Transfer of Wikipedia sites from GoDaddy complete
After months of deliberation and a complicated transfer, the Wikimedia Foundation domain portfolio has been successfully transferred from GoDaddy to MarkMonitor. The portfolio transfer was formally completed on Friday, March 9th, 2012. The transfers were done seamlessly and our sites did not experience any interruption of service or other issues during the procedure.
As the provider of the 5th most visited web properties in the world, the Foundation cares deeply about who handles our domain names. We had been deliberating a move from GoDaddy for some time — our legal department felt the company was not the best fit for our domain needs — and we began actively seeking other domain management providers in December 2011. GoDaddy’s initial support of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the controversial anti-piracy legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives, reaffirmed our decision to end the relationship.
After exploring numerous alternatives, the Foundation’s legal team decided that MarkMonitor could best provide the comprehensive services that we needed. MarkMonitor is a U.S.-based registrar with an office in San Francisco and has substantial experience managing other high-traffic domains. The company will help the Foundation consolidate and centralize management of all of its domains, will provide services needed to manage a global domain portfolio and will better protect our domains with additional security features.
The Foundation was already utilizing MarkMonitor’s brand protection services and we found their dedicated customer support team’s work to be exceptional. The use of their domain management services ensures greater efficiency in the handling of the Foundation’s trademark and domain name portfolios.
We have been very impressed with MarkMonitor to this point and we are confident we have placed the Wikimedia domain portfolio in competent hands.
Michelle Paulson
Legal Counsel
Nick – WMF is a US-based charity, so would be affected regardless.
For Christ’s sake, stop the activism. First the ridiculous blackout and now this. I’ll never donate to Wikimedia ever again unless you stop taking sides in political matters.
I would of thought it best to us a none U.S. domain handler and exchange all your domain extensions away from .com? Surely it’s only a matter of time before the U.S. joins the likes of China, North Korea and some other countries in censoreship. Except with a .com in the USA they can wipe you off the whole planet, unlike with a specific country code not under there whole control. I may be perhaps wrong in my knowledge though, so if anyone wants to clear things up I may have perhaps got wrong, with references, than please respond so I know for myself.
Sorry I meant to say .org (I believe the US Government controls all .com, .org & .net addresses the same as .US? – unlike with specific country codes such as any most outside USA listed here http://www.rwgusa.net/domain_extension_by_country.php)
I also move all my sites from Godaddy (before SOPA and for other bad experiences with them).
Horrible company.
Daddy, I don’t understand why they are so big ?
Please : avoid a mistake and choose another host, you’ll thanks me for this choice.
Congratulations! Good move! Thank you for being a responsible and socially-upright segment of the internet community!
Great move. GoDaddy is an awful terrible company. Not only SOPA tons of other things.
Well done. SOPA friendly GoDaddy and it’s elephant murderer CEO, Bob Parsons, are not worthy.
Just a great decision. Godaddy is so cheap at first, but their policy is also awful. I have almost moved my domain names to Namecheap :-).
YAY!
GoDaddy actually has the worst advertising campaigns ever…ugh
Nice move!
I hate Godaddy with a passion. Their service stings and I never liked them. Along the same line also Network solutions and verisign are the worst.
Good on ya, mates!
I completed the transfer of every domain I own/manage, personal and corporate, last month. It was a pain in the butt to move so many domains but I just couldn’t support GoDaddy any longer.
Hi, I support you with your move away from GoDaddy, but I wonder, Where does Wikipedia move now? What hosting provider will it use now? Or Did it only move the domain portafolio? Thank you.
How many domains did you move?
Danger Wikimedia troyann
Good move. I did the same sometime ago. Wikipedia took much more time though!
Well done Wiki for backing your claims!
That said, their interface was useless anyway, why anyone would keep using it I do not know.
And their offensive, sexist advertising campaigns didn’t factor into this decision?
Good move on your part. Wikipedia is an oracle for many Internet users. I wonder if others have the courage to follow in your footsteps. The day had come.