As per #61 :

@frivoal and @tantek suggested that we should be explicit that W3C is a voluntary standards forum, as opposed to legislated or otherwise compelled standards. We may want to expand on this further later to summarize what voluntary means for those who are not familiar, but we should explicitly state what is already true, and set expectations accordingly.

This is not a troll issue! The W3C has a strong habit of talking about the web as though everyone agrees what it is. It seems to me from e.g. #53 and other issues that what folk think the vision should be is strongly coloured by the beholder's personal viewpoint of what the WWW is. But those viewpoints are not in fact coincident, and the differences take people in different directions.

I searched for definitions of the web, and none of the first page results came back to a w3.org page.

There is a W3C definition, it turns out, at https://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/ from 2004:

The World Wide Web (WWW, or simply Web) is an information space in which the items of interest, referred to as resources, are identified by global identifiers called Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI).

In those definitions there's a rough consensus that the web is about interlinked resources/webpages available via the internet. But almost all of them omit anything about people! Many of them talk about web browsers rather than user agents. None of them talk about physical objects, or money.

I think we need to consider if our definition remains useful. Then we will have a common starting point that can provide a useful scoping for the vision and strategy.

I don't think there's anything technically wrong with the 2004 definition, but I don't think it's quite right for thinking about our future. My own broader definition of the web would be something roughly like:

• A set of technologies that connect people, information and devices

Getting the breadth and scope right is obviously important, and I might not have it "good enough" yet. But putting people first feels important, and is what drives e.g. the TAG's work on privacy principles, and our collective focus on accessibility and internationalisation for example.

"Our Vision for the WWW" is too long, colloquial (as per #23), and embeds a "vision" that isn't called out. It needs to be improved.

originally filed at WebStandardsFuture/Vision#35.

In the Vision for the W3C there is this sentence

The W3C is an association where diverse voices from around the world and industries come together

While I agree with this emphasis on diversity I wonder about the emphasis on industry as opposed, for instance, to public sector actors.

• Recommend changing the title to "The W3C Vision: Principles and Values". I have added "Principles" due to later use e.g., section "Principles and Values".

• Recommend adding content related to the future Web (since this is a vision document). Specific 'keywords' can reflect W3C work on key technologies for shaping the future Web (in my opinion, it is already here) such as: "Web of Linked data", "Semantic Web", “Web of Everything”. Currently, these terms are missing from the vision document, but in my opinion, this is a large part of W3C efforts and recommendations already (that deserve proper placement in W3C vision).

• Such additions (as proposed above) could be added to the different sections. I provide a few lines below, to get an idea. If I may, I am adding/editing (with bold) a few points in the ‘vision’ and ‘mission’ sections, as follows:

• Vision for the World-Wide Web
  • The Web is for all humanity.
  • The Web is designed for the good of its users.
  • The Web must be safe and fair for its users.
  • There is one open, interoperable world-wide Web for everything (human, machines, things, processes, services, linked data).

• Vision for the W3C
  The W3C is an association where diverse voices from around the world and industries come together to recommend, incubate and build consensus for global standards that make up the future Web, serving the Web vision.
  • We put the needs of users first: above authors, publishers, implementers, paying W3C Members, or theoretical purity.
  • This organization believes in diversity and inclusion of participants from different geographical locations, cultures, languages, accessibility needs, gender identities, and more.
  • We believe in principled, community-wide consensus-building as the basis for building standards.
  • We strongly emphasize fairness, accessibility, internationalization, privacy, and security.
  • Our standards are rooted in a strong royalty-free patent policy and open copyright licenses, openly developed with the consensus of industry and key stakeholders.
  • W3C leads the Web forward, towards the future Web, the semantic Web, the Web of data, the Web of everything (humans, machines, things, processes, services and linked data).

• Mission of the W3C
  The fundamental purpose of the W3C is to provide an open forum and workspace where diverse voices from around the world and from different industries work together to build consensus on global standards for current and future Web technologies. This forum and workspace welcome individuals and organizations of all sizes (from single-person companies to multi-nationals), and takes into active consideration feedback from the general, technical, and scientific public.

As the W3C leads the Web forward (to a future Web, a semantic Web, a Web of data, a Web of everything), our mission is to recognize and embody fundamental values and principles into an open architecture of the current and future Web.

Originally filed at WebStandardsFuture/Vision#12.

Originally filed at WebStandardsFuture/Vision#41.

As noted in #62, and inspired by discussion in #53, I've been looking at the TAG Ethical Web Principles and the draft Vision document side by side. At a high level, the TAG's document offers a vision and principles of a better Web; the AB's document offers a vision for how W3C can help build a Web that is more aligned with those principles.

Perhaps some of the contention comes from the structure of the draft Vision document, which has several similar sections, lots of bullet points, and some bullets more or less repeating bullets in other sections. I realize that the text of these bullets has gone through a lot of consensus-building in the AB and I'm leery of suggesting changes. But perhaps reorganizing them into a structure more like that of the TAG EWP document would benefit the "users" of the document.

For example, something like the text below, which mainly cuts and pastes existing text, making only minimal grammatical changes. I wonder if this structure would help both clarify the purpose of the document, and make it easier to read and be guided by?

======================

Vision for the World-Wide Web

The TAG Ethical Web Principles summarize W3C's vision for a better Web, especially:

• There is one interoperable world-wide Web 2.1
• The Web is for all humanity 2.4
• The Web is designed for the good of its users 2.2 2.3 2.8
• The Web must be safe for its users. 2.5

Vision and Mission for the W3C

W3C's mission is to make this Vision for the World-Wide Web more of a reality.
The W3C is an association where diverse voices from around the world come together to incubate and build consensus for global standards for the technologies that make up the Web. It welcomes individuals and organizations of all sizes (from single-person companies to multi-nationals), and takes into active consideration feedback from the general public.
As the W3C leads the Web forward, our mission is to recognize and embody fundamental values and principles into the architecture of the web. We must become more principled in our execution of the vision of the Web.
The core principles and value that guide W3C as it pursues its vision are:

• Put the needs of users first: Users' needs are above above those of authors, publishers, implementers, paying W3C Members, or theoretical purity. Seek diversity and inclusion of participants from different geographical locations, cultures, languages, accessibility needs, gender identities, and more.
• Strive for the broadest participation, along axes including worldwide participation, diversity, and inclusion, facilitating balance, equity, and cooperation among the participants from different industries, user groups, and organizational sizes, and thus establishing W3C as representative of the whole community. Increase involvement of under-represented key stakeholders such as end users, content creators, and developers. Establish and improve collaborative relationships with other organizations in the domain of Internet and Web standards, including building and maintaining respected relationships with governments and businesses for providing credible advice.
• Use principled, community-wide consensus-building as the basis for building standards. Encourage incubation in new areas and industries with open platforms for discussion, collaboration, and innovation, making it more structured and improving consensus-building among key stake holders. Ensure transparency, equity, and fairness. Our work will not be exclusively dominated by any person, company, or interest group.
• Offer standards with a strong royalty-free patent policy and open copyright licenses, openly developed with consensus of industry and key stakeