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US government domains seem a little over the place. I'm surprised by the number of courts and counties that have random .org and .com domains. In Australia, it

by YPPH 2y ago

US government domains seem a little over the place. I'm surprised by the number of courts and counties that have random .org and .com domains. In Australia, it follows a pretty strict structure: Federal: entity.gov.au State: entity.wa.gov.au (example for State of Western Australia) Local: entity.stirling.wa.gov.au (example for a local government in Western Australia), So, for example, the Federal Court is fedcourt.gov.au as it's federal. Strange how the US has such a mishmash.

dave881 2y ago
I assume that this is the result of a few quirks here in the US - Lots of things came online in the US before ccTLDs were common, and are still rare for US based orgs - US states have quite a bit of freedom in how they communicate with their citizens. - US states vary greatly in services provided and population (from ~600,000 up to ~40M)
Operyl 2y ago
It’s not terribly difficult to get a gov domain, it’s just much easier to do an ordinary one. Smaller towns and cities outsource to cheap WYSIWYG type builders that also include a domain so it’s really simple to just go that route too.
- Mountain_Skies 2y ago
  It can get quite unprofessional at that level. There was a small suburb in our metro whose .com domain was an insult against the core city. I'm sure they thought it was funny but eventually it did get changed to the town and state name.
FinnKuhn 2y ago
Wait until you see the situation in Germany. Everything uses just a normal .de domain, no special TLD for government institutions at all.
- 9dev 2y ago
  It’s awful, really. Some domain names are so awfully chosen, they sound like scams. Take the government program for financial support to students, called BAföG. Here’s a bunch of domains related to that: * bafoeg.de * bafoeg-digital.de * bafoegonline.bva.bund.de Or, the worst one in my opinion: the German federal ID card has an integrated RFID chip that requires a PIN to unlock. You can use that chip to authenticate against a few government services online, which rely on the PIN as proof of identity. The PIN can be reset using a OTP sent via snail mail. Q: where you you think can you order that letter? a) Bundesdruckerei.de b) personalausweisportal.de c) pin-ruecksetzbrief-bestellen.de d) bmi.bund.de? A: yes. It’s c. Seriously.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    Healthcare billing in the USA has gone this way. You're going to see emails from my-doctor-billing.com directing you to hospital-pay-site.biz and they're all totally legitimate. It's nuts.
0xbadcafebee 2y ago
That's the genius of having states, counties, cities, towns and villages that are almost entirely decentralized. When an evil force takes over the government and wants to rule the whole country, they can't, because nobody even knows how a single tiny village is organized. Complete disorganization and inefficiency as a defense against tyrrany. (or, well, at least, slowing it down)
- rvnx 2y ago
  In that world, we should store that in a blockchain for more efficiency, rather than a csv file.
  - 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
    The whole point is for it to be disorganized and flexible. A blockchain is way too organized and rigid
    - adolph 2y ago
      otoh, a blockchain is also immutable unless you take out the entire thing, you can't just alter previous transactions without invalidating subsequent ones
      - mannyv 2y ago
        You can't access the blockchain when the power + internet are gone.
        adolph 2y ago
        Very true, and also true for the compared technology, csv. In a larger sense, the two are complementary and wouldn't be mutually exclusive.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  > When an evil force takes over the government and wants to rule the whole country, they can't, because nobody even knows how a single tiny village is organized. As we're seeing right now this isn't true. Everyone is afraid because the current federal executive doesn't give a flying f..k about norms, including telling people "comply with what DOGE wants or get fired" or drawing up lists of "Government Gangsters" [1]. And so, everyone is bending over in fear of getting in the crosshairs, getting government spending contracts cut, getting fired, getting death threats like Fauci, or getting extorted to buy ads on Twitter [2]. Side rant: where are all the "don't tread on me" gun nuts that have arsenals rivaling what would be a special forces unit in smaller countries? [1] https://rollcall.com/2024/12/09/trumps-pick-to-lead-fbi-identified-government-gangsters/ https://rollcall.com/2024/12/09/trumps-pick-to-lead-fbi-iden... [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-linda-yaccarino-x-twitter-threaten-advertisers-government-ipg-2025-02 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-linda-yaccarino-x-...
sybercecurity 2y ago
The .gov TLD was only for the Federal government in the past, it was opened up later to state/local governments. By then, some had already had <something>.<state>.us, or some other TLD. Most probably thought it was too troublesome to migrate over. That and the fees were more than any other gTLD (though not now).
- xattt 2y ago
