ICANN Opens its Blogs for Public Comments, Finally!

ICANN has finally announced that it has opened its own blogs for comments. This is after a long and unusual manner in which any blog by ICANN staffers could not be commented upon as a form of reply, addition, suggestions or criticism.

One of the notable stakeholders who have in the past commented on the lack of opportunity for reply is DotConnectAfrica (DCA) Trust who were forced to use other industry media like CircleID, to reply to Mr. John Jeffrey, the ICANN General Counsel and Company Secretary regarding the recent DCA vs. ICANN IRP Final Declaration because the ICANN blog had no comment section.

DCA Trust stated in their reply that

As we can’t see a way of making comments on his blog, DCA Trust as a directly affected party, will respond to the issues Mr. Jeffrey has advanced on behalf of ICANN, in order of how he has addressed them. A copy of our response has been communicated to ICANN.

Here is the ICANN announcement by Chris Gift, VP, Digital Services on opening its blogs for comment

ICANN blogs ought to be one of the key tools to provide a wider understanding of ICANN’s role and work as well as an accessible entry point for community newcomers to understand what is happening and why.

There’s work to do on the presentation and organization of the blogging platform and we’re thinking about what steps we can take. But the most obvious function of a blog is as a discursive platform. So we’re going to let the conversation flow and open up comments on our ICANN blogs.

It’s not a technical triumph, but it is a minor gamble with our resources. No organization wants to spend time monitoring the behavior of its community, but we assume that the courtesy and respect you wish for yourself will be given to others. As such, we will rely on post-moderation. Comments are posted immediately and we review them once they are live. The Expected Standards of Behavior Policy is the same for the wider organization. View our website Terms of Service. With comments now open, we hope blog posts can open up useful exchanges between community members and the blog authors.