2009/4/23 Mike Godwin mnemonic@gmail.com:
If they had transferred the domain name over to us, we'd have paid all their expenses and forwarded requests for some period of time to any new domain name they chose to register. There are other alternatives we might have considered as well. But, take my word for it, we had no interest at all in shutting down their site (which, so far as I can tell, is a very low-traffic site in any case).
I don't doubt that you weren't trying to shut them down, but it was highly predictable that people would come to that conclusion.
At any rate, disagreements resolved through negotiations typically lead to compromises, and so it makes sense sometimes to make your strongest arguments first, so that you can fall back into a reasonable compromise.
Very true. You have to balance starting high enough that you have room to come down with not appearing unreasonable. It's a difficult balancing act, and I'm not sure you got it quite right this time. Perhaps you could have requested they make wikipediaart.org into a portal page, linking to their site and to Wikipedia, but keep it under their control - basically a really big disclaimer. Then you could have settled for a nice small disclaimer like the one they've gone with.