Wales seeking a .cym top level domain

[ilox]

Now I have just found this but not investigated it any further than this report, if I have it wrong I apologise.

But to my way of thinking this might be a step forward if it ever comes to pass...
http://www.domainnamenews.com/icann-pol ... w-tld/1961

According to Philip Virgo of ComputerWeekly, Wales is preparing to apply for their own sponsored top-level domain - .cym - in order to reverse the economic outflow from Wales in e-commerce.

The Welsh Assembly Goverment has expressed an issue with the majority of Welsh shoppers buying from non-Welsh sites and fewer non-Welsh buyers purchasing from Welsh businesses.

“In confirming the intent to apply for a TLD for Wales, Ieuan Wyn Jones fulfilled a desire that has been strongly expressed by Parliamentarians in both Cardiff and Westminster,” Virgo said on his blog. “An early day motion in the House of Commons was signed by 24 MPs of all parties. In the Welsh Assembly, the House Committee passed a vote of support by a large margin.”

The Welsh TLD would be used by organizations, companies, and individuals around the globe that express themselves in the Welsh language and/or look to encourage Welsh culture.

I am helping a Scout District in Wales to have a bi-lingual (is that how you say it?) site using Joomla 1.5 and JoomFish. If there was a .cym TLD available then in theory it might be able to point to a page with the Welsh language as default and English as the option.

A Welsh TLD would be managed on a new register of clearly identified internet users, to tight protocols, so that criminal activity could be detected rapidly and dealt with appropriately. Parents in Wales, for example, would know that their children were far less likely to come to any harm if their internet access was constrained to dotCYM domains, as would be possible."

My understanding would be that devotees of the Welsh language would be looking for sites with the .cym TLD and thus such a site would gain more support and recognition. Maybe a Scout District is too small a market for the added expense of a second domain but that is all in the future.

What do you of Welsh residency and/or background think of the .cym proposal?

[nickn5]

Interesting news. I quite agree that something needs to be done to encourage Welsh residents to use local shopping outlets, and as long as the requirement for registering a .cym domain is that the registrant lives in Wales, or the registrant's business is registered in Wales, then it should certainly help.

And as .eu seems to have taken off for European use, I don't see why .cym shouldn't be popular. I'll buy one...

N.

[ilox]

Nick, they seem to be keen on making residency/location of business to be a criteria for acceptance and I think that is all to the good for making sites using the TLD recognisable as a local.
Of course pricing and the hoops needed to be jumped through for registration could make a difference in how well the .cym is taken up.

[treetopbaz]

I think it is a good idea. I live in wales and am webmaster for 2 .org.uk sites one is a welsh club and the other a uk club I have for a long time now being trying to get the welsh club into welch as a large percentage of the members speak welsh so have moved over to joomla from dreamweaver and as a learner i have first of all written my own personal site in joomla 1.6 only taken about a week to do the conversion. But as a test for my welsh club site when i move onto that next I have installed the JV Translate module and even though I do not speak welsh reports from my welsh speaking friends have been good
My site is www.treetopbaz.co.uk if you want to try out the conversion to welsh.

[thomaswelton]

I don't think it's that great of an idea, verging on the pointless especially if it's to drive business to Welsh businesses. As a user I'd expect that any site on a .cym domain to be either entirely in Welsh or have Welsh as the default language, also i'd anticipate that most business will be using .co.uk or .com domains in addition to the new .cym so I'd never visit the .cym domain.

As implied the .co.uk TLD covers the whole of the UK and as a result should be making that site accessible for any of the languages spoken in the UK. Plus if users want to find local business they can do so already online, if users are not proactively trying to use local business they'll resort to those with the highest page rank or the best advertising and even with a .cym domain users who are not actively looking for .cym sites they will not find them.

Also in regards to .cym sites as being recognizable as "local" for me that wouldn't help. Living in Newport, South Wales I live much closer to business that use .co.uk sites in Bristol, England than I am to business in North Wales.

Are there any costs in applying for a TLD? If so maybe that money could be spent in developing city centers, like Newport, to actually make them places worth visiting and shopping in and supporting real business in the real world instead... just a thought.

[ilox]

Thomas, I an guessing that a site with a .co.uk domain might also register a name in the .cym TLD and thus emphasise to those looking that it provides business based in Wales and would probably have a language capability to transact that business in Welsh.

I for one would recommend the Scout site I help to look at taking up a domain in the .cym even more so IF they went back to JoomFish and provided a bi-lingual experience. At present they have it turned off.

The article wasn't clear if they were seeking for sites to have a Welsh language capability in order to qualify for the .cym TLD or whether it was simply a requirement to prove physical location within Wales.

Has anybody heard any more news on this interesting proposal?