A thread to discuss naming threads, board policy, new thread suggestions, and anything else that has to do with board administration and maintenance. Guaranteed to include lively debate and polls. Natter discouraged, but not deleted.
Current Stompy Feet: ita, Jon B, DXMachina, P.M. Marcontell, Liese S., amych
The admin mailbox just got an email from them as follows:
To admins,
We apologize if etiquette was violated by posting that vampireslayer.us/vampireslayer.biz had expired and were currently open for registration. Any hint of spamming was unintentional as no marketing language was included in the post and no links to our business were included. We did not include the name of our business at all except as a user name. As a domain register (and Huge Firefly Fans - How else do you think we knew of this board?) we regularly receive lists of expiring domain names. Some of our techs regularly contribute to many boards including whedon related boards with technical advice and thought it a good idea to post here as info to those who might be most interested but not in the Domain Industry. The name of our site was used at sign up simply as common practice as we subscribe to many domain industry related organizations and this is common practice. If this constitutes spamming, again, deep apologies. Rest assured we have instructed our employees not to post to this board with any information on company time, and not to post any information that passes our business in the future even if it does relate to projects by Whedon, Minear, ME or any related entity. Regards - Unleashed Domains
I'm still confused, but whatever.
I guess I would encourage them to be a little more verbose in their posting to avoid the appearance of spam.
"Hi, we operate a registration site and got notification that _____ was available and thought people here might want to know about it. You don't have to register with us, just happen to be fans and thought you might be interested."
Would go a long way to at least *appear* less suspicious...
Odd, but I like that they didn't intend to offend or spam. It certainly was not spam to all possible parties and run activity. Thanks for sharing the message where they clarify their intent.
Daniel -- I think you've nailed it. If they'd posted as you suggested, I think we'd have been kerfuffle-free.
Here's the problem I have. I ran the whois for both vampireslayer.us and vampireslayer.biz, and they are both owned by a Steven Diaz, whose email address is admin@unleasheddomains.com. That says to me that unleashed domains owns both domains, so that if you want to use one, you'll have to pay them for the privilege. That's one of the ways they make their money. If you try to get one of them through NSI, say, then NSI presents you with a screen asking you to make an offer to the owner.
I still think it was spam, and it seems to me that their apology is just covering their ass so they can do it to others.
Ah. Well it looks like they won't be back anyway.
vampireslayer.biz was
not
owned at the time of my posts last night.
NSI tells you to make an offer to the owner. Register.com does not. Domaindiscover does not. UNLEASHEDDOMAINS does not. So even if they'd both been in their nefarious pockets at the time of post ... I don't see how that's spammy.
Register.com does not.
Yes, they do. Minimum bid is $200 through them.
Sorry. I didn't notice that.
However, the assertion that they were selling something they didn't own (the .biz) still strikes me as odd.
The idea that the post could be taken at face value does not seem naive to me.
The response was very unequivocal to something that was ambiguous at best.
