.us Geographical Domains

[wdhdev]

As noted in #2316, I have not modified geographical names yet for the .us section of the PSL.

I have done some basic searching in the .us zone fie using a script and have generated a list of all geographical domains with >100 domain names under them.

ca.us: 3843
tx.us: 2650
k12.ca.us: 2388
ny.us: 1644
co.us: 1311
mn.us: 926
oh.us: 836
va.us: 767
il.us: 733
wa.us: 668
ma.us: 658
k12.ny.us: 601
wi.us: 544
mi.us: 530
pa.us: 480
fl.us: 463
or.us: 453
nc.us: 439
k12.co.us: 432
sc.us: 371
in.us: 346
state.ny.us: 344
ne.us: 337
mo.us: 333
k12.va.us: 332
nd.us: 313
nj.us: 262
ga.us: 260
nh.us: 260
tn.us: 254
denver.co.us: 240
ia.us: 232
md.us: 232
ms.us: 214
al.us: 207
nv.us: 196
ut.us: 170
ar.us: 169
lib.tx.us: 168
az.us: 164
ks.us: 152
ok.us: 151
ky.us: 135
mt.us: 133
id.us: 130
nm.us: 124
pvt.k12.ca.us: 120
lib.ny.us: 116

I was thinking we could remove existing geographical entries and only keep the direct state suffixes (e.g. tx.us, ny.us) and suffixes that have more than 100 domains registered (e.g. k12.ca.us, k12.ny.us). This would reduce the amount of .us suffixes listed on the PSL that do not have much or any use whilst keeping direct state suffixes as most of them are used.

The main motivation I have behind removing entries with less than 100 registrations is similar to what we enforce in the Private section of the PSL where we do not tend to allow services with more than 1,000 users. I dropped the number to 100 in this case, as those domains specifically would likely be affecting a few thousand users regardless.

I am wanting comments on this matter as there would definitely be some different perspectives on how these should be handled.

[dnsguru]

Please do not modify the .us subsection. There are numerous legacy sites that might be civic, educational, lea or local government that could be disrupted, and the presence of these is not harming anything.

[wdhdev]

Should I add any missing sub-TLDs?

[dnsguru]

Let us not deny the .us registry from that responsibility/privilege of doing that.

I would encourage #wontfix on this one and closing.

[wdhdev]

They gave me zone file access so I could do it from my understanding. But I can leave it if need be.

[dnsguru]

I don't mean to sound like I oppose adding order to this, it is just that the .us legacy zone distribution and delegation of management is something that the .us regstry really should be driving, as there's a lot of legacy stuff that can get broken.

We (PSL Volunteers, to be specific) have typically kept fairly lassez-faire about taking any specific self-driven actions, because it is possible to disrupt the status quo in ways that might be problematic. If the only upsaide is so we can tidy a few lines, and the downside is breaking police station, school or city governments or NSN tribal stuff, that's not a good trade off.