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by EvanAnderson27 days ago |
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upvoteby bombcar27 days ago|
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I'm still mildly annoyed every time usps.gov redirects me to usps.com
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upvoteby Xirdus27 days ago|
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Once you stop thinking of domain as an addressing tool and start thinking of them as branding, the complaints will make sense. "Dot k12 dot oh dot us" is a terrible brand name.
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upvoteby EvanAnderson27 days ago|
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I have a hard time with public dollars going to "branding" but I do recognize it's a concern for some people and I'm a vastly minority opinion.
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upvoteby Xirdus27 days ago|
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Everything needs branding. "United States of America" and "USA" is branding. Good branding makes people's lives easier and (on average) a tiny bit happier. That has some impact on quality of life. Spending a few tax dollars on improving people's QOL is a good thing if you ask me.

As a specific example, imagine how many less people would enroll in Medicare if instead it was called Lifelong Assistance in Meeting Medical Needs of Aging Able-Bodied Population. Just finding eligibility criteria and the correct forms to submit would be 10 times harder.

(I think it would be even better if Medicare and Medicaid weren't so similar and easy to confuse with one another. Recently I had to explain both concepts to an immigrant who knew about neither but found contradictory information online about both.)

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upvoteby Atotalnoob27 days ago|
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Public dollars or not, it IS branding.

Having a strong, consistent, easy to use name IS a positive.

It’s easy to remember, which means more “engagement”. For a local government organization, that means more support, more feedback, and the constituents are “getting their moneys worth” more than a government organization that they can’t ever interact with.

It’s a clear win for using your dollars BETTER

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upvoteby ericjmorey26 days ago|
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Why would you have a problem with public dollars being used for effective communication?
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upvoteby TMWNN27 days ago|
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.gov should never have been expanded to outside the US federal government.

(.com should never have been expanded to outside US-headquartered companies, either.)

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upvoteby thesuitonym26 days ago|
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I'm actually in favor of it, because it makes it much more clear what is a government address, versus what is a private address in the US. But .gov should have been broken up into .state.gov address so you could very easily guess the address of your local governments website. Like why is the site for Los Angeles lacity.gov and not losangeles.ca.gov? Why is the Ohio secretary of state not sos.oh.gov? These should all be well known address, so if I move to a new state, I can just go to the web site, and do whatever registration I need to without having to hunt for these addresses.
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upvoteby NetMageSCW26 days ago|
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The second is hard to justify unless you are willing to say .com should have been replaced with .com.us
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upvoteby hed26 days ago|
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Agreed on both.
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