Domains with "0"

[neddy]

I have raised this issue before (can't find previous thread).

There is a two letter domain sold on the aftermarket today. Except it is not a 2L domain - it has a number and a letter.

0W.com.au - this is not "O" - it is "zero"

I can almost guarantee you that the person who has a bid on it does not realise it is a zero. In fact, this is what the listing said in part:

0w.com.au,2 & 3 Letter

I seem to remember that NF was perhaps going to do something about this (to avoid any possible issues)? Like make the "0" with a slash in it?

ØW.com.au

Just my opinion.

 

[neddy]

Just as an addendum to this, I notice that Publishing Australia owns OW.com.au.

This could really lead to confusion and some issues in relation to today's sale of 0W.com.au.

If you could put a "slash" in the zero, or make some other notation, I think this would be really helpful all round.

I notice there are a couple of these for sale tomorrow on the AMA.

 

[DavidL]

Just as an addendum to this, I notice that Publishing Australia owns OW.com.au. This could really lead to confusion and some issues in relation to today's sale of 0W.com.au.

Yes we do! However I don't see how this makes any difference to the o,O,0 problem...?

 

[Mark]

We've looked in to this again, and it's not feasible for us to replace a zero with a non standard font character on our auction platforms (it's too intensive). Also, the platforms are busy enough with information that I don't really want to push more notations in.

It's pretty rare these things happen anyway so will just keep an eye on things

Thanks for input

Cheers
Mark

 

[neddy]

Yes we do! However I don't see how this makes any difference to the o,O,0 problem...?

Not having a go at you in any shape or form David. I'm just pointing out that it is easy for someone to get confused over this particular name - and that coincidentally PA owns the proper letter version.

So you can imagine a newbie buyer perhaps thinking they had bought the "letter domain", and firing off letters of complaint to NF etc.

Prevention is better than cure imho. I found the old thread, and Mark did say he would have a look at it.

http://www.dntrade.com.au/aftermarket-auctions-domains-closing-soon-t4224.html?p=30204#post30204

I was talking to another very experienced domainer, and he mentioned that he thought SEDO differentiated these domains.

Here is a SEDO listing for n0w.com.au - they use lowercase for their letters. So the "0" stands out like dogs balls.

http://www.sedo.co.uk/search/detail...d=14456&et_cid=13&et_lid=17473&origin=parking

Take a listing tomorrow - 0X.com.au. You have the second letter in uppercase - at the very least, why couldn't you have that in lowercase? 0x.com.au

 

[DavidL]

Not having a go at you in any shape or form David.

Yeah I know that!

But I still don't see how Publishing Australia owning ow.com.au as opposed to Joe Bloggs or it being unregistered affects the potential issue for the winning bidder??

Sorry if I'm being dopey!

 

[neddy]

Yeah I know that!

But I still don't see how Publishing Australia owning ow.com.au as opposed to Joe Bloggs or it being unregistered affects the potential issue for the winning bidder??

Sorry if I'm being dopey!

I never thought I'd see the day where you owned up to being dopey.

As I said, it was purely coincidental that you owned ow.com.au.

I searched 0w.com.au first, and then as a matter of course searched ow.com.au.

The potential issues I refer to relate to a buyer being confused over the listing (because it appears all in uppercase), and thinking they had bought ow.com.au when in fact
they had bought 0w.com.au. I could imagine indignant emails being fired off to NF support - along with moans and groans to friends or on online forums.

All I'm trying to suggest is that it is better for NF to avert this situation if possible - make the whole listing in lower case so that the "0" stands out. Or something else.

Sorry if I'm carrying on about this - but I spoke to 3 other domainers this afternoon, and they all said they would be ropeable if they'd thought they'd bought a 2L domain
on the AMA only to find out that it wasn't.

And yes, maybe we would know better - but would a newbie or casual buyer?

Now tomorrow there are four of these up for sale on the AMA. One of them is 0J.com.au. Have a look at the listing page - and the metrics tab (Phrase: 0J ) - and tell me
if you definitely can see it is a "zero" followed by a "J".

www.netfleet.com.au/0J.com.au

I'm just trying to be constructive.
.

 

[AnthonyP]

The issue I have with ØW.com.au is that it Ø is not a zero.
If you cut and paste the domain name to do a whois you will find that the domain ØW.com.au returns "No data found" (at the moment I think you cannot register this domain name). This has the potential to cause real confusion since we are displaying invalid information then.

