Yeesh...in case there was any doubt beforehand that this is a terrible idea, the initial list is now proof. They have taken something that has a valid technical reason to exist and turned it into a cesspool.
Hopefully those in control of infrastructure take a stand and simply reject these "domains" entirely. Shouldn't be hard to set up sanity-restoring filters...let us please just pretend these are spam domains and never acknowledge their existence.
Ironically anyone vain enough to reserve ".<whatever>" is surely ALSO going to keep a death grip on "<whatever>.com" so this will do nothing to improve the size of the name space.
I believe they cannot just toss a coin - there has to be an element of skill - so they are using a "digital archery" approach.
The user sets a time in the future, and then later must come back and click a button as close to that time as possible. Then users are ranked by the delta between their target time and actual time.
:-) Your post nicely shows why having a top level ___domain 'Berlin' could be good idea: without it you would not be able to find those German bike tours. Germany has top level ___domain de for 'Deutschland'; ge = Georgia (the country)
I was gonna say communities like Catalan speakers (.cat) have a good excuse, but then I remembered that ICANN already gave these people their own TLDs.
Hopefully those in control of infrastructure take a stand and simply reject these "domains" entirely. Shouldn't be hard to set up sanity-restoring filters...let us please just pretend these are spam domains and never acknowledge their existence.
Ironically anyone vain enough to reserve ".<whatever>" is surely ALSO going to keep a death grip on "<whatever>.com" so this will do nothing to improve the size of the name space.