On Thu, Dec 01, 2005 at 01:36:38PM -0500, jesse wrote:

...

So, would that be Manchester NH, Manchester, MA or one of the other

Manchesters?

I meant to add that I'll leave it to USians to comment on whether theirs

should be a three level system with state. In most countries this doesn't tend to be necessary.

To quote the London guide:

* The names of English towns are by no means unique, for example, there are two Ashfords, one in [Middlesex]?, near Heathrow Airport, and the other in Kent. (http://london.openguides.org/index.cgi?Easily_Made_Mistakes)

That said...

USians could probably cope with a first-come first-serve for top-level .us domains with a fallback to city-state (saintpaul-mn) or somesuch if two guides spring up with a namespace clash inside a country (springfield will be painful). The generic domain either resolving to a "Choose which city you mean" page or to the first guide to use the name, with the understanding that they'll be good social people and have a "If you intended to get to Boston, Arkansas please try http://boston-ak.us.openguides.org"

I have no clue why I prefer a hyphen in this instance to a subdomain, but I find it easier to parse [guide].[country].openguides.org vs [guide].[possible state].[country].openguides.org just seems to be more useful and global to me since Ashford in Middlesex will probably have to resort to something like this after the OpenGuides Craze out near Heathrow spreads.

-Chris