LOL at your original post. Gobsmacked at most of what followed.

Don’t you ever, ever, EVER let those politically correct, anally retentive, joke free zone, pumped up with their own importance, do-gooder, wouldn’t recognise irony if it was a country with weapons of mass destruction, useless as a chocolate fireplace, plonkers force you to remove the use of humour from as much of what you do as possible. Ever.

The real irony here is that these people are like small minded, cobweb ridden local councillors arguing over the interpretation of the 1948 Fence Post Size and Colour Ordinance (‘yes Albert…we all respect your enormous depth of knowledge, but it’s not really brown is it… more of a fawn or beige and thus outside of the Ordinance’) whereas in fact the stuff we all do is really important and needs people with expansive minds who can shift from big to small picture in a second. And such people would, of course, actually have a sense of humour!

This is a good time and spot to get back to you both on this.

I think the unintentional mistake I made here was not to state clearly and upfront that of course we were going to change the graphic.

There seems to be a genuine concern that the graphic was going to remains as was, and that this blog post was criticising people for wanting it changed.

If that was how people saw this, then I apologise – that was not the case but there’s little doubt I didn’t make that sufficiently clear.

I should also say that I am sorry that this has clearly caused anxiety and irritation where it was never my intention to do so. It is a lesson I have learned and will apply in future.

I hope at least that people will recognise that the page and the graphic is a great improvement on what was there previously.

I suppose I should also say at this point that I had nothing to do with this graphic, I only took it from the Annual Report and posted it on ICANN’s website in an ongoing effort to make the site up-to-date and more understandable.

I intend to continue improving the website and its content but it is now with a certain amount of trepidation following the number of aggressive and critical emails I have received both internally and externally on this one issue.

Despite the page and its links on the Structure page being exactly the same as they have been for years, there has been a significant number of emails complaining about them. And those complaints have been sent to people all over ICANN, adding to the confusion.

If people want an up-to-date and usable website, I would really urge people to come directly to me and to please approach it from the perspective that all changes are intended only to improve the site and its functioning, and not for any other reason.

All that said, I would like to express for a third time the fact I am sorry that was what intended as a gentle poke has caused annoyance. Some of it was a little over the top but then that’s always the way in ICANN.

All the best,

Kieren

Bret