After outcry, ICANNWiki to get ICANN funding next year

ICANNWiki will continue to get funding from its namesake, after community members complained about ICANN’s plan to abandon its $100,000 annual grant.
The independent wiki project will get $66,000 instead in the year beginning July 1, which will drop to $33,000 in ICANN’s fiscal 2020.
The funding will then disappear completely.
It’s a slight reprieve for ICANNWiki, which uses the money not only for its 6,000-article web site but also in-person outreach at events around the world.
The organization had complained about the plans to drop funding back in December, and fans of the site later called on ICANN to change its mind.
Supporters say the site fulfills a vital educational service to the ICANN community.
ICANNWiki also receives over $60,000 a year from corporate sponsors.
ICANN has also offered a reprieve to its Fellowship program in the new draft budget, reducing the number of people accepted into the program by fewer than expected.
It said in January it would slash the program in half, from 60 people per meeting to 30. That number will now drop to 45, at a cost of $151,000.
As discussed in this February article, the community has differing opinions about whether the program is an important way to on-board volunteers into ICANN’s esoteric world, or a way for freeloaders to vacation in exotic locations around the globe.

ICANNWiki fans protest funding cut

ICANN should continue to fund the independent ICANNWiki project, according to high-profile industry supporters.
As I first reported back in December, ICANN plans to stop giving a $100,000 annual grant to ICANNWiki, a repository of about 6,000 community-sourced articles on the people and organizations involved in the ICANN community.
While ICANNWiki does not merit an explicit mention in ICANN’s latest proposed budget, both organizations have confirmed to DI that the funding is for the chop, as ICANN attempts to rein in spending in the face of depressed revenue.
About a quarter of the 41 comments filed on the budget express support for the wiki.
Consultant Kurt Pritz, a 10-year veteran of ICANN and one of the key architects of its new gTLD program, wrote that the wiki “has been an essential part of the ICANN culture for many years… often saving ICANN meetings from terminal ennui.”
Roland LaPlante, chief marketing officer of Afilias (one of about 15 sponsors listed on ICANNWiki’s front page), wrote:

The complete withdrawal of funding from ICANN so abruptly not only threatens the viability of the project, but rather disrespectfully junks the valuable time and resources that the community has invested over the years. Ultimately the loss of ICANNWiki would be a loss to our overall sense of community.
ICANN should continue to support ICANNWiki at a reasonable level in the next fiscal year. At a minimum, please consider giving the team time to find other sources of funding.

Sandeep Ramchandani, CEO of Radix, concurred, writing:

ICANNNWiki benefits the entire ICANN community. Cutting the funding entirely would effectively halt its operations and be a disservice to the community it serves. It is in ICANN and the community’s best interest to continue funding it in an amount that works for ICANN long-term, and provide ICANNWiki sufficient time to develop a more sustainable business plan.

Simon Cousins, CEO of Chinese market localization specialist Allegravita, said:

Before ICANNWiki, there was precious little information on industry fundamentals in China, and since Allegravita has supported the pro-bono translation of ICANNWiki content into Chinese, the vital platform that is ICANNWiki has been acknowledged hundreds of times.
We do not support the immediate and full withdrawal of funding for ICANNWiki. We guardedly support incremental, annual decreases to give ICANNWiki the time necessary to generate new sponsorship income to cover their costs.

Pablo Rodriguez of .pr ccTLD operator PRTLD, host of ICANN 61 and an ICANNWiki sponsor, wrote:

We believe that they should not be cut out from the ICANN’s Budget, instead, they should be supported and embraced to continue their engaging approach and work with ICANN’s Community and as well newcomers, veterans, special programming for beginners and others in order to deliver what is ICANN and what does the organization do and so forth.

