Forum:.org or .com?

Here is a question that I am just throwing out there since we are doing a lot of revamp work on the site. We never really discussed whether we want our primary domain TLD to be a .org or a .com. What do you guys think? tmtoulouse 00:33, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * What would the impact of each be? 01:57, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Nothing other than what appears on the url bar when you load the site, at the moment rationalwiki.org and rationalwiki.net all redirect to rationalwiki.com. tmtoulouse 01:58, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I always thought dot-org would be more appropriate. Dot-com implies some sort of commercial aspect, while dot-org more accurately reflects what we aspire to.   02:01, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * To be honest, I've always wondered why it ist't .org. Providing the redirecting still worked and it wouldn't bork any links it would be a positive step. 06:00, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * If it has no effect on day to day running why not? And Armondikov+RA make a good point. Acei9 06:01, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It was because rationalwiki.com was what was originally registered. The .org and .net TLDs weren't registered till later, and by then...well institutional inertia is strong. tmtoulouse 06:06, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That's what I figured was the case. Stupid suggestion, but if we go the .org route and the board/trustee route is it also worth changing the front page from media wiki to straight-forward HTML so we have a front page. Sort of along the lines of how skeptical-voter has a basic page fronting the site before hitting the wiki. 07:16, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia has that because it's multilanguage. If you go to en.wikipedia.org, as opposed to wikipedia.org, you get the wiki straight away (don't know about skeptical-voter). It's not worth putting a roadblock in front of people unless we have a good reason.
 * As for the tld, rationalwiki.org sounds strange, but that's probably just because I'm used to .com, and I'm not against the change if the mob wants it. We should probably advertise this discussion more, e.g. intercom message and all that. -- Nx  / talk 10:38, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It probably is you being used to .com that makes it sound strange. However, by tld convention, we should be .org. We are .org, but it directs to .com. The impact, I think, would be very minimal. 10:55, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Although I agree that the primary domain should really be .org, I would not change it now in case it fucks up our pagerank. 10:59, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Not that we care about pagerank, of course. 11:03, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I think our ranking on a search engine beginning with G is quite important. Where else are people going to go to get information on Poe's Law? 15:04, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * This can be researched a bit more, but my understanding is that as long as every single .com link winds up on the right page but with a .org TLD google shouldn't really care that much. tmtoulouse 15:17, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

