set new models of Governance for the Registry and Registrars operating .wiki
• set new models of stakeholder participation (who can "create" a page which will be the 1st sublevel of the top-level domain, such as "einstein.wiki" - an article/page about Albert Einstein.)
• there is no fuzz with IPR - Intellectual property rights. The Einstein case is a well documented Domain Dispute.
• A dot WIKI can claim to be a "zone of common interest" and not hurting current IP owners.
• you stay in the league of Internet inventions in the first tier group.

That's it, that simple

— Dr. Winfried Boeing - Advisor CORE - Internet council of Registrars - http://corenic.org

Dr. Boeing, thank you for providing this informed feedback. It is great food for thought! -Peteforsyth 00:51, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Similar discussion

A slightly less ambitious proposal has come up at en:Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#URL_shortener_for_wikipedia.org_e.g._http:.2F.2Fwi.ki.2F_to_use_on_social_networking_sites_such_as_twitter.com, although I must say I think this version makes far more sense. Unless the cost is completely outrageous, it should be common sense to protect against Domain squatters. LeadSongDog 16:34, 14 May 2010 (UTC)