  Canadian domain names in the 90s also followed this newsgroup-like syntax: <website>.<city>.<province>.ca At least one site (transit.toronto.on.ca) still has an active domain in that format, even though it’s not operationally-related by the City of Toronto. It’s quaint that folks wanted to root their web presence in their physical world.
  - LorenzoGood 2y ago
    Like ouac.on.ca.
    - xattt 2y ago
      Tangential: toronto.edu redirects to U of T. Major early 1990s vibes and the woody smell of the graduate computer labs.
      - LorenzoGood 2y ago
        Hopefully I get to go to Toronto lol.
chasd00 2y ago
I work with US state governments a lot. Departments treasure their .com domains because they can actually get updates to the zone file without having to go through months (literally) of repeated requests to get something added to the .<state>.gov/us domain. If a department or agency has to reach outside to the state IT department for anything the timeline doubles or triples. It’s a real problem.
- Mountain_Skies 2y ago
  I used to do lots of consulting work for various departments and agencies in the state I was in at the time. The biggest issue was that the state IT department wanted everything centralized, running on only department servers, using a single platform chosen by them (Vignette StoryServer). Most agencies found that to be too restrictive, especially since at the time Vignette only used TCL. Even worse was the IT department's insistence that agencies sign a 99 year contract for cost sharing, the amount of which would never be known in advance since it would only be calculated quarterly based on all expenses the state IT department incurred hosting state agencies.
- frakt0x90 2y ago
  Same for the enterprise (non-tech I assume) world. When I was on the business side, we treasured any compute we could get that was not tied to corporate IT. Going through them would turn a 1 day fix into a 2 week endeavor. Product development would go from 1 month to 6 or more.
  - mlhpdx 2y ago
    Yes. I remember the delight of deploying my first server with a credit card. The previous one had taken 6 weeks and $100,000 out of our department budget. Such a godsend.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    You've found out a huge reason cloud took off so hard. Lots of it is shadow-IT. Nobody except a few universities actually uses subdomains as they should be, where you actually delegate the subdomain to the business unit using it.
duxup 2y ago
I can understand some local government official "I don't know how to validate things to get a gov ... but I do know how to register a domain" and it's .com.
- cbozeman 2y ago
  Then they should use this amazing tool we have that contains damn near the entirety of accumulated knowledge of Humanity called The Internet. You don't even have to search any longer. You can literally ask a conversational AI, like this... How would a local government official obtain a domain name with .gov for their governmental office? ChatGPT said: A local government official can obtain a .gov domain for their governmental office by following these steps: 1. Verify Eligibility .gov domains are restricted to U.S. government entities, including federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial governments. Local government agencies, such as city or county offices, are eligible. 2. Choose a Domain Name The domain name should clearly reflect the governmental entity (e.g., cityname.gov or countyname.gov). Avoid abbreviations or acronyms unless commonly recognized. 3. Obtain Authorization The request must be authorized by the highest-ranking official of the government entity (e.g., mayor, county administrator). They will need to submit a letter verifying the legitimacy of the request. 4. Submit an Application Visit domains.dotgov.gov to apply. Create an account and complete the application form. Upload the signed authorization letter. 5. Await Review and Approval The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) reviews all applications. If approved, the domain is registered, and the office will receive account credentials. 6. Configure DNS and Website Once the domain is active, configure DNS settings. Set up email services and website hosting as needed. 7. Maintain Compliance Ensure the domain is actively used for government purposes. Keep contact information updated to prevent domain suspension. There is no cost for registering a .gov domain as of April 2021, since it is funded by the federal government. There is literally no excuse for not knowing what to do in the year 2025.
  - andelink 2y ago
    Not the best instructions given. I'd erase it all and simply say: Go to https://get.gov/domains https://get.gov/domains and hit the "Start a domain request" button.
arscan 2y ago
URLs are a part of the UX of websites. The domain often represents the first interaction between the user and the site. Domains that follow a strict hierarchical structure that aligns to some real-world hierarchy may not be the best first interaction with the user, or at least not in the opinion of those that are creating the site. So, I think it’s natural for site owners to want this freedom. Then it comes down to whether there should be constraints forced on them or not by policy for some greater good. In the US, generally, central planning on this type of stuff isn’t really part of the culture.
- nothrabannosir 2y ago
