Friday, January 19, 2018

ICANN for dummies

I just received an ICANN alert on "Operating Standards for ICANN's Specific Reviews" so I clicked to learn more. The purpose is to offer to comment to solicit feedback on "ICANN things" such as: "to assure selected review teams have the necessary skill set and diversity to conduct a successful review ".

What's the point?
The comments were open in october 2017 so I clicked to check the comments and guess what? There are none and comments are closing in 14 days. It's been opened for 4 months...

A staff is going to use this "no feedback" and it is going to do a reporting to...ICANN, take decisions...what's the point if there is no participation?

Zero feedback: why?
I first tried to understand the content of the page offering to participate. Unless you pay a strong interest and have been following this closely, read English, or work at ICANN, I don't see how someone normal can understand the content of this page.

The same for a lot of the ICANN work
I noticed that very few people participate with their comments and I believe that one of the reasons is just this one: potential participants still don't understand what all this is about:
  • There is no communication;
  • It is difficult to understand.
I checked the page again and my first thoughts is: "I don't want to read it completely because the first two bullet points...I just don't understand them clearly".

Criticizing is easy
Yes it is, but the the reason of this post is to offer solutions to ICANN to drive more people to pay interest and participate. I am a person to follow "things that ICANN does" and there are still plenty of things that I just don't follow up with because I have a problem understanding them! Note that I also have a problem with time (following group meetings requires some).

So I do imagine newcomers or law firms trying to participate in all this.

Time for change?
What about a simplified version of the ICANN website entitled "ICANN for Dummies" or just a paragraph added to these pages entitled "In simple words" (with a sumup written using a simple vocabulary)?

I personally like the simple way pages are designed on the ICANN website, and sections are of interest, but who can read this today but ICANN insiders? Isn't the purpose of such a pages to have people to participate and comment to provide ICANN a feedback? Well, if it is, something written by a non expert could make the difference.

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