In other words, theirname.org, theirname.net, theirname.info etc., were all taken and not set to expire anytime soon, even though some of them are not in active use. Efforts to contact the registrants of the inactive but reserved domains were fruitless. Leaving aside the issue that checking domain availability needs to be part of the process of coming up with a name... the alliance leaders are now considering using a two-letter country TLD instead. The Alliance will be based in The Hague (which is very friendly to nonprofits), but theirname.nl (for the Netherlands) is also already taken. For perhaps obvious reasons they don't want to use the country codes of any of the ten members (International types are always touchy on that kind of thing), so they asked me about relatively unknown country codes like .nu and so on; spefically, they wondered if .nu and several other country codes had bad reputations (such as being the source of spam) they should be aware of and avoid, or conversely, if there are any with good reputations that would be appropriate to their mission of international knowledge-sharing and cooperation.
So I wanted to put that question to WebmasterWorld's experts: Are there certain ccTLDs that should be avoided due to bad reputations? Any with desirable good reputations? Let me know your opinions!
Also, I read elsewhere about the .eu ccTLD being approved -- are there any other "extra-national" ccTLDs or some other alternative I haven't considered that would be appropriate for an international nonprofit organization that has members from ten countries on four continents?
For reference, you might wish to consult the current list of ccTLDs [iana.org].
.cc is quite good, more and more people are starting to use it.
keep away from .tv (what were Liverpool F.C thinking of)
Shak