  Oh I thought you were going the exact opposite direction with that reasoning. A hierarchical url is good because it immediately establishes trust and provenance. Currently I never know whether I’m dealing with a for profit entity pretending to be governmental, or actual government. But maybe that is part of the culture?
  - arscan 2y ago
    To technical people, sure. I don’t think the average person knows about provenance rules of subdomains though and how it’s useful… it’s more just a bunch of symbols they don’t care about. And we understand the threats here… a very real problem is someone forgetting to renew one of these .org or .com domains (maybe the person that maintains it retired) and a malicious actor grabs it after expiration, stands up a scraped copy, and uses it to collect parking ticket payments or whatever. I was actually thinking a bit more about the diversity of domain names under .gov, though I realize now that the parent comment I replied to was about .org and .coms. I think you get a bit of those provenance assurances if they are under .gov, as a practical matter it’s harder for malicious actors to own one of those than one under other tlds. And then instead of forcing a strict taxonomy that is mostly for the benefit of the infrastructure maintainers (very enterprise software), there is freedom to use a name that makes the most sense for the target user.
- cbozeman 2y ago
  No, people need to learn how the Internet is organized and named. It's the same as learning the Dewey Decimal system so you can navigate your local library. It should be taught in school exactly the same way. It's more important in the year 2025 to know that, than it is the Dewey Decimal system, which is still taught in a majority of schools for some reason. People should know what it means to be connected to a .gov, .com, .org, .edu, .net, .mil site, etc. I know we have a lot of new TLDs, but knowing the originals should be a bare minimum. This isn't rocket science, hell, most of these domains are almost self-explanatory even as three letter codes.
EvanAnderson 2y ago
My county government started w/ a "co.Name.oh.us" domain name back in the late 90s. People in the government hated it. The complaint I heard most frequently was that the public couldn't get it right-- too many dots. I was a fan of the ".co.name.oh.us" naming because it made logical sense. I could easily find any County website in the state. My intuition now is that anything logical (or, perhaps, just anything I like) will be hated by the public. >sigh< The county moved to "NameCountyOhio.gov". It's 5 characters longer than the old domain name but isn't hated. The public still gets it wrong often, expecting it to be "NameCountyOH.gov". Edit: Okay, so I got this totally wrong. Chalk it up to poor memory for stuff 20+ years ago. There's RFC 1480, first of all: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1480 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1480 The old County domain was "co.name.oh.us". I completely forgot the hierarchy was flipped for localities, with the locality being the higher level domain and the designation for type of locality (city, county, etc) being second. For K-12 school districts, libraries, colleges, and others, the hierarchy comes first (like "name.lib.oh.us").
- abtinf 2y ago
  [countyname].co.[stateabbr].[ctld] is injecting ontological metadata into the data, which is bizarre. Would be better to just get rid of the “co” layer.
  - abtinf 2y ago
    Actually I just looked at the original post, which indicates that both oh.gov and ohio.gov exist. Ohio.gov actually works. So countyname.ohio.gov would be perfect.
    - EvanAnderson 2y ago
      The city of Medina Ohio, Medina County Ohio, and the Medina City School District have entered the chat.
      - abtinf 2y ago
        County: medina.ohio.gov City: medina.medina.ohio.gov From brief googling, the school district is subordinate to the county, not the city, despite its name. medinacityschools.medina.ohio.gov Or cityschools.medina.ohio.gov Or mcc.medina.ohio.gov Or bees.medina.ohio.gov
belorn 2y ago
Looking at the list I wold assume that the majority of those are not the "primary" domain, and indeed if I click around randomly, most of them redirect to somewhere else.
Mixtape 2y ago
Just my $0.02 as a net/sysadmin for a small municipality in the US: A big part of why we haven't been able/bothered to migrate to a proper .gov domain boils down to the amount of technical debt we'd need to pay back in the process of doing so. Everything that we do uses our non-.gov domain, namely our Office 365 connectors. On top of that, end users' day-to-day communications with the public make use of the existing domain. Modifying that in any capacity could prove disruptive to ongoing communications and potentially render them liable for dropping the ball somewhere. Not to mention that every single internet account ever created by staff using the current domain would need to be migrated or risk being lost forever. Additionally, we're a small team. Only myself and one other individual would really have the technical knowledge to migrate our infrastructure. The opportunity cost involved would be massive. There are grants available to help us with this, but obtaining/using those can get complicated at times. Ultimately, the pros just don't outweigh the cons enough to make a huge difference. From a purely academic angle, should we have a .gov TLD? Absolutely. In practice though, the residents and staff are familiar enough with the current one to render it a non-issue. The average non-technical user doesn't "see" "[municipality].[state].gov". They aren't familiar with the concept of a domain hierarchy at all. They just memorize "[municipality_website]" and move on with their day.