This is an interesting issue since all the web safe fonts are consistent in not providing an easy way to distinguish a zero from a capital O

 

[findtim]

its a valid point you make ned, i never thought of it till then as still a newbie in auctions


d0ctor, comes to mind, you'd be reallyyyy mad if you got sucked into that one

tim

 

[fcdoms]

I'm now interested to find out if there's a font that's considered the best at distinguishing characters.

The issue Ned raises would probably also apply to overlooking the numeral 1 for the lower case 'l' or upper case 'I' - it's really a problem of language itself and the character encoding tech dating back to the cuneiform, lMH@.

 

[neddy]

This is an interesting issue since all the web safe fonts are consistent in not providing an easy way to distinguish a zero from a capital O

I believe this issue only arises with 2 letter/digit domains (though I might be wrong). If the first "letter" is a number, then the second "letter" automatically
gets treated as the first letter (and thus gets capitalised). That's what causes the problems with 0J.com.au (for instance).

Can I please make two simple suggestions Anthony?

1. Make all listings in lower case - including first letter.
   
   
2. You know how you did the little symbol for the utube.com.au misspelling? Is it possible to do a symbol for combination numerical / letter domains?

 

[neddy]

I believe this issue only arises with 2 letter/digit domains (though I might be wrong).

I am wrong. Some examples:

B00.com.au
G00.com.au
L00.com.au
M00.com.au
P00.com.au
R00.com.au
Z00.com.au

If it was all lower case, these would read:

b00.com.au
g00.com.au
l00.com.au
m00.com.au
p00.com.au
r00.com.au
z00.com.au

Much easier to discern.

 

[johno69]

If everything was lowercase there'd be no issue.

 

[AnthonyP]

I am not keen on all lower case for two reasons
1) We use the capitalization to show you what phrase we are basing the search volume on
2) All lowercase has historically caused more complaints than the current solution as it becomes much more difficult to discern misspellings. Take for example these two
excercise.com.au
and
ExcerciSe.com.au
The human brian is amzingly adept at fixning spelling mistakes if the first and last letters of the word are correct, so the capitalisation of a character in a misspelled word tends to help overcome this.

I am not keen on adding more icons like MS or PD because MS and PD are seriously important pieces of information and need to remain distinct from theoretical issues like this one.

 

[neddy]

theoretical issues like this one.

I'm surprised that you take the attitude that this is "theoretical".

Nothing "theoretical" about it. It is potentially misleading.

I don't know why you don't follow one of the industry leaders in SEDO. They do it all lower case with their auctions.

http://sedo.com/search/searchresult.php4?language=e

Anyway, I've made my point and given my opinion for the record - I'll leave it alone now.
.

 

[DavidL]

I don't think it's really a big deal. 0w.com.au went for min bid $100 which is fairly typical of a 2-letter NL.com.au domain so I'm not convinced the buyer did make a mistake. Even if he did make a mistake he's not paid hugely over market value... IMHO of course.

For a particular instance to be a real problem (ie someone pays $3K for 0w.com.au), you need at least two people to make the same mistake and bid against each other. That greatly lessens the chance of it happening (in fact has there ever been a problem like this so far in .au??)

Much more significant would be a misspelling and we've definitely seen those. So, as per Anthony's point below:

2) All lowercase has historically caused more complaints than the current solution as it becomes much more difficult to discern misspellings. Take for example these two
excercise.com.au
and
ExcerciSe.com.au
The human brian is amzingly adept at fixning spelling mistakes if the first and last letters of the word are correct, so the capitalisation of a character in a misspelled word tends to help overcome this.

changing to all lowercase might help to reduce a negligible problem but instead introduce a much more serious problem.

Also I like the capitalisation for a general usability reason - scanning through lists is so much easier for me. So perhaps the convenience of thousands should also be considered against the potential mistakes of a tiny few.

 

[neddy]

0w.com.au went for min bid $100

I notice you wrote it on here how I was suggesting it should be spelt on Netfleet.

Also I like the capitalisation for a general usability reason - scanning through lists is so much easier for me. So perhaps the convenience of thousands should also be considered against the potential mistakes of a tiny few.

Fair enough. I am happy to be a contrarian on this.

 

[johno69]

If theres any suspicious, copy paste into your browser. It will remove capItaliSation.

Leaving 0 to stand out.

 

[DavidL]

I notice you wrote it on here how I was suggesting it should be spelt on Netfleet.

Good point!

 

[findtim]

i'm just going to give this a bump, hope thats ok? just so maybe newbies can have a read, PLEASE start at the beginning and read through.

no real need to comment and nor shall I

tim