Walter Vermeir wrote:

This sounds fermilliar. Is that policy of wikimedia to only pay when the expire?

<irony> The official policy is to allow squaters take over domains, and then use large part of funds to buy them back or redirect sites to other, not so easy to remember domains. </irony>

If there's a trouble, why would you need to mock at guys, running the sites? Sure, there was an error, registrars are not always as user friendly, as they could be. People are not always as attentive, as they could be. Errors do happen. Why didn't you notice that yourself (as you're on wikitech-l as well) before?:)

I've seen large GSM/net operators and various other enterprises with expired core domains, where their hosting, dns and mail servers reside. Just a short list: - hotmail.co.uk - mp3.com - washpost.com ...

Domas