Wikipedia Hasn't Forgiven GoDaddy

netbuzz writes "The fact that a month and a half has gone by and Wikipedia still hasn't followed through on Jimmy Wales public threat to remove its domain name registrations from GoDaddy over the latter's early support of SOPA has some concerned that the online encyclopedia may have had a change of heart. After all, GoDaddy did withdraw its backing of the controversial antipiracy legislation, at least publicly. But fear not, SOPA foes, as Wikipedia says its days with GoDaddy are indeed numbered and that number is getting very small."

Comments

SOPA isn't the only reason GoDaddy sucks

[MrEricSir]

Let's also not forget all the other ways GoDaddy sucks:

• So much up-selling a car dealer would blush
• Obnoxious TV advertisements that are straight out of Idiocracy
• Customer service worse than the post office or a bank
• That whole elephant-killing thing.

So fuck GoDaddy. There's plenty of registrars with better service that cost less anyway.

Re:SOPA isn't the only reason GoDaddy sucks

[symbolset]

I believe when we were having this discussion namecheap was the consensus.

Re:SOPA isn't the only reason GoDaddy sucks

[stephanruby]

and don't forget also:

The GoDaddy CEO publicly supports waterboarding
GoDaddy already has an history of shutting down domains without requiring to see a court order
GoDaddy has a long history of getting its customer servers/accounts hacked and not saying anything about it to its customers
And during the SOPA exodus, which is still going on, it's been dragging its feet on domain transfers (a violation of ICANN rules and regulations).
Hopefully, they'll have their domain name registry privileges taken away by ICANN because of that last one.

Re:SOPA isn't the only reason GoDaddy sucks

[SuperTechnoNerd]

Don't forget The GoDaddy CEO shoots elephants in Africa for fun too.. Nice guy.

Re:SOPA isn't the only reason GoDaddy sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL.
After following your link to waterboarding, which then leads to another page 60 links deep proclaiming the GoDaddy CEO supports waterboarding, the only thing it eventually led to is a blog posting by the CEO calling Guantanamo Bay an "important asset" to protect Americans. So yes, I suppose you could say he therefore supports waterboarding, in the same way that if a staff member at Guantanamo Bay was into BDSM, you could say Bob Parson supports BDSM tooly. Or in the same way that you support Open Source, of which Linux is a leading example, which contains components written by Hans Reiser, who was a murderer; and therefore you publicly support murder.

Re:SOPA isn't the only reason GoDaddy sucks

[Arrepiadd]

Put two fish of the same species in a proper environment and safe from predators and after one year you have 10000 of them.
Put two elephants in an equivalent scenario and after one year you have two elephants. After two years you may have three. After 10 years, all things perfect, you'll have about 5 of them.

Now go back to the end of year one... kill one fish, kill one elephant. Do you see where this is going?

forgivness

[SuperTechnoNerd]

I have not forgiven my congress critters either. Looking forward to November.

Re:forgivness

[EuclideanSilence]

What the hell is wrong with being a statistical outlier? Elections aren't some horserace that you win by voting for the candidate that gets office, they are won when public opinion changes.

Re:forgivness

[artor3]

What the hell is wrong with being a statistical outlier? Elections aren't some horserace that you win by voting for the candidate that gets office, they are won when public opinion changes.

True, but public opinion isn't changed by the fact that 0.2% of the vote went to Generic Third Party #17. Not even a little bit.

If you want to effect change via voting:
1) Primary for the best candidate you can find (a lot of people ignore this step, and then go on to bemoan that they only have two choices in the general election)
2) Vote for the least bad of the two major party nominees at the federal level
3) Vote for third parties at the local and state level

Non-federal politics matter a whole lot -- more than federal politics for many aspects of life -- and are easier to influence. Plus the pool of people who get taken seriously at a federal level tends to be drawn from those who have been successful at the lower levels. If you can get a great candidate to be a popular and successful state senator, then he's got a good shot at becoming governor. If you've got a popular and successful independent governor, I know a whole lot of people who'd love to see him become president. It's admittedly a long shot, but it's better than throwing away your vote every cycle in a protest that 99.9% of the populace won't even notice.

Re:forgivness

[epine]

True, but public opinion isn't changed by the fact that 0.2% of the vote went to Generic Third Party #17. Not even a little bit.

