There was a 2006 movie called “ATL”, and there seems to be an increasing trend to call major cities by their 3-letter airport codes in some, but not all cases. A lot of that seems to come from hip-hop.
E.g. ATL, STL, PDX, SFO, SLC, JAX, DFW, PHX
But not for cities with multiple airports and/or not named after the city itself – New York, Chicago, Miami. And LAX seems to be specific to the airport rather than LA in general.
Also sometimes the city is “the TLA” for some reason, as in “raising hell in the ATL” or whatever
I’m not sure how new this is though, come to think of it. Sarasota, Florida even had a local magazine called SRQ, which was the code for its airport with one terminal that was too small to qualify as international at the time and usually just shuttled people to bigger cities to get on a “real” plane.
AllTheLikes… this feels happy and friendly to me, with just enough of a reference to our fun back at the bbs without the unpleasant reminders that the Elsewhere names might hold. And while we’ll probably always be Mutants in one way or another, that’s kind of a BoingBoing trademark and we’re trying to do our own thing here.
Adhocracy… it’s another reference to doing our own thing, in our own way, and it’s pretty catchy.
Sanctuary… where our community can be a community, a refuge and a celebration of ourselves, to share with each other and with the Web at large, as we choose.
That’s my two cents, FWIW. Though I also want to compliment @waetherman for his most excellent reasoning in generating the semi-finals. Eris approves, and so do I!
all I can think of is that shock site that operated out of christmas island (.cx). They lost their domain name because it offended christmas islanders.
When I saw it I didn’t know the reveal. I really enjoyed it. But I never watched it a second time just because I knew it wouldn’t be the same. Some movies with a big reveal are fun to watch a second time knowing, but The Crying Game didn’t seem to be like that.
i narrowed my choices down to three by considering which seemed most memorable for daily use. Mutant Underground, Mutant Speakeasy, and End of the World Cafe are all super easy to remember.
So, these were my criteria:
First, it should be a straightforward name: one whose meaning is readily accessible. The “mutant” names went out the window here, as did All The Likes.
Second, it shouldn’t be confused with another community. Numbers Station is out, as we’re not actually focused on those. SnickerSnark (as much as I love the name) as well, as we’re not a Lewis Carroll group. The HMS ones, as we’re not British or naval. And Annexia because frankly, it sounds too similar to an eating disorder.
I’m now down to six. Of those, I think End of The World says who we are the least, so it’s gone. Snark Exchange… If we were just going to be a comment section, sure, but I don’t think the front page should exist entirely of snark; certainly not just directed at each other. And, of the remaining four, I had to drop one, so Commentariat Collective had to go.
Leaving:
Elsewhere.cafe
Adhocracy.cafe
Sanctuary.cafe
I think all three are names that clearly express a vision of who we are today and who we want to be in the future, have subtext about where we come from in the past, and are snappy off both the tongue and keyboard.
The .cafe domain is specifically for the coffee industry so I’m wondering about that ending. I’m thinking we can do these with .net or .org and include cafe in hr main domain.
.net is (ostensibly) for the ISP industry and .org is for charitable organizations. Point being, TLDs have always been stretched beyond their original intended use.
So I don’t think it should make a difference, what the TLD is if people like the name. In fact, I’m somewhat regretting including TLDs at this point; while they were necessary at first to establish what domains were actually available and in what format, many of the top choices so far are available in multiple flavors of TLD so it might make sense for round three to eliminate the extension and show all the options.
@waetherman@ChickieD I confess I got a little less strict about proper TLD starting around the time of the .TV situation (Not that I begrudge Tuvalu the income, mind.)
And then, well: dorktower.com
Yeah.
However, I think a pragmatic take on it might be the same as the position around numbersstation.whatever (and similar) in the list - is it likely to confuse the people we want to attract, and/or annoy them by polluting their searches.
(I.E. Will people actually think we’re a physical café when they see the URL (and be put off) or will we turn up in the searches of people looking for cafés (and thus be annoying).
Even though I’m not a complete TLD purist, @ChickieD’s concern makes sense to me from that perspective - whether .cafe will be perceived as being only tea, coffee, and tasty foodstuffs or not.
Myself, I think we’d get away with it, but freely acknowledge that my perspective might not match the target user’s, here.
That’s different, though, because in order to register a .coop you actually need to be a cooperative, of the right sort by their standards, and someone checks this when you buy the domain. Most of the other new domains, like .cafe, aren’t restricted at all; I was able to buy a .fish domain without having to prove I was a fish.