- massysett 2y ago
  > They just memorize "[municipality_website]" and move on with their day. I haven't even done that much, I couldn't tell you offhand the URL for my county government. I always just search in Google, which takes me right to the page I need (roads, solid waste, library, etc.)
- cbozeman 2y ago
  > The average non-technical user doesn't "see" "[municipality].[state].gov". They aren't familiar with the concept of a domain hierarchy at all. They just memorize "[municipality_website]" and move on with their day. You've just highlighted the problem. This is something every single human being in America should know, and arguably almost the entire world. This falls directly under the rubric of Basic Computing Knowledge > Basic Internet Knowledge. Every single time I see someone searching for "microsoft" or "apple" I immediately stop them and tell them, "You've already done most of the work. Microsoft and Apple are commercial entities. Add .com at the end, which is what .com means. Commercial. You're adding extra work for yourself." Yes, a few people pop off at the mouth at which point I remind them ignorance is of a thing is easily remedied with a little give-a-damn, and saves everyone time and money. Talk about a fucking miserable failure of education. I'm 44. I expected the generation 20 years younger than me to be impossibly skilled with computers to the point that I wouldn't hope to even match them, much less surpass them. Instead what we got was a world where we dumbed every goddamn thing down so even the most drooling moron can utilize it. It's pretty disappointing, to put it mildly.
plorg 2y ago
My state has a telecommunications network that was responsible for bringing the Internet to schools and libraries in the 90s. As a result many of these institutions were assigned domain names under ia.us, which the network controls on behalf of the state. The state government gets the state.ia.us subdomain, libraries got their own second-level subdomain under lib.ia.us, schools under k12.ia.us (private schools under another level pvt.k12.ia.us, although their website now lists that as pvtk12.ia.us; my elementary school domain of the first form still resolves), community colleges cc.ia.us and so on. I didn't know better at the time and assumed the whole US was organized that way. In any case no one liked having johnd@excelsior.pvt.k12.ia.us as their email address so most of the schools bought a second .net or .org domain. I know my high school moved off the ICN T1 service in the early 2000s, but it looks like the domain records are still maintained, as the old address still resolves correctly. Edit: see EvanAnderson below I didn't realize this was ~formalized as an RFC and actually was relatively standard across states, I assume for the same reasons very few public entities were using these hierarchal addresses as their primary by the time I really got online in the mid 2000s.
kube-system 2y ago
It isn't really that strange, it mirrors how decentralized and fragmented government in the US actually is.
__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
It makes it pretty difficult to tell whether your parking ticket is a phishing attempt.
kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
That hierarchy exists for US states. It just is rarely employed because politicians and administrators don't know how the Internet works and insist on vanity domains that can't be easily discerned from scammers.
dragonwriter 2y ago
There was a period right when lots of entities decided that they needed a web address where the US government was making an effort to get everyone who wasn't the federal government (including local and state governments, federal contractors, etc.) off of .gov and stop new non-federal registrants to .gov (I don't think it lasted long, but I distinctly remember it occurring), there was a defined hierarchy for local governments under .us, but most local governments weren't aware of it, and I'm not sure the registrars they went to dealt with .us domains, and people ended up just doing whatever...
kccqzy 2y ago
The most amusing example is https://gooutsideandplay.org/ https://gooutsideandplay.org/ which doesn't look like an official government website at all. And yet it's the official website for county parks in Santa Clara county. Anywhere in the world one can go outside and play and yet this vanity domain is restricted to Santa Clara county parks.
mixdup 2y ago
> Strange how the US has such a mishmash We have so many subdivisions, and in many/most cases there's no accountability (by design) from one level to the next Feds can't force states to use .gov addresses, and most states don't force counties or cities to use whatever the state's top level is. Some do, or try to encourage, but it's like herding cats and when there's 50 states and a couple thousand counties, and then tens of thousands of cities that all have varying levels of authority to enforce anything on the next level down it's never, ever going to be uniform for us

