A Miscellany 194
A Ramble Around Domain Names
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The question asked in the latest Ask the Patriarch caused me to check the status of agnostic.com and agnostic.org. Quite a few years back when this site had outgrown the capacity of its free hosting service, I had wanted to register one of them but Bill Schultz had already had the foresight to grab both for his Agnostic Church / Agnostic Bible[1] and he continues to renew his registration well into the future even though his site has apparently been offline for around three years.
Agnostic.net which was another option I considered at the time belonged to a software package of some kind. It’s currently parked and available for purchase – but much more than I’d be willing to pay. Agnostic.us is in the same situation, and strangely enough for a .us domain, priced in Euros. If I wanted either of them, I’d have to go against principle and seek donations.
But in checking those out, the system automatically generated a number of other somewhat related selections that perhaps I might be interested in purchasing. Most of them seemed to relate to diagnostics, which, other than amusingly reminding me of Talk Back 5 and its all too brief discussion, were quite irrelevant domain names for what I am doing. I was momentarily tempted by AgnosticArt.com, available for a mere $100. Lacking any artistic talent, I resisted the temptation. But, it looks like a good deal for any artist who has agnostic themes. Or you can hope it is allowed to expire and get it cheaper.
Not content with letting things lie, I decided to have a look at Canadian (.ca) registrations. And that resulted in Meditation 730 when I found where agnostic.ca took me. As another result of that search, I impulsively ended up registering agnosticism.ca solely to keep it out of the hands of the Catholics. What I’ll do with it in the long run, I don’t know. As a temporary expedient, it points to this site. At least it is more relevant than pointing to a Christian apologetics site.
Continuing with where I was going in paragraph 2, I was a bit dismayed with the number of domains involving agnostic, agnostics, and agnosticism which are simply parked on rudimentary search pages. Essentially all of these were once owned by someone – and most presumably hosted a website for the promotion of agnosticism – and the registrations allowed to expire. And instead of these going back into the pool of unregistered domains where someone can pick them up inexpensively, they have been grabbed by those who specialize in reselling domain names in the hope of making a profit (not that there is anything wrong with making profits.) But I do find it disappointing that the various major competitors to the Apathetic Agnostic site are disappearing, and that it is getting expensive for those who want to get into the game to obtain a relevant domain name
I don’t think it is good for agnosticism that the number of agnostic voices on the internet (at least from a major site perspective) is apparently diminishing, but it sure seems that way. I’d welcome a little competition.
Footnote:
- Now available once again in our archives.