# I'd suggest "example.com," which is valid, uses a real TLD,
# and is specifically being kept as an otherwise-null domain
# to use in examples like this (and in textbooks, etc.).
I was just about to suggest something along those lines...
# >I tend to the vague opinion that using
# >.example might confuse less-aware new readers.
#
# Not quite sure why you think that.
[and he answers]
# I understood Yves to be suggesting the use of an
# .example TLD.
So did I. But that would be confusing. example isn't
three letters long, and most people are unaware that
there can be TLDs of other lengths. The local domains
are fairly obscure[1], and the others (.arpa and whatnot)
are even more obscure, never seen by most end users. Most
people don't understand the TLD suffix very well anyway,
aren't quite sure how it differs from the www and ftp and
other prefixes[2], and certainly don't understand the
technicalities of URL parsing.
# Just to make it completely clear,
# the domain you should use is example.com.
Ah. Yes, *that* makes sense, but it wasn't clear
from the earlier posting. I also thought you meant
to use foo.example (similar to the foo.invalid that
is sometimes suggested for address munging), and
*that* does _not_ make sense. Using example.com
is different; that does make sense.
[Later]
# Actually, you can use either, because .example is one of those TLDs
# guaranteed never to exist in practice, just like .invalid. In the
# Usefor draft, for example, we are using .example throughout.
That works fine for a technical draft, because techies will
understand how URLs work. A FAQ aimed at end users is
different; if it doesn't end in a familiar three-letter
TLD, it'll confuse people. example.com is a much better
solution for this reason.
[And in another thread...]
# In my examination, it appeared that most of the multiple URL headers
# were in fact for redundancy -- either redundant web sites or redundant
# protocols (ftp vs http). A large organization might provide the
# redundancy in other ways -- multiple servers with round-robin DNS for
# example -- but that isn't a tactic generally available to solitary FAQ
# authors.
No, it isn't. I admitted that redundancy is an exception;
I just didn't realise it was at all common. Sorry for the
confusion.
----
[1] Except maybe uk, because of demon's being fairly large and
not using a .net or .com suffix like every other ISP in the
known universe.
[2] prefices? prefixen? Hmmm... those don't seem right
for this word. It's probably been in the language too
long to pluralise as prefices, but not long enough to
be prefixen... Must be prefixes after all. Odd that
I never thought about this before.
-- jonadab
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