by YPPH 2y ago

dave881 2y ago

I assume that this is the result of a few quirks here in the US - Lots of things came online in the US before ccTLDs were common, and are still rare for US based orgs - US states have quite a bit of freedom in how they communicate with their citizens. - US states vary greatly in services provided and population (from ~600,000 up to ~40M)

Operyl 2y ago

It’s not terribly difficult to get a gov domain, it’s just much easier to do an ordinary one. Smaller towns and cities outsource to cheap WYSIWYG type builders that also include a domain so it’s really simple to just go that route too.

Mountain_Skies 2y ago
It can get quite unprofessional at that level. There was a small suburb in our metro whose .com domain was an insult against the core city. I'm sure they thought it was funny but eventually it did get changed to the town and state name.

FinnKuhn 2y ago

Wait until you see the situation in Germany. Everything uses just a normal .de domain, no special TLD for government institutions at all.

9dev 2y ago
It’s awful, really. Some domain names are so awfully chosen, they sound like scams. Take the government program for financial support to students, called BAföG. Here’s a bunch of domains related to that: * bafoeg.de * bafoeg-digital.de * bafoegonline.bva.bund.de Or, the worst one in my opinion: the German federal ID card has an integrated RFID chip that requires a PIN to unlock. You can use that chip to authenticate against a few government services online, which rely on the PIN as proof of identity. The PIN can be reset using a OTP sent via snail mail. Q: where you you think can you order that letter? a) Bundesdruckerei.de b) personalausweisportal.de c) pin-ruecksetzbrief-bestellen.de d) bmi.bund.de? A: yes. It’s c. Seriously.
- bombcar 2y ago
  Healthcare billing in the USA has gone this way. You're going to see emails from my-doctor-billing.com directing you to hospital-pay-site.biz and they're all totally legitimate. It's nuts.

0xbadcafebee 2y ago

That's the genius of having states, counties, cities, towns and villages that are almost entirely decentralized. When an evil force takes over the government and wants to rule the whole country, they can't, because nobody even knows how a single tiny village is organized. Complete disorganization and inefficiency as a defense against tyrrany. (or, well, at least, slowing it down)

rvnx 2y ago
In that world, we should store that in a blockchain for more efficiency, rather than a csv file.
- 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
  The whole point is for it to be disorganized and flexible. A blockchain is way too organized and rigid
  - adolph 2y ago
    otoh, a blockchain is also immutable unless you take out the entire thing, you can't just alter previous transactions without invalidating subsequent ones
    - mannyv 2y ago
      You can't access the blockchain when the power + internet are gone.
      - adolph 2y ago
        Very true, and also true for the compared technology, csv. In a larger sense, the two are complementary and wouldn't be mutually exclusive.
mschuster91 2y ago
> When an evil force takes over the government and wants to rule the whole country, they can't, because nobody even knows how a single tiny village is organized. As we're seeing right now this isn't true. Everyone is afraid because the current federal executive doesn't give a flying f..k about norms, including telling people "comply with what DOGE wants or get fired" or drawing up lists of "Government Gangsters" [1]. And so, everyone is bending over in fear of getting in the crosshairs, getting government spending contracts cut, getting fired, getting death threats like Fauci, or getting extorted to buy ads on Twitter [2]. Side rant: where are all the "don't tread on me" gun nuts that have arsenals rivaling what would be a special forces unit in smaller countries? [1] https://rollcall.com/2024/12/09/trumps-pick-to-lead-fbi-identified-government-gangsters/ https://rollcall.com/2024/12/09/trumps-pick-to-lead-fbi-iden... [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-linda-yaccarino-x-twitter-threaten-advertisers-government-ipg-2025-02 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-linda-yaccarino-x-...

sybercecurity 2y ago

The .gov TLD was only for the Federal government in the past, it was opened up later to state/local governments. By then, some had already had <something>.<state>.us, or some other TLD. Most probably thought it was too troublesome to migrate over. That and the fees were more than any other gTLD (though not now).