Several other commentators on ICANN’s budget asked ICANN to maintain the funding and I was unable to find any comments supporting its withdrawal.
It’s worth noting that ICANN’s $100,000 is not ICANNWiki’s only financial support. It says it receives an additional $61,000 a year from corporate sponsorship, and as a wiki much of its output is produced by volunteers.
It has been in existence for a decade, but ICANN has only been giving it money for three years.
The costs associated with running it appear to be mostly centered not on maintaining the web site but on its outreach and promotional activities, such as attending meetings and the popular caricatures and card decks it distributes.
It could be argued that ICANNWiki is pretty good value for money when compared to cost of a dedicated outreach professional (the average cost of an ICANN staffer has been estimated at $175,000+ in the latest budget).
ICANNWiki will host an “Edit-A-Thon” during the current ICANN 61 public meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico on Tuesday at 0900 local time.

ICANNWiki could be first victim of budget cutbacks

ICANN is mulling whether to cut funding to ICANNWiki, the independent community encyclopedia, as part of its efforts to rein in spending.
There’s $100,000 at stake, more than half of the Oregon-based non-profit’s annual budget.
Ray King, the gTLD registry CEO who founded ICANNWiki in 2005, told DI today that ICANN has been providing funding for the last three years.
“While no decision has been made yet, there is a possibility that ICANN will not continue it,” he said in an email.
“We’ve poured our hearts and minds into this project for many years so this would be disappointing to say the least,” he said. “We believe in our mission and that it is in the community’s interest for this support to continue”.
An ICANN spokesperson said: “At this time, while it is highly unlikely that ICANN will be renewing its contract with ICANNWiki, we have not come to a final determination.”
ICANNWiki currently carries about 6,000 volunteer-edited articles covering many aspects of the ICANN community and the domain name industry in general.
It’s perhaps most recognizable for the frequently shared caricatures of community members it produces, such as this handsome devil, and the playing card decks handed out as freebies at ICANN meetings.
According to a letter (pdf) sent to ICANN earlier this month, ICANNWiki receives cash contributions of $161,000 a year, $61,000 of which comes from 10 corporate sponsors.
ICANNWiki estimates the 2,200 hours per year of volunteer work it benefits from is worth about $66,500. It says it has in-kind contributions worth about $40,000 from other companies.
It puts the value of its “reference services” at $339,959 a year.
That’s based on estimated visits to its site of 182,774 in 2017 (not including visits from its editors and staff) and a value per visit of $1.86 (based on an unrelated ROI calculation Texas Public Libraries used to justify its own existence earlier this year).
The ICANN $100,000 contribution is at risk now due to the organization’s plan to cut back on spending in the face of revenues that are coming in lower than expected due to a weak domain name market.
CEO Goran Marby said yesterday that its fiscal 2018 is currently running a million dollars short. Coupled with a perceived need to add an extra $80 million to its reserve budget, ICANN is looking for areas to cut costs.
ICANNWiki funding may be the low-hanging fruit in this endeavor; while it’s no doubt valuable (I probably use it two or three times per week on average), it’s perhaps not straightforward to quantify that value.
Even if the funding is cut, I would not expect ICANNWiki the web site to disappear, given the level of corporate sponsorship and in-kind services it receives and the low overheads suggested by its modest traffic numbers, but perhaps its growth and outreach ambitions would be curtailed.
UPDATE: This post was updated at 2307 UTC with a quote from ICANN.

ICANNWiki boss applies for 10 gTLDs

A new company run by ICANNWiki founder Raymond King and business partner Peter Brual has applied to ICANN for 10 new generic top level domains.
Top Level Design has applied for: .blog, .llc, .group, .wiki, .gay, .art, .style, .design, .ink, and .photography.
The company is entering contention sets on most of those, but I believe it’s the first .wiki bid announced to date.
It’s also the only portfolio player so far to announce that it’s using CentralNIC, best known for pseudo-gTLDs such as uk.com, as its back-end registry provider.
The company said the venture “will not interfere with the presentation or neutrality of ICANNWiki.com”.