Why is this question ... [ Which TLD would be suited to a personal site? ] ... community Wiki?
I don't understand the rationale. And I am often frustrated seeing questions turned into Community Wiki without a good explanation, little discussion, and no mechanism to "revert" from Community Wiki status.
While the question of what should constitute a community wiki remains open to debate, I do think that maybe the process should be a little more democratic. It seems to me, and I may be wrong, that moderators have marked certain questions as a community wiki very early on, in some cases even before the question had any answers.
In my opinion, this serves as a disincentive for other users to answer the question and could actually hurt the original poster by preventing them from getting answers they would otherwise have gotten if the question wasn't marked community wiki. (In fact, I would be very interested to see a comparison of the average number of answers a question marked community wiki early on receives versus a non-community wiki question.)
Yes, community wiki questions do still earn badges, but badges have decreased importance and visibility in comparison to reputation points. While a subtle difference, the first thing that I think most people will look at is the reputation number rather than the number of badges. The reputation is listed first for all profile snippets. Even on the user profile page itself, reputation is large and prominent at the top, while the badges are relegated to the very bottom of the profile. Reputation, not gaining badges, is also the key that unlocks more privileges across the site. Most importantly, users are ranked by reputation by default, not the number of badges. Ranking by the number of badges isn't even an option, thereby minimizing their weight in terms of social proof.
As it stands, reputation, not the number or type of badges, is the chief currency of social proof on all StackExchange sites.
Here's what I would suggest:
The main issue as I see it with that question is that there's not just "more than one right answer" there's officially NO right answer.
Now, there are certain TLDs set aside for "personal" use, and if the OP had asked "Is there a personal TLD set aside for use by people in country [x]" then that's a legit and valid question with a correct answer.
As it is, it's still a valid question, but one with absolutally no way of giving a correct answer.
For example, your answer (currently at +2) does a very good job of outlining the differences in the three examples that the op provided. But then there's other peoples answers that include valuable domain names that weren't in your answer. That doesn't make your answer less correct, and it doesn't make the other answers more correct.
The only fair thing to do in such a situation is go CW.
Community wiki questions and answers are not in any way second class citizens. Someone asking the same question will find the answers every bit as valuable as any other answer that solves their problem or in this case, helps them make a decision.
Keep in mind, you also earn normal (not tag, but normal) badges from community wiki questions and answers. Since these questions are very easy for other users to vote on, those badges tend to roll in much faster than they would on other questions. There is no part of participating in the site that is not (eventually) rewarded in some way.
The overwhelming majority of questions on Pro Webmasters come from people who have very specific problems to solve that require some degree of knowledge and skill to answer. While we can't solve the problem of rare knowledge being under rewarded, we can help to balance it by ensuring that answers to polls, list of, or best (something) questions are not over rewarded.
You could conceivably garner thousands of reputation points over a month by simply answering "Joomla" to "What is an ideal CMS", or ".com, people think it's professional" to "What TLD should I use" if they were not community wiki. The votes you gain basically say "I agree" vs "Yes, this was the best solution to the problem". That is a major difference in the context of our site.
Keep in mind, also, that we are still working on our ground rules and discussions like this are extremely important. I'm merely explaining why I made this particular question CW. I plan to open a combined discussion of this question and several others to reach a consensus that leads to greater detail in our FAQ.
First off, this post on meta.SO should explain what a community wiki is supposed to be. The best answer came up with this specifically as what kind of questions should be community wiki:
A question should not be marked CW if it is possible to write valid, helpful and knowledgeable answers which contribute to SO.
Even if there is more than one valid answer (in open-ended questions), individual answers may still have value, and so they deserve the rep gain when they're upvoted. Marking such a question CW just discourages people from putting any effort into their answers.
I think the most important part of that comment in this case is "valid answer". That means answers should be correct in that they solve the issue the asker has and if another user comes along and has the same question, the answer solves their issue/problem as well. The opposite of those kinds of questions should then be community wiki. Meaning questions that have no definitive answer(s) should be wiki.
On to the question at hand. In the question, the user specifically asked:
I'd appreciate remarks on the differences between these options, and suggestion on which would be suitable for my need.
When a user uses phrases like "best answer", "remarks", or "suggestions" the question infers that there is no definitive answer(s) and that all answers are subjective to some extent.
Taking it a step further, if you look at the spirit of the question, it is I need help with how should do X which is subjective. If the spirit of the question was I need help solving X because X is broken then it would not be community wiki.
I think the main point is subjectivity. With the way the question is currently asked there will be no answers that are for sure correct unless someone is able to pull out statistical research on peoples TLD preferences and what they hold true in this specific case.
My concern with this is having Pro Webmasters turn into a site where questions like "What is the best web server?" or "Should I use Linux or Windows to host my website?" become flash point questions and give users a great deal of reputation for asking a popular question that does not benefit the entire PWM community simply because a voting equivalent of a flame war occurs.
OP here (of the question under discussion). It's unfortunate that this happened, that what I thought was a question with a good chance of a real answer has been considered otherwise. For what it's worth, I've selected the answer that worked for me. That answer provided the information I needed, explaining the intent of each of the TLDs I mentioned initially, and it recommended the suitable TLD for my criteria.
I probably should have put a bit more thought into the question, since looking back at it suggests it wasn't as clear as it could have been. What I meant by my request for "remarks" was the differences between the options listed, not necessarily opinion-based feedback. Which I got from the accepted answer.
Again, for what it's worth, I hadn't intended the question to be subjective. I would have reworded it earlier if it had been suggested, before it became a wiki.
The reason it has been made a CW is probably that every answer is equally valid, and there isn't a right answer; somebody could suggest you to use "domain-name.me," somebody else would suggest to use "domain-name.it," and somebody else could suggest using "domain-name.ws." None of them would give you any quantifiable advantage, and choosing one or the other is just a matter of preferences.