xattt 2y ago
Canadian domain names in the 90s also followed this newsgroup-like syntax: <website>.<city>.<province>.ca At least one site (transit.toronto.on.ca) still has an active domain in that format, even though it’s not operationally-related by the City of Toronto. It’s quaint that folks wanted to root their web presence in their physical world.
- LorenzoGood 2y ago
  Like ouac.on.ca.
  - xattt 2y ago
    Tangential: toronto.edu redirects to U of T. Major early 1990s vibes and the woody smell of the graduate computer labs.
    - LorenzoGood 2y ago
      Hopefully I get to go to Toronto lol.

chasd00 2y ago

I work with US state governments a lot. Departments treasure their .com domains because they can actually get updates to the zone file without having to go through months (literally) of repeated requests to get something added to the .<state>.gov/us domain. If a department or agency has to reach outside to the state IT department for anything the timeline doubles or triples. It’s a real problem.

Mountain_Skies 2y ago
I used to do lots of consulting work for various departments and agencies in the state I was in at the time. The biggest issue was that the state IT department wanted everything centralized, running on only department servers, using a single platform chosen by them (Vignette StoryServer). Most agencies found that to be too restrictive, especially since at the time Vignette only used TCL. Even worse was the IT department's insistence that agencies sign a 99 year contract for cost sharing, the amount of which would never be known in advance since it would only be calculated quarterly based on all expenses the state IT department incurred hosting state agencies.
frakt0x90 2y ago
Same for the enterprise (non-tech I assume) world. When I was on the business side, we treasured any compute we could get that was not tied to corporate IT. Going through them would turn a 1 day fix into a 2 week endeavor. Product development would go from 1 month to 6 or more.
- mlhpdx 2y ago
  Yes. I remember the delight of deploying my first server with a credit card. The previous one had taken 6 weeks and $100,000 out of our department budget. Such a godsend.
- bombcar 2y ago
  You've found out a huge reason cloud took off so hard. Lots of it is shadow-IT. Nobody except a few universities actually uses subdomains as they should be, where you actually delegate the subdomain to the business unit using it.

duxup 2y ago

I can understand some local government official "I don't know how to validate things to get a gov ... but I do know how to register a domain" and it's .com.

cbozeman 2y ago
Then they should use this amazing tool we have that contains damn near the entirety of accumulated knowledge of Humanity called The Internet. You don't even have to search any longer. You can literally ask a conversational AI, like this... How would a local government official obtain a domain name with .gov for their governmental office? ChatGPT said: A local government official can obtain a .gov domain for their governmental office by following these steps: 1. Verify Eligibility .gov domains are restricted to U.S. government entities, including federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial governments. Local government agencies, such as city or county offices, are eligible. 2. Choose a Domain Name The domain name should clearly reflect the governmental entity (e.g., cityname.gov or countyname.gov). Avoid abbreviations or acronyms unless commonly recognized. 3. Obtain Authorization The request must be authorized by the highest-ranking official of the government entity (e.g., mayor, county administrator). They will need to submit a letter verifying the legitimacy of the request. 4. Submit an Application Visit domains.dotgov.gov to apply. Create an account and complete the application form. Upload the signed authorization letter. 5. Await Review and Approval The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) reviews all applications. If approved, the domain is registered, and the office will receive account credentials. 6. Configure DNS and Website Once the domain is active, configure DNS settings. Set up email services and website hosting as needed. 7. Maintain Compliance Ensure the domain is actively used for government purposes. Keep contact information updated to prevent domain suspension. There is no cost for registering a .gov domain as of April 2021, since it is funded by the federal government. There is literally no excuse for not knowing what to do in the year 2025.
- andelink 2y ago
  Not the best instructions given. I'd erase it all and simply say: Go to https://get.gov/domains https://get.gov/domains and hit the "Start a domain request" button.

arscan 2y ago

URLs are a part of the UX of websites. The domain often represents the first interaction between the user and the site. Domains that follow a strict hierarchical structure that aligns to some real-world hierarchy may not be the best first interaction with the user, or at least not in the opinion of those that are creating the site. So, I think it’s natural for site owners to want this freedom. Then it comes down to whether there should be constraints forced on them or not by policy for some greater good. In the US, generally, central planning on this type of stuff isn’t really part of the culture.

