2009/4/23 Mike Godwin <mnemonic(a)gmail.com>om>:
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.