I have settled for .net's before, but in general I would advise to pick a .com that is available in a variation that sticks. You can do what many companies do, such as choose some animals name + topic of site and brand that as their .com It works, if you have .org or .info, you won't be able to get too far IMO.
i'd take .org any day. the extension has a community feel to it. heck, craigslist.org is ranked #40 in the world by Alexa (i know Alexa sucks but you can't argue with craigslist's millions of daily pageviews) careers.org - even though the site sucks now, used to be a pretty useful resource and is still somewhat popular. can't think of more examples at the moment but there are plenty i've come across before. all open source projects use .org. it says "giving" to me.
there are very less sites that comes to my mind with ".org" but tis blank when it comes to ".info"... acc to my preference, ".org" is better among the two but still ".com" is always the best....Good Luck
I have sites in the same sector. I always take the better domain name, which is more likely to be a .info because it is newer. If both names are available, then I think I wouldn't spend a lot of time worrying about it. I usually go with .info because I think it is more relevant, but I think fewer people are apt to remember it over a .org, however, I don't think the percentage it that much higher. I own mostly .com's and sometimes forget myself and type in .com There isn't any difference from a ranking perspective. I would also see if you can purchase an existing .com. If you are serious about the site, it will be worth it provided you can get it at a price that works for you.
Honestly, I don't think it's going to matter either way. It's a forum that i bet will rely on SE traffic. So visitors that come looking for info probably won't care much either way. Retaining forum visitors would be easy with things like instant email notifications and such. You can also put up links to bookmark the site.
My vote is the scratch your head really hard and find a .COM that is still available. Consider hyphenating words (like-this.com), etc. Get creative if you have to LC
.org was originally only for non profits. I'm old fashioned but I'd like to see it stay that way as much as possible so if you're doing it for proffit, go for the .info. But to be honest, unless you're doing offline marketing, most people will not bother with the dot whatever. They'll just click the google result and then bookmark your site. I hardly ever visit sites by memory anyway so just go with whatever you feel most comfortable with. Another suggestion is to go back and find a .com. you could use a dash in the name or something to get the one you wanted if possible.
Great minds think alike fwiw I think anyone can get a .ORG domain (I've gotten a few anyways, and I'm definitely not a non-profit org.) But I agree with the comment that if the new site/board is going to be accessed from links, then it probably doesn't matter. You could have a link to jkllkjdshjkds.org, and as long as the visitor likes what they see, they'll bookmark it and that's that. Of course the other argument is SEO - if you want to SEO on terms such as "health" then it probably helps you to have that word/term in the domain name. LC
The problem with .info is some people see them as spammy sites. I think this originated when they were giving out .info's for free and a bunch of spammers gave them a bad rep. For that reason alone I would go .org I'd still highly encourage any form of .com over either, just because of recognition.
Internationally, .org is seen as an American site. .info seem to be good for simple informational sites in Europe. Not seen many pro .info sites tho! But just reading this: www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm .edu seem to be given the highest status .org sites seem to be given high status .com sites excel in encompassing all the spam/ crud sites, resulting in the need for the highest scrutiny/ action by Google. Perhaps one would do well with the new .info domain class. Go .org! It reminds me of a joke attributed to Vinton Cerf when told that the KKK had registered kkk.com "Surely that's blatent DNS violation it should be a .org"
Personally, I would get both ***.info and ***.org Then I would get the ***.com (if available) and the ***.co.uk Finally I would get the ***.org.uk This means no matter how stupid people are, they are likely to get to your site. Also, 5 domains give 5x more listings in the search engines - provided that you submit them all