nothrabannosir 2y ago
Oh I thought you were going the exact opposite direction with that reasoning. A hierarchical url is good because it immediately establishes trust and provenance. Currently I never know whether I’m dealing with a for profit entity pretending to be governmental, or actual government. But maybe that is part of the culture?
- arscan 2y ago
  To technical people, sure. I don’t think the average person knows about provenance rules of subdomains though and how it’s useful… it’s more just a bunch of symbols they don’t care about. And we understand the threats here… a very real problem is someone forgetting to renew one of these .org or .com domains (maybe the person that maintains it retired) and a malicious actor grabs it after expiration, stands up a scraped copy, and uses it to collect parking ticket payments or whatever. I was actually thinking a bit more about the diversity of domain names under .gov, though I realize now that the parent comment I replied to was about .org and .coms. I think you get a bit of those provenance assurances if they are under .gov, as a practical matter it’s harder for malicious actors to own one of those than one under other tlds. And then instead of forcing a strict taxonomy that is mostly for the benefit of the infrastructure maintainers (very enterprise software), there is freedom to use a name that makes the most sense for the target user.
cbozeman 2y ago
No, people need to learn how the Internet is organized and named. It's the same as learning the Dewey Decimal system so you can navigate your local library. It should be taught in school exactly the same way. It's more important in the year 2025 to know that, than it is the Dewey Decimal system, which is still taught in a majority of schools for some reason. People should know what it means to be connected to a .gov, .com, .org, .edu, .net, .mil site, etc. I know we have a lot of new TLDs, but knowing the originals should be a bare minimum. This isn't rocket science, hell, most of these domains are almost self-explanatory even as three letter codes.

EvanAnderson 2y ago

My county government started w/ a "co.Name.oh.us" domain name back in the late 90s. People in the government hated it. The complaint I heard most frequently was that the public couldn't get it right-- too many dots. I was a fan of the ".co.name.oh.us" naming because it made logical sense. I could easily find any County website in the state. My intuition now is that anything logical (or, perhaps, just anything I like) will be hated by the public. >sigh< The county moved to "NameCountyOhio.gov". It's 5 characters longer than the old domain name but isn't hated. The public still gets it wrong often, expecting it to be "NameCountyOH.gov". Edit: Okay, so I got this totally wrong. Chalk it up to poor memory for stuff 20+ years ago. There's RFC 1480, first of all: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1480 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1480 The old County domain was "co.name.oh.us". I completely forgot the hierarchy was flipped for localities, with the locality being the higher level domain and the designation for type of locality (city, county, etc) being second. For K-12 school districts, libraries, colleges, and others, the hierarchy comes first (like "name.lib.oh.us").

abtinf 2y ago
[countyname].co.[stateabbr].[ctld] is injecting ontological metadata into the data, which is bizarre. Would be better to just get rid of the “co” layer.
- abtinf 2y ago
  Actually I just looked at the original post, which indicates that both oh.gov and ohio.gov exist. Ohio.gov actually works. So countyname.ohio.gov would be perfect.
  - EvanAnderson 2y ago
    The city of Medina Ohio, Medina County Ohio, and the Medina City School District have entered the chat.
    - abtinf 2y ago
      County: medina.ohio.gov City: medina.medina.ohio.gov From brief googling, the school district is subordinate to the county, not the city, despite its name. medinacityschools.medina.ohio.gov Or cityschools.medina.ohio.gov Or mcc.medina.ohio.gov Or bees.medina.ohio.gov

belorn 2y ago

Looking at the list I wold assume that the majority of those are not the "primary" domain, and indeed if I click around randomly, most of them redirect to somewhere else.

Mixtape 2y ago

Just my $0.02 as a net/sysadmin for a small municipality in the US: A big part of why we haven't been able/bothered to migrate to a proper .gov domain boils down to the amount of technical debt we'd need to pay back in the process of doing so. Everything that we do uses our non-.gov domain, namely our Office 365 connectors. On top of that, end users' day-to-day communications with the public make use of the existing domain. Modifying that in any capacity could prove disruptive to ongoing communications and potentially render them liable for dropping the ball somewhere. Not to mention that every single internet account ever created by staff using the current domain would need to be migrated or risk being lost forever. Additionally, we're a small team. Only myself and one other individual would really have the technical knowledge to migrate our infrastructure. The opportunity cost involved would be massive. There are grants available to help us with this, but obtaining/using those can get complicated at times. Ultimately, the pros just don't outweigh the cons enough to make a huge difference. From a purely academic angle, should we have a .gov TLD? Absolutely. In practice though, the residents and staff are familiar enough with the current one to render it a non-issue. The average non-technical user doesn't "see" "[municipality].[state].gov". They aren't familiar with the concept of a domain hierarchy at all. They just memorize "[municipality_website]" and move on with their day.

