For a decade, ICANNWiki, the online portal that checks the pulse of the ICANN community, presenting its achievements and happenings, has been doing so diligently and with gusto.
And now, ICANN might cut off its funding, all while millions of dollars went to paying off members’ trips!
ICANNWiki announced the news today:
ICANNWiki was recently informed that ICANN might choose not to renew its contract, which accounts for 60% of our annual revenue. The contract began in 2015, with an initial three-year term, which enabled us to bring on two full-time co-directors to steward the project and improve its services. ICANN has stated, ‘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.’
The ICANNWiki folks continue:
With over a decade of community work in limbo, there is a lot at stake. ICANNWiki owes its success to the tremendous support we have received from our sponsors and community over the years. With all of the time, money and resources you have all contributed to ICANNWiki, we feel it is only right to keep our stakeholders informed.
If you support or have have benefitted from ICANNWiki, we are going to need your support now, more than ever. You can help by spreading this message and making your voice heard about the value of ICANNWiki.
Should ICANN continue to fund the existence of ICANNWiki?
For a large organization with a budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars, we believe that ICANN should trim its members’ travel expenses and fund ICANNWiki’s successful continuity, pronto!
There is no fun in ICANN without the Wiki!
The chances of ICANNwiki shutting down due to lack of funds are, I reckon, zero. The web site could continue to function for $10 a month. I’ll run it for free if they don’t want to.
Kevin – How did you deduce that’s the operating cost? The sponsorship goes beyond any such arbitrarily calculated numbers.
The site gets under a quarter million views a year. Under a thousand per day. Fewer, I’m fairly confident, than Domain Gang. Certainly fewer than Domain Incite.
How much do you pay for hosting?
Even if I’m wrong by a factor of ten on the hosting cost, it’s still only a tenth of what ICANN is paying in sponsorship.
The beauty of a wiki is that you don’t have to pay anyone to update it.
I’m not saying ICANNwiki would be as good without ICANN funding — and we may have to say bye-bye to those lovely caricatures — just that the chances of its “shutdown” based on lack of funds should be close to nil.
I’m not even sure that ICANNwiki is claiming it would have to shut down without ICANN money.
After all, the site was up for a decade before ICANN gave it a penny.
Kevin – I’m certain ICANN isn’t just footing their hosting bill “as is.” They are being sponsors, or patrons of the content. That, in itself, is a different class of support.
But I’m not familiar with who runs ICANNWiki – how many people, or how many hours of work they put in. For them to cry murder there has to be a lot at stake.
There is very little content on ICANNwiki that is up to date. They may need to re-assess why their staff travel to events like the IGF, and not only to ICANN meetings, if they need to cut their own costs. Still, without ICANN’s support, they still receive $70,000 from Amazon et al. That’s enough to support their hosting expenses ($150/year, per their budget), two staffers, and their travel to meetings. I’m not sure they work full-time for ICANNWiki as it is.
I agree that content on our website needs to be updated. I’ll give you that.
Regarding the IGF, we’ve been twice now and our thinking behind the trips was to promote the site, look for more sponsors and to engage a broader internet governance community that could help to improve our articles and hopefully work on some of our translation initiatives. We thought a second trip would give us the context we needed to decide whether it was worth it or not for us to continue going. The ICANN meetings have always been priority #1. The IGF has always been negotiable.
Yes, we have $60,000 in sponsorships outside of ICANN. We try to keep a low overhead and try to maximize our time and efforts wisely. $60,000 is hardly enough though to pay two full-time employees a living wage with health insurance AND account for travel. ICANNWiki requires more than the hosting expenses if it is to be a successful project. Our budget includes our giveaways, travel, and engagement workshops to improve the site. Here’s a better breakdown of our work: https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/correspondence/king-et-al-to-atallah-05dec17-en.pdf