Names expired, never got any warning

#1

All of my place names are expiring.
Adriania, Earth, and several others suddenly were non existent, the place names have expired and no longer work, when I checked my account I found in fact they have been dumped back into the available names pool, with zero notice to me, the genuine owner of the names.

Several issues arise here, not the least of which is that my destinations are suddenly unreachable in the usual way,
also the names, MY NAMES are suddenly and without warning available for someone else to register.

Why isnt there a better warning system, why were my names instantly wiped off the register, no grace period? no sense of ownership? Other people got an email why didnt I get one?

I have renewed some of the names that expired but now I have to reset all the settings because it just all fell away when the names expired.
I am not renewing all my names because what was once a no brainer and has now become a ā€œlets just hope for the bestā€, I wont be renewing pointless names like Adriania. The domain formerly known as Adriania will from now on be known as Australia.

Earth is still running but not connected to the name until I fix it, I have renewed the name and will reconnect it once I have finished messing around paying one name at a time because there is no bulk renewal system yet.

@chris can you please check the records and find out why I am not getting the email warnings, I have several other names due for renewal later this month. This is important, thanks.

Group name expired with no warning. Urgent, please restore Earth Group
#2

I asked others here about names expiring after the meeting on Friday because I noticed talk of it on the forums from people who I know registered theirs after I did. I did get one email notice today or yesterday saying that the first one was about to expire in 7 days.

A one week notice is not enough. There should be at least two or more emails. At least a one month and one week notice. I could have been on vacation in Antarctica or Kentucky or somewhere.

And yes, I agree with Adrian, there should be some kind of notice and grace period to prevent the kind of domain squatting/ransom that happens with net domain names.

#3

The two Internet domain name registrars I use both provide the option of automatic renewal for domains.

One registrar automatically renews about a month in advance of expiry (is kind of good) but, like High Fidelity, doesnā€™t provide the option of bulk renewal of multiple domains with is a PITA. It only sends renewal notices a week in advance of renewal, which isnā€™t so good.

The other registrar (optionally) automatically renews - on the renewal date, I think - but it also provides the facility to renew multiple domains manually in advance which is what I do because I find it very convenient. It sends renewal notices more than a month in advance. Yay!

Both, I believe, provide a grace period after expiry. And, presumably, send e-mails about non-renewal in order to increase the odds that one will pay for renewal.

#4

Sorry for this long post but I have to get this off my chest.

The whole thing seems like it was hastily thrown together at the last minute like this is a hundred dollar project (even though apparently itā€™s a millions of dollars project).

Sometimes I get the feeling customers and third party devs are second class citizens (compared to investors). This sort of thing doesnā€™t earn many brownie points with people who are the bread and butter of HiFi.

It almost sounds like SL all over again. Remember how Coca Cola, ABC and other companies tried SL and failed? It is because they entered a virtual world trying to use real-world business methods (which will never work). They need native virtual worlders and third party devs to hold their hand. At this rate the cringe-worthy treatment of VWers is going to form a IDGAF BIWTYM (but I will take your money) attitude, much like SL. When you treat your community with a IDGAFBIWTYM attitude they tend to treat their customers the same way and it sets a bad tone right in the beginning that will carry on forever.

Remember HiFi, you arenā€™t the only guys with a stake in this. Many of us have our time and money invested in this too. If you piss off third party devs they will be more inclined to beat you at your own game. Is that what you want, or will you try harder to embrace us and work with us?

This isnā€™t aimed at anybody in particular because there are some good guys on the team who go out of their way for us (i.e. chris and others) but they donā€™t have time to do all these things. Maybe it is time to hire more people to work with the community. Throwing a bone every now and then will pay off big time later.

Maybe it would help by taking a look at how independent game studios treat their communities these days, especially kickstarted games like Star Citizen and Camelot unchained. They donā€™t rely on deep pocket business whales for their money, but they have earned the respect and adoration of their communities which is probably more important in the long run than having a few extra dollars to throw at things.

I see that there are many community members who are dying to be loyal HiFiers but donā€™t feel that they are wanted or appreciated and are thus being driven away when they could become huge assets. Stop trying to be a pure business or a pure open source project and start being a real hybrid open source community-driven business project like you present yourself to be (see the difference?).

I guess it just strikes me as odd that even though a lot of these former Lindens have years in the virtual metaverse game they still donā€™t understand how the community works.