massysett 2y ago
> They just memorize "[municipality_website]" and move on with their day. I haven't even done that much, I couldn't tell you offhand the URL for my county government. I always just search in Google, which takes me right to the page I need (roads, solid waste, library, etc.)
cbozeman 2y ago
> The average non-technical user doesn't "see" "[municipality].[state].gov". They aren't familiar with the concept of a domain hierarchy at all. They just memorize "[municipality_website]" and move on with their day. You've just highlighted the problem. This is something every single human being in America should know, and arguably almost the entire world. This falls directly under the rubric of Basic Computing Knowledge > Basic Internet Knowledge. Every single time I see someone searching for "microsoft" or "apple" I immediately stop them and tell them, "You've already done most of the work. Microsoft and Apple are commercial entities. Add .com at the end, which is what .com means. Commercial. You're adding extra work for yourself." Yes, a few people pop off at the mouth at which point I remind them ignorance is of a thing is easily remedied with a little give-a-damn, and saves everyone time and money. Talk about a fucking miserable failure of education. I'm 44. I expected the generation 20 years younger than me to be impossibly skilled with computers to the point that I wouldn't hope to even match them, much less surpass them. Instead what we got was a world where we dumbed every goddamn thing down so even the most drooling moron can utilize it. It's pretty disappointing, to put it mildly.

plorg 2y ago

My state has a telecommunications network that was responsible for bringing the Internet to schools and libraries in the 90s. As a result many of these institutions were assigned domain names under ia.us, which the network controls on behalf of the state. The state government gets the state.ia.us subdomain, libraries got their own second-level subdomain under lib.ia.us, schools under k12.ia.us (private schools under another level pvt.k12.ia.us, although their website now lists that as pvtk12.ia.us; my elementary school domain of the first form still resolves), community colleges cc.ia.us and so on. I didn't know better at the time and assumed the whole US was organized that way. In any case no one liked having johnd@excelsior.pvt.k12.ia.us as their email address so most of the schools bought a second .net or .org domain. I know my high school moved off the ICN T1 service in the early 2000s, but it looks like the domain records are still maintained, as the old address still resolves correctly. Edit: see EvanAnderson below I didn't realize this was ~formalized as an RFC and actually was relatively standard across states, I assume for the same reasons very few public entities were using these hierarchal addresses as their primary by the time I really got online in the mid 2000s.

kube-system 2y ago

It isn't really that strange, it mirrors how decentralized and fragmented government in the US actually is.

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago

It makes it pretty difficult to tell whether your parking ticket is a phishing attempt.

kevin_thibedeau 2y ago

That hierarchy exists for US states. It just is rarely employed because politicians and administrators don't know how the Internet works and insist on vanity domains that can't be easily discerned from scammers.

dragonwriter 2y ago

There was a period right when lots of entities decided that they needed a web address where the US government was making an effort to get everyone who wasn't the federal government (including local and state governments, federal contractors, etc.) off of .gov and stop new non-federal registrants to .gov (I don't think it lasted long, but I distinctly remember it occurring), there was a defined hierarchy for local governments under .us, but most local governments weren't aware of it, and I'm not sure the registrars they went to dealt with .us domains, and people ended up just doing whatever...

kccqzy 2y ago

The most amusing example is https://gooutsideandplay.org/ https://gooutsideandplay.org/ which doesn't look like an official government website at all. And yet it's the official website for county parks in Santa Clara county. Anywhere in the world one can go outside and play and yet this vanity domain is restricted to Santa Clara county parks.

mixdup 2y ago

> Strange how the US has such a mishmash We have so many subdivisions, and in many/most cases there's no accountability (by design) from one level to the next Feds can't force states to use .gov addresses, and most states don't force counties or cities to use whatever the state's top level is. Some do, or try to encourage, but it's like herding cats and when there's 50 states and a couple thousand counties, and then tens of thousands of cities that all have varying levels of authority to enforce anything on the next level down it's never, ever going to be uniform for us