You can't back that up, I don't believe it to begin with, and the argument from continuity suggests it's not even logically possible, not to mention the problem with induction.

There exists threshold j below which your vote matters not at all in the minds of dullards who believe this. At some point you have to cross the dullard threshhold. Only a non-dullard can move the dullards. But even the non-dullard concedes that there exists k much less than j below which his inductive impetus is wasted. Only a double non-dullard can move the non-dullards. But even a double non-dullard concedes that there exists m much less than k ...

On a more practical basis, there was a time in the nineties in a Canadian election where the dismal third option failed to clear a threshold I didn't even know about: percentage of popular vote which granted them official party status and the resources which flow from that. All the idiots were saying "don't waste your vote" over votes this party desperately needed to clear this bar.

The big one in America, of course, is excluding Ralph Nadar (or anyone like him) from the presidential debate. I think that's the worst possible outcome of all, because it grants the asylum complete control over the speaking points. All you have left are two candidates promising the same small opposites. We're left arguing over the colour of the paint rather than whether to adopt a gasoline or diesel engine.

These throw-away votes don't decide between the donkey and the elephant, but they have a big impact on whether good candidates, or at least strong voices for a different future, bother to show up at all.

I believe America should outlaw two party debate in presidential elections. There should always be at least a third voice who gets equal time, selected by whatever mechanism proves workable. (This is probably a long term arms race where the incumbents constantly work to scupper whatever worked the time before.)

In fact, I wouldn't mind having an entire panel of third party voices who collectively get 1/3 of the total debate time. They can have a bidding system among themselves for who gets to cut in on which issues.

Your rule of thumb is a good one for people who don't wish to think. Not even a little bit.

To be fair...

[Daetrin]

I expect with a company the size of Wikipedia, particularly one with Wikipedia's web presence, switching your hosting around isn't really something you can do on the turn of a dime.

On the other side of the coin though (er, so to speak) i wonder if this is really the best tactic. I mean, i couldn't wish for the fallout to land on a more deserving company, but will this affect Wikipedia's bargaining position for similar situations in the future? Threatening to punish people for actions you don't like is just fine (well, assuming you stick to legal methods of course) but if they recant and you follow through on your threats regardless, would the next company you deal with have any reason to recant?

Re:To be fair...

[EdIII]

switching your hosting around isn't really something you can do on the turn of a dime

Exactly. It does take time, especially for a large organization, to find a suitable replacement for services.

.....but if they recant and you follow through on your threats regardless, would the next company you deal with have any reason to recant?

That's not the point. There is no forgiveness for GoDaddy. Absolute Utter Destruction Required. They KNOW better.

Some actions are not possible to take back. Yes, I will compare it to murder. You just can't take it back. Do I care that the murderer is blubbering in the court room? Nope. Not at all. Fry his ass.

That is what it really comes down too. A deterrent. When we partially hang GoDaddy, cut off their balls, disembowel them, chop of their head, and distribute the remaining portions of their body on spikes to the far reaches of the Internet it will stand as warning to all companies to not support laws that threaten the base functionality of the Internet and a free and open network.

Their cries for mercy fall on deaf ears and hardened resolve.

Re:To be fair...

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I'm aware, Wikipedia does not depend on GoDaddy for anything other than domain registrar services. They don't use them for DNS. They don't use them for hosting of any kind. So actually, yes, they literally can switch to another registrar on the turn of a dime. I've seen it done with corporate sites fielding millions of page views a month, and downtime should be precisely zero. Nothing changes aside from the registrar name in the whois info.

Re:To be fair...

[EdIII]

Uhhhh... yeah okay.

That might be true if Wikipedia was being unreasonable. If I knew there was a potential big client out there with a lot of media clout that was known to be unreasonable and difficult to work with I would probably pass on servicing them too. However, taking a stance against something like SOPA, which anybody remotely involved with Internet knows is bad, very very bad, is hardly unreasonable.

Saying SOPA is political is like saying we could have rational discourse about the *possibility* of owning African Americans as slaves and starting up our "import business" all over again to compete with China on low cost labor.

No. SOPA is only political in the remotely tangential sense that it involves some politicians. Other than that, there is no rational basis on the pro-SOPA side to enact such dangerous and draconian laws.

Pro life and anti-evolution have more rational arguments and positions than SOPA and could be considered a valid political debate amongst the citizenry. SOPA is just flat out insanity with no possible redeeming virtue towards society in any way, shape, or form.

