That’s my preference. Any finger given to BB is a finger given to Cory, Xeni, Andrea, and others I have no beef with. I favour a name that isn’t a reference to an ephemeral pop culture meme, and one that is broad enough to cover the widest range of topics.
I do like Numbers Station, Croatoan, and Caravanserai. Elsewhere or some variation isn’t bad, although it does bring to mind the recent unpleasantness for those in the know.
Personally, while I agree with a clean break, I don’t for a second believe that the site authors aren’t fully aware with what happened and, overall, OK with it. JLW isn’t some rogue actor and at least some of the authors have never really liked the BBS or the community at all.
No need to restrict ourselves to the oversubscribed .com space. In fact, I wouldn’t mind seeing us adhere to one of the new TLDs such as .space, .cafe, .here, or others.
I say this as someone whose first job came with the title of ‘Hostmaster’, back in the days when .com domains were free and it took an entire FTE to manage a few thousand DNS records. As much as I might kvetch against the willy nilly expansion of top-level domains from a nostalgic POV, I would love to see this experiment pioneer a new TLD as well.
I’ve had the issue of late when I look up a domain name that the name gets snatched within a day by some domain sitter. I’m lately just buying domains that are not too pricey that interest me and are available. I’m curious if others have had this issue and if there is a workaround that doesn’t involve my wallet.
Y’all, the domain is fine as is, officially. The Entity is thrilled to see Happy Mutants become a thing beyond our responsibility and moderatorial sniper range.
Thanks for running it by the Borg for us. Half the fun of this board has been the inventive names people have come up with.
brb, sniping a domain name.
That may have happened to me. I did a Google search for Ruelle.net when I first suggested it, and didn’t find anything, but when I checked GoDaddy a day or two later, it was taken. A search now yields “Page under construction”.
That’s very interesting - thanks for checking, and thanks to the HMS LLC folks for being generous and ungrudging. It remains to be seen how folks here feel about making our own name vs linking to the origins of this community but at least now we know we have a choice.
For now, I’m going to keep the naming process going as it has been outlined. When we get down to the semifinals, I’ll add happymutant.space in to the mix so we can argue it on its merits against other fully developed names.
I think other TLDs are fine, but I still have a preference for the “big three” (.com/org/net) because if they are available, they tend to be more familiar to people and there is less confusion. Also, if another name is already taken and active in the big three, there is a high likelihood of trademark/domain squatting challenge and confusion. And then there’s the porn forwarding 
That’s cool news.
This is a thing now. Squatters will pay shadier registrars for open domain names that are searched for but not registered. Squatter then uses the API of the registrar to auto-register the domain so they can sell it back to you at a premium. I put GoDaddy into the ‘shady registrar’ category, personally.
Given the fact that carriers like Verizon and Level 3 have started a trend of directing non-existent domains to their own landing/search pages (calling it “DNS Assistance”), I wouldn’t be surprised if the also monetize that data.
My blood pressure rose 25 points just typing that because I find the practice infuriating.
In summary: Don’t type domain names into browsers to see if they’re already owned. Don’t use registrar’s tools to search for available domains. Just looking can get the domain ganked by squatters.
I see a much scarier use of that than just domain squatting: taking that domain (if there are enough searches) and using it for phishing, malware and such. And god(s) help the casual mis-typer.
Capitalism; the gift that keeps on giving.
We need a logo design
#competition!
Logo design will be easier once we get a name for this place. But I’m looking forward to it. I’ve got a newer edition of Photoshop Elements around somewhere, waiting to be installed on my laptop, and I’ve been looking for an excuse to brush up on my rusty-dusty ol’ graphics skills…
Double helix and a spanner.
