What a registry is

A registry has a name and a visibility, and a short name used in its address. It is made of sections, and each section is a form. You decide the fields in a form: text, a number, a choice from a list, a web address and the other kinds a form can ask for.

An entry is one registrant's answers to those forms. A few things about an entry are the same in every registry: its short name, its display name, who owns it, its status and its visibility. Everything else is whatever your fields asked for. An entry can also offer services, and it keeps up to three earlier short names when it is renamed, so old links still find it.

Visibility works as a ceiling. An entry can be as visible as its registry allows and no more. You can tighten a registry's visibility, but you cannot loosen it past what an existing entry chose.

A registry has permissions of its own: who may review entries, and who may edit the registry. A new entry waits in a review queue until someone decides on it, and any entry can be opened and edited by someone who may.