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My question regarding premium domain names was closed less than five minutes after I asked it for being "subjective and argumentative," with nothing but a single down vote to tell me why. I understand the need to prevent such types of questions, but I don't believe my question was either. I wasn't asking whether or not such practice was ethically right or anything, simply who sets the price of what appeared to be (on GoDaddy.com, at least) an unowned domain. I was simply looking for an answer such as ICANN or whomever owns the TLD, or, as @Iain pointed out, that it actually WAS owned by someone, just being resold.

I'm a little disappointed in the ServerFault community for what I see as a hasty and subjective decision to close my question, and wish my question was closed for augmentative discussion, rather than the unfounded fear of it.

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    I'll also add that downvotes on meta are a reflection of disagreement with the question, not that it shouldn't be asked. Meta's a different beast than the main site.
    – Holocryptic
    Commented May 9, 2011 at 21:25
  • @Holocryptic - can you clarify that a little? (I'll admit I haven't used any meta very much.)
    – dlras2
    Commented May 9, 2011 at 21:52
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    On the main site, a downvote is for a bad question (for whatever reason). On meta, it just means we disagree with the premise of the question, not the question itself. A little convoluted, but you can search through the older questions to see what I mean.
    – Holocryptic
    Commented May 9, 2011 at 21:55
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    "wish my question was closed for augmentative discussion" - We don't do discussions period. This is a Q&A site, not a forum.
    – Chris S
    Commented May 10, 2011 at 4:11
  • "rather than the unfounded fear of it." Hands up everyone who felt the fear.... Yeah, that's what I thought - nobody. What a ridiculous thing to say.
    – John Gardeniers
    Commented May 11, 2011 at 7:57
  • diras: You are right on. Folks are WAY to aggressive in closing threads around here. Makes the site unpleasant to use.
    – Jonesome Reinstate Monica
    Commented Oct 16, 2013 at 15:40

5 Answers 5

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Lets take a look at the close reason for a second.

It's impossible to objectively answer this question; questions of this type are too open ended and usually lead to confrontation and argument.

What makes a domain "premium"? is a very opened ended question, which would tend to lead to people discussing what exactly premium is. Then on we go to the fact that people would probably start going back and forth about proper pricing. How much would you pay? Type things could follow next.

Oh and there is no way to objectively answer that question, there is no "right" answer for what is premium.

So yes, it was Subjective and Argumentative.

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    But there IS a right answer to "who sets the price," which is apparently "the owner" even if it isn't expressly stated by the registrar that it's owned by someone already.
    – dlras2
    Commented May 9, 2011 at 21:43
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    It is expressly stated by the registrar (at least in the case of GoDaddy) that the name doesn't belong to them, but to a 3rd party. Did you not read my answer?
    – Holocryptic
    Commented May 9, 2011 at 21:49
  • Q: "Who sets the price?" A: "The owner." Q: "Who set the price of a premium domain?" A: "Premium or not (whatever premium refers to), the owner of the domain sets the price." It was not a subjective question, because "what makes a domain premium" was more of an unrelated tangent that the reader may infer or ask themselves, but ultimately has no bearing on either the question or the answer.
    – Triynko
    Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 21:23
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I sometimes have trouble deciding whether "Not a real question" or "Subjective and argumentative" is the best description of why I'm voting to close. That's what happened for me in this case, but regardless of the "official" reason, I thought it should be closed because the value of a domain name is not primarily an issue for sysadmins.

Why domains have different values is an economic issue, and what to do about the value of a domain name is mostly a business issue, i.e. how much do I want to pay for a certain domain name? A sysadmin might (I'd say probably) be involved in researching domain names and costs, but it's not something that only a sysadmin can do, and that research is basically just shopping.

Shopping question are generally closed because they're too localized, and that applies to your example. There is no generally agreed-on definition of "premium domains," and the exact reasons why more is being asked for the ones you asked about domains probably won't apply to other domains.

Hopefully the answers here will give you a better idea of what's considered on- and off-topic and you'll have no problem with future questions. And hopefully in the future I'll do what I almost did here (but didn't bother taking the time) and add a comment as to why I voted, in case it's not clear.

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The question was closed before I saw it, otherwise I would have voted it closed as off topic. In simple terms, the question has nothing whatsoever to do with system administration or for that matter IT at any level. Even if someone wants to dispute that, we are left with the fact that on SF we don't do shopping questions.

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Your question doesn't really bring anything to the table. Who sets the price? I have no idea, but to hazard a guess, I would say the owner of the site does, with a commission fee to the registrar to list it as available.

Does this help me fix my server that's blue screening? Not really. Instead of subjective and argumentative, I would say off-topic. But regardless, not a question that needs to be asked here. Even if you go to GoDaddy, they have a link specifying what a Premium Domain is, which is a domain they list which is owned by a 3rd party.

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  • My question is very applicable; if GoDaddy set the price arbitrarily high, I would want to use another registrar. I guessed this wasn't the case, but didn't know who else would have set it. The explanation I saw on GoDaddy was that premium domains were domains "more valuable because they are based on common words and phrases," which made me wonder if the third-party owner they referred to was the owner of the TLD, not the domain itself.
    – dlras2
    Commented May 9, 2011 at 21:49
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    Ok, you got that far. So, if you read the rest of the link, you'll see it says that GoDaddy doesn't own the names but is offering them on behalf of a 3rd party. Your attention to detail is lacking. And your question is still not applicable. Now you're getting into pricing, which is shopping, which is off-topic.
    – Holocryptic
    Commented May 9, 2011 at 21:53
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It's possible that the question's validity could be interpreted a bit more generously on https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/ - though that's just me spitballing.

Sorting through the pricing & marketing hassles of vendors is definitely an annoying part of the job, but has been filed into the 'off topic' category for SF.

I feel for you in that it's equally frustrating to take the time to read the FAQ and put together a question that seems to meet the criteria for a valid question - only to have it closed. We naturally feel a bit protective of our questions (I'm no exception!), and things can get prickly in a hurry when the criticism starts.

If it's any consolation, the FAQ has been debated endlessly in an attempt to balance thoroughness vs. length. If it's too long, more people skip it, but then sometimes people are caught defending a question asked in good faith.

For what it's worth, we could've been more gracious about the close. We should definitely make an effort to leave comments for closing questions that are valid from what you could tell by reading the FAQ.

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