[iomcr]

I do have a complaint about relatively new TLDs. Did you know .forum domains are $500 to $2000 per year?

We live in a world where everybody is complaining about censorship and nazis, but one of the best new TLDs for an independent forum is prices out 99% of the market!

Of course, there are plenty of TLDs in the $5-$20 range, which are great, but this will cause cheap TLDs to become crowded and .forum will be a ghost town.

Forums generally don't make money. Any forum making money, probably isn't making enough to budget $500 extra in another domain. Any company that would say "wow, $2000/year is acceptable" would already have something like {forum,community}.acme.com.

[ziml77]

Is it the best TLD for in independent forum? It could be completely irrational on my part but I'd be hesitant to click a search result that would bring me to a .forum domain.

[beprogrammed]

Well, to be fair, censorship and fascism are worse things than extortionate domain name prices. Though both are bad.

[iomcr]

While true, a free and open web is generally desirable, and we'd like to keep the barriers of entry for federation to a minimum. If someone was ready to start mycool.forum, but doesn't have $500/yr to start a website, they must now wade through a garbage pile of "minimum $2,000 bid" squatted domains, weird TLDs that could declare your domain premium and charge $400,000/yr at any time, maybe even if the only thing "premium" about the name is that your website got popular, or buy a domain like themycoolforum50.com.

This might be only one managable issue, but these things add up, and the more they add up, the more facebook becomes the only website people use.