Feb. 9, 2016
12:38 a.m.
Taking IANA as a leading source is what we do as far as the information exists, and maybe from that side a 'wrapper' like $tld.whois.iana.org could be provided. I know there is such functionality around but I've never found one that is 100% free of errors.
I have a WHOIS locator list updated daily at <tld>.ws.sp.am. (WS is Whois Server.) It uses a variety of methods to find the servers, the IANA list, the common whois.nic.<tld>, and a manual list for the ones that are just hard to find. As far as I know it's correct and complete. Oh, and it's DNSSEC signed, too, although that doesn't help much since very few of the WHOIS names it points to are. R's, John