ICANNWiki

General Information
Issue Areas:	Capacity Development
Country:	USA
Region:	Global
Founded:	2005
Headquarters:	Portland, OR, USA
Website:	https://icannwiki.org
Email:	info@icannwiki.com
Facebook:	Facebook
Twitter:	[@ICANNWiki Twitter]

People
Founder(s):	Raymond King

ICANNWiki is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to supporting the Internet community's collaborative development of wiki articles on ICANN and Internet Governance-related topics. The wiki provides neutral, third-party information for ICANN meeting attendees and Internet citizens at large. It is an open platform governed by wiki values, such as Neutral Point of View, transparency, assuming good faith, and building together.

ICANNWiki is not ICANN. ICANNWiki is a separate non-profit organization independent from ICANN. This website is operated by the ICANNWiki organization and any donations made to the ICANNWiki website are for the ICANNWiki organization only.

The Internet Governance space is known for being highly technical and obscure, making it difficult to develop a general understanding of the issues involved. These issues are pertinent to the daily lives of all Internet users, as well as those on the other edge of the digital divide, still waiting for Internet access. ICANNWiki works with the community to break these complex concepts down into understandable, fully-referenced, fact-based, and neutral articles.

Mission

Giving everyone a voice in the future of the Internet.

Work Areas

The ICANNWiki team's time is spread across 4 main areas:

• ICANN Meetings - There are 3 ICANN meetings held per year, often in very disparate locations as per ICANN's mandate to be a global organization. Generally, two ICANNWiki team members travel to the meetings in order to interact with the participants. We teach people about the site and its usage, create and edit articles, take photographs for caricatures, and sometimes conduct video interviews. While travel costs and booth materials are one of the project's largest expenditures, we feel the opportunity to work directly with the community, in a face-to-face mode, is important.

• Content Creation & Editing - We strive to incorporate information from ICANN and other news sources into existing articles in a timely fashion. If we see that an informational need is unmet, we build new articles from scratch and elicit the community to contribute as well. ICANNWiki insists upon on neutral and documented information and edits pages as they are created or updated by community members. This has always been a significant undertaking for staff, and with the launch of the New gTLD Program, we've seen the site traffic, pages and its activity increase exponentially.

• Community Building - Community Building begins with the newcomers. Once we have helped them into the world of Internet Governance, they often return the favor by contributing edits to ICANNWiki content. ICANN veterans and career DNS folks are often the most educated about ICANN topics. We encourage these seasoned participants to help edit articles, assisting those who do not yet have an advanced perspective or understanding. The ICANN community is vast and diverse, so even long-time participants find themselves in need of information about the work being done by other groups at ICANN.

• Sponsorship Outreach - ICANNWiki depends on the generous support of sponsors. Without them, we would not be able to do what we do.

Throughout all this work, ICANNWiki is known for putting a fun and unique twist on the content, such as the Caricatures and Playing Cards it produces. We value our creative reputation and are constantly looking for fun and new ideas, and interacting with our community on Twitter, Facebook, at ICANN meetings, and remotely.

Philosophy

ICANNWiki strives to be a valuable and neutral Internet resource containing information on all aspects of the ICANN community. The ICANN community is not limited to ICANN itself, but includes all those associated with, or affected by ICANN's decisions.

ICANNWiki is a global commons that brings all groups of the ICANN community together to communicate and share knowledge in an open, and transparent manner.

ICANNWiki is a unique and valuable information resource specifically addressing the larger world of ICANN. ICANNWiki warmly welcomes any and all community members to join in the effort of global online collaboration and resource creation for the benefit of all!

History

ICANNWiki was originally founded by Raymond King in 2005, with help from Brandon CS Sanders and John Stanton, with the belief that a public wiki could be a real benefit to the greater ICANN community. The project debuted at the ICANN 24 in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The site was relaunched in 2010, and a considerable effort has gone into improving articles and standards. ICANNWiki has always been supported by the community, whether from the thousands of people who have contributed to articles on the site, or through company sponsorships. Our wiki is a medium for peer production, where the act of using the site together will create a valuable common asset. This lasting work, made up of the industry's collective intelligence, can then be used to further our common mission of making the Internet a better place to live and work.

Sponsorship

ICANNWiki is made possible via the generous sponsorship of companies in the industry. Read more here.

Logo

The brackets on each side of the logo represent the wiki markup for an internal link and the the sprout on the globe symbolizes the growth of Internet knowledge worldwide.

Projects we're working on

• ICANNWiki:ICANNWiki Development