Political my ass. To characterize it as such it to give it validity. It has none whatsoever.

Re:To be fair...

[EdIII]

It's still not political and I am delusional, ignorant, or refusing to accept reality.

Political, in the contemporary sense, and in this context, means that it is an argument about laws, regulations, policy, or a school of thought on how society should be administered to the benefit of the society. There can two or more sides to the argument, but what they all have in common is at least the pretense that it is beneficial towards society and serves to protect it.

I deny SOPA that status. While politicians may be involved in it, there is no valid discussion, no valid arguments, and no valid sides supporting SOPA. That is why it is not political. It is entirely one-sided. No other argument in government can claim such distinction. Not FISA, not the Patriot Act, not Abortion, not Gay Marriage, etc. Every single one them has some sort of basis to support it. Some sort of rationale in which the American Way of Life (tm) is protected and allowed to flourish, even if I may disagree with it.

SOPA is pure corruption and abuse in its most distilled form. It is the most direct assault on intelligence, liberty, and common sense that I have been witness to in my entire life.

I don't know of any stronger terms that I can state just how evil SOPA *is*. For me to acknowledge it as political means that it there is some sort of public interest served in the debate. I just can't see that or say it.

Re:Fun, but...

[EdIII]

That's being a bit simplistic.

If I walked into a local restaurant and received poor service and bad tasting food, the people there might be a bit dismissive when I complain loudly and tell them that I am going "blog that shit all over the Internet".

Now if President Obama walked in (unlikely I know) and then mentioned how shitty the place was to the White House press core, it might be a little more devastating.

Both of us spent the same amount of money, and represent the same amount of loss in the future on an individual basis, but one certainly stings a bit more.

I finally quit godaddy this week

[alex_guy_CA]

I called up hover.com. Spoke with someone on the phone, gave her my godaddy login info. She did all of the work for me. I'm done with godaddy, and I can't think that there is any possible way it could have been easier.

And this costs GoDaddy what, $2.95?

[Animats]

And this costs GoDaddy what, $2.95? It's just domain registration. Wikipedia isn't hosted by GoDaddy.

There's a hierarchy of registrars. At the top is MarkMonitor, which registers domains like "ford.com". If you have to ask how much their registration costs, you can't afford it. This is where you register a "must stay up" domain. If anything goes wrong with a MarkMonitor registration, alarms go off and teams of DNS admins and lawyers swing into action.

Network Solutions is a reasonable registrar for corporate domains. They have "amazon.com", for example. If something goes wrong, you can usually get them ont he phone and get them to do something.

Much further down is GoDaddy. But they're not the bottom. Below GoDaddy are the bulk registrars, like Enom. That's where you register junk domains for link farms, domaining, and other dubious activities. At the bottom are the registrars in the ICANN list that don't even have valid contact information. It's not clear what they're doing, but it's probably not good.

Re:And this costs GoDaddy what, $2.95?

[FreakyGreenLeaky]

It costs them reputation.

A Personal Appeal from Jimmy Wales

[Cryacin]

I'm just waiting for the personal appeal to boycott Godaddy.

Re:A Personal Appeal from Jimmy Wales

[bky1701]

"Hi, I'm Jimbo. I'm going to leave my face on every page until GoDaddy goes out of business. You know what to do. Thank you for your support."

Re:A Personal Appeal from Jimmy Wales

[hairyfeet]

I'd just like to say../wipes away tear/...that I'd like to thank the little HTML nerd that made the ABP code that made Jimbo's ugly ass mug finally disappear from Wikipedia forever! Bless your little nerdy heart!

Have you ever tried to switch from GoDaddy??

[ukemike]

Have you ever tried to switch from GoDaddy? I'm sure they're just having difficultly figuring out HOW to unregister from GoDaddy. It took me about 5 tries over the course of three months and I only had one domain to deal with.

Re:Have you ever tried to switch from GoDaddy??

[Microlith]

Funny, I had a domain that was registered with GoDaddy for 9 years and I was swapped over to Gandi.net within an hour or less.

Re:Have you ever tried to switch from GoDaddy??

[thatskinnyguy]

I had to look it up. But once I found a reliable source I did a batch transfer. http://help.godaddy.com/article/3560 lol