.org, especially if we create a NPO as our basic structure. .com implies "company", .org implies "organisation". Also, I once accidentally called us a .org in an email read by a radio host. 03:40, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The difference between .org and .com has largely been subverted by common usage and complete lack of enforcement. Hell, if we lived in the original world of t'internet rationalwiki wouldn't have been entitled to register _any_ of the top level domain names. My vote is for .com, since that's always going to be what comes to be the first thing that comes to mind when people wonder what rationalwiki's web address is. -- 08:23, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I want .net just for the sake of being different. 08:35, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not getting the right redirect from .net. It directs to .org then stops. Actually, the .org redirecting has stopped too. I'm not sure if it's a browser thing stopping the automatic redirecting as it seemed to work fine yesterday. BTW, while I like .net, I don't think rationalwiki.net quite works as well as rationalwiki.org; indeed, even rationalwiki.com feels less right than the .org. 08:52, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * My preference is for .org for any non-commercial site. Totnesmartin (talk) 09:13, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * .ca! .org -- more prestigious soundin'. --[[Image:Flag of Soviet Canuckistan.svg|30px|IN SOVIET CANUCKISTAN, BEAVER DAMS YOU!!!]] Yossarian The Man from the USSR 10:55, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * As mentioned earlier, .org better suits us and I'm pedantic when it comes to this kind of thing. -- ConcernedResident noseblower, for the ladies 11:40, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I think .omg would be quite cool. --⁠ (talk) 12:04, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * If there are no technical issues then "ORG" would be best.--BobSpring is sprung! 16:48, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It is useless to resist the org. you will be assimilated--Thanatos (talk) 18:43, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * dot org. 00:07, 23 May 2010 (UTC) C ® ackeЯ
 * Your edit sum. said "On advice from TK". I don't think we should pay any heed to what a morally bankrupt individual like has to say on this matter. Acei9 01:33, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I have always preferred .org as it doesn't have the commercialism of .com. It's not like another site could nick the .com TLD and then usurp us because .com comes before .org or .net in the default browser search order. We had some laughs at CP over their .com suffix and just how much money AS was pocketing fom the site, perhaps .org would remove the long-held suspicion that TMT is using our Paypal donations to subsidise his moist toilet wipe addiction. 05:44, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The .org move is good.  Sorry I missed this discussion, I must have been at the weed again.   DogP Marmite Patrol 18:17, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Changing domain and pagerank
Just a few posts I found in relation to this issue. It seems to be a non-issue regarding search rankings, or at least it will correct itself within a few weeks. I can say that from when I changed my group's website, I put a "dummy" page in the exact URL of the page that was previously top of the search rankings, but within a few weeks that had been completely replaced by the "real" page. So search engines will correct themselves pretty quick and, at worst, we'd lose search engine traffic for a month, tops. The remaining issue is that redirects work effectively to compensate for the fact that a lot of our traffic comes through archived links, such as when we get slashdotted. 08:59, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * http://www.google.co.uk/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=20968644a6eecbe7&hl=en
 * http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm
 * http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=29f0b73d5f026fc5&hl=en
 * We've instantly lost our pagerank (back to N/A instead of 4/10). Search results will still list the .com entry for a couple of weeks, and reindexing will also take a couple of weeks. Let's hope there's an overlap! 12:04, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

no www. ?
Is there any reason why the primary name is "rationalwiki.org" not "www.rationalwiki.org"? I'd expect it to be the other way around. Also, when there is a URL redirect (not mediawiki redirect) from a URL ending in %3F (that's for the question mark), it gets lost at some point. Presumably its being converted into a ?, and then removed as there is no POST query params after it. Csmiller 17:24, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * We have never had a www, www is deprecated. tmtoulouse 17:25, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm trying to figure out the ? thing, hang on. -- Nx  / talk 17:27, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if this worked at all before we made the switch. Expect more breakage while I try to fix this. -- Nx  / talk 17:47, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I seem to remember problems with disappearing %3Fs before, but didn't realise what was causing it. CS Miller (talk) 18:06, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I tried a configuration identical to our previous one (except redirecting to .org, not .com), and it wasn't working, so I'm pretty sure it was broken before. Unfortunately, I don't think it's possible to do this properly, so I've disabled rewriting for now (i.e. www prefix isn't removed and .net/.com aren't changed to .org, but of course short urls still work.), until I find an alternative solution. -- Nx  / talk 18:12, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * For the record, the guys at wikipedia haven't figured it out either: http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/%3F -- Nx  / talk 18:16, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

I give up. Apache and/or I am retarded. Make sure we have redirects. -- Nx  / talk 20:25, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Anything involving mod_rewrite in any capacity whatsoever is the work of goddamn Satan. WHY YES WE DO USE IT EXTENSIVELY AT WORK - David Gerard (talk) 10:35, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

*vent*
I just realised I now how to change all my fucking scripts. 10:32, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Bug reports

 * The thing at the top of my screen is truncated to ~20 characters. Now reads "Editing Forum:.org or .com? (new sect


 * In my firefox taskbar it is a series of rectangles. Not wiki-breakers, but of concern. 04:05, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, never mind, these problems are occurring on all my windows. 05:04, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Moral of the story
Use instead of copying the url from your address bar. I.e. instead of http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Forum:.org_or_.com%3F&action=edit&section=new, use --  Nx  / talk 11:06, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * What is that the solution to again? 02:40, 26 May 2010 (UTC)