Explore the Internet & Govern It, a project of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ, has launched a new quiz section called IDN on its website. The section includes three rounds of questions dedicated to the language and cultural diversity on the web.
The topics of the new section include Universal Acceptance, nuances of internet coding, internationalized domain names (IDN) and email addresses (EAI), Russian Cyrillic domains, new general top-level domains (New gTLDs), and the digital transformation of the Russian language: spelling and punctuation rules.
The quiz questions may first seem tough but they contain a lot of useful trivia. For example, participants will find out:
- what the main principles of Universal Acceptance are (spoiler alert: when working with any domain names and email addresses, an application, service or system must correctly accept, verify, process, store and display them);
- what Unicode and Punycode are and where “xn--" is used;
- that Cyrillic domains can be registered in .COM, and domains containing Arabic letters are typed in from right to left;
- that Yandex has its own TLD, and the longest TLD consists of 14 characters;
- how to spell “hashtag” in Russian and pronounce the word “domain” properly;
- … and 70 more facts about the internet today
Some questions in the new section concern .РФ, Russia’s Cyrillic ccTLD, which marked its 10th anniversary this year. Players will have to guess which domains are prohibited for registration in .РФ, whether the letter “ё” can be used in .РФ domains, if the registration of one-character domains is possible, and for what purposes .РФ domains are used most often, among other questions.
“Universal Acceptance and related issues of cultural and language diversity on the web are topical in today’s internet environment. Russia has several Cyrillic TLDs, including its ccTLD .РФ, Moscow’s TLD .МОСКВА and one positive domain .ДЕТИ, as well as new gTLDs such as .TATAR or .YANDEX. However, not all applications and services, including email agents, know how to work with them. The Coordination Center has initiated several projects to change the situation. We use this easy interactive format to teach about IDN, EAI, new gTLDs and their structure, how they operate and what Universal Acceptance is. This quiz will help users learn how diverse the domain world is, how it has developed and what it is like today. We also hope that users will use them even more actively and safely,” said Maria Kolesnikova, the Coordination Center’s Chief Analyst and Chair of UASG’s UA Local Initiative in the CIS and Eastern Europe.
The quiz is accessible for all users: all you have to do is register or log in on the website of the Explore the Internet & Govern It project to start solving tasks. The project is recommended for leisure, school lessons or specialized educational events.
Explore the Internet & Govern It is an interactive educational project designed by the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ with the support of Rostelecom. The project will help you learn how digital technologies work, how to become an experienced internet user and how to navigate the web safely. It includes a game website, a quiz, an internet glossary, online tournaments, and the annual national online championship for school students.