Also, I say to the community let your voice be heard. If you are unhappy with something be vocal about it! This isnā€™t SL, HiFi wonā€™t ban you from running your HiFi domain (HiFi is open source remember?). I suppose they could ban you from the forums but I think they really do want to hear what you think and would rather hear what you have to say rather than see you abandon HiFi. Believe it or not many of these guys have tough skin (you kind of have to in order to have jobs like theirs) and they can take a little criticism. Sometimes a little criticism is a good thing. Besides, I think HiFi needs the community more than the community needs HiFi.

#5

@Adrian has your email changed? Our emails to you are bouncing.

#6

That explains why earth failed for me.
Also why is there not any time-out on expired domain names. so the keep lets say for at least 1 month out of the available pool list when the expire.

Btw, i have seen one notice last year about my name expires. and thatā€™s all i have seen. Not any reminder a few days later or so. Itā€™s a corner for improvements.

#7

Currently weā€™re sending out notices via email both two weeks and one week prior to expiration, as well as a notice upon expiration. Recognizing that there will always be mishaps with email addresses (especially since registration and renewal are a year apart, and email addresses tend to change) weā€™re also working on other ways to give people a heads up. Now when you login on the website, all place names set to expire within 30 days and all recently expired place names are highlighted in red with a renewal option. Stay tuned for more here.

#8

Mabye works when you visit the website. but i only use this link https://alphas.highfidelity.io/ and the other pages i come very rare, so not sure if you get notices also when you only visit the forum. This mabye change offcourse when itā€™s not alpha anymore.

#9

May I suggest you harmonize the place name expiry and grace period to that of the major internet domain name registry agents? Example:

Expired domains are held at Tucows for a Grace Period defined by the Registry.

Partial list of Grace Periods:
.COM, .NET, .ORG, .INFO, .BIZ, .US, .NAME, .TV and .CC ā€“ 40 days
.CA ā€“ 30 days
.UK domains resolve for 30 days past their expiration date after which they no longer reside with Tucows. Your Domain Provider can recover the domain for an additional 60 days by placing a transfer request for the domain.

#10

I have a question about place names. When I bought some before, some I mistakenly made lower case and although they are not case sensitive, I would rather have some of them displayed starting with an upper case letter.

For example: I have a place name ā€œcontentā€ I use for a local host domain. If I try to edit the place name when logged into the website, it says that ā€œYou cannot change a place name once it has been purchased.ā€

If there is no difference between ā€œcontentā€ and ā€œContentā€ then why canā€™t I change it?

Which brings up the question, if I canā€™t change the first letter case on ones that are expiring, what might be an easy way to do it without letting them expire and trying to immediately buy them back with the new spelling?

#11

Thats interesting that you say your emails are bouncing from my address.

No nothing has changed here my email address is the same, and I still receive all the emails from the forum posts, all the emails from the worklist, all the emails from gitter.
I dont know what to tell you, there seems to be nothing wrong at my end.

#12

I can help you fix these manually - please send me a mapping of old to new spellings in a message and I will change it in the database.

#13

Iā€™ll do some more checking into sendgrid to see why they are bouncing exactly.

#14

This is a common problem with small company emails getting blacklisted. The algos see email blasts from a single site then thinks it is spam. For HF, you need to either create a very large IP pool to spread outgoing emails, or you have to talk to the various spam filtering companies and register yourself as a ā€˜good guyā€™.

#15

Hey hiā€¦ sorry to bug butā€¦ I thought I sent you in PM, the three place names I wanted to have changed to start with upper case lettersā€¦ is cool if youā€™ve not gotten around to itā€¦ Iā€™m still not using themā€¦ but doesnā€™t seem to be changed yet.

#16

Iā€™m wondering if it might be worth adding a means of having the server software in some way notify the guy running the server that the domain name registration is a couple days away from expiring. Say, have it appear as a pop-up or dialog box something, when told to by the domain registration service, as an extra precaution in case thereā€™s a communications problem (i.e. their emails are bouncing or getting spam-canned).

#17

Hey there, sorry about that - responding to your PM now.

#18

Thanksā€¦ but I still donā€™t see any changes. And if you meant you were sending me a PM about it, I tried clicking on the other buttons here but all I got was old messages about other stuff.

#19

I like this idea. After all, since ā€˜consoleā€™ is the integration of several services, adding imminent expiry of place names seems a good thing to roll into console.

#20

Just in case you didnā€™t see the PM, the changeover you requested should be completed now.