.wiki: a home for knowledge bases, docs and fan wikis

Who runs it, and who does not

• Current managerRegistry Services, LLC (GoDaddy Registry contacts)
• Original operatorTop Level Design, LLC
• Delegated19 February 2014
• TransferredJune 2023 (IANA report)
• Public availabilityLate May 2014 (trade press)

The IANA record names Top Level Design as the original applicant and shows a transfer to Registry Services, LLC reported on 26 June 2023. So an assumption that Identity Digital or another registry runs it is out of date. Wikimedia does not appear in the IANA record at all; the Wikimedia Foundation's projects use .org addresses such as wikipedia.org. Treat a .wiki domain as a normal commercial registration: it has no official standing and implies no endorsement by any encyclopedia.

Where it fits

Internal documentation

Teams that run a company wiki, runbook collection or product handbook sometimes register company.wiki so the URL describes the content. Because internal docs are often private, the domain may point to an access-controlled system.

Fan and community wikis

Games, TV shows and hobby communities need a place to keep knowledge. The extension suits a wiki devoted to one series, and a name like fictional-saga.wiki says so at once.

Personal knowledge gardens

People who maintain public notes, a digital garden or a topic reference like the short, topical address.

Industry reference sites

Niche professional references fit as well, for example a glossary for a trade. A .info name is the traditional alternative for informational content.

Launch scale

Trade press reported only a few thousand registrations on the first day of general availability in May 2014, a modest start next to the larger launch of .club in the same month. That is the order of magnitude we can support; we found no authoritative current total, and no figure here should be read as present-day size.

Reputation and trust

A word that signals knowledge helps a legitimate project and equally helps impersonators. Someone can register brand.wiki and build a page that looks like an official documentation site, so users of software should confirm doc links from the vendor's main site. We did not verify any abuse statistics for this TLD; Spamhaus's domain reputation updates are one place to look. Quality is domain-by-domain.

Price pattern

Pricing for this extension has historically sat in the mid band, with registrar promotions on the first year, higher renewals, and premiums for the most generic words. Check renewal costs; a documentation site is a multi-year commitment, and losing the domain means broken links in every README and forum post that cited it. Read the domain lifecycle to see what happens after a lapse, and set auto-renew.

SEO and discoverability

Search engines handle it as a generic TLD. A wiki site's ranking depends on how many useful pages exist, how they link, and whether other sites cite them, not on the suffix. A common practical pattern is to host docs on a subdomain such as docs.example.com, which lives inside an established domain's authority. Choose .wiki when a dedicated name is a feature in itself, for example when the wiki is a product of its own.

Running a public wiki on it

A public wiki attracts spam editors and bots within weeks, so plan moderation before launch: require accounts or approval for edits, rate-limit new users, and keep backups of the database. Use HTTPS from day one, because a knowledge site that browsers flag as insecure loses trust fast. Keep a clear about page that states who maintains the wiki; that is the single best defence against being mistaken for an official source.

Also plan for continuity. If the maintainer leaves, the domain registration, hosting account and admin logins should be recoverable by someone else. Store them in a shared password manager and list a role-based email as the registrant contact.

Choosing the name

Because the suffix already says "wiki", repeating it in the label is wasteful: cooking.wiki beats cookingwiki.wiki. Prefer the topic word or the product name, and keep it short enough to type from memory. If a project spans several topics, one broad label with sections is easier to defend than a separate domain for each. Check that the name is not a trademark of a game studio or publisher, since fan wikis are a common source of takedown notices.

If you track it

For anyone building a watch list, a zone-file-based tool can show new .wiki names as they appear and dropped ones as they vanish. For the broader picture of how new extensions differ from country codes, see gTLD vs ccTLD vs new gTLD.

Frequently asked questions

Is .wiki run by Wikimedia?

No. The IANA record shows a commercial registry, currently Registry Services, LLC, and Wikimedia appears nowhere in it.

Who ran .wiki originally?

Top Level Design, LLC, according to the original delegation report. A transfer to Registry Services, LLC was reported in June 2023.

When did .wiki start selling?

It was delegated in February 2014 and, per trade press, opened to general registration in late May 2014.

Is .wiki restricted?

The IANA record lists no eligibility rule, and registrars sell it to anyone.

Should I put my documentation on .wiki?

It is a reasonable fit if you want a standalone name. Many teams use a docs subdomain of their main domain instead. Either way, keep the registration auto-renewed.

Does .wiki help with search rankings?

No. Search engines treat it like other generic TLDs, so content and links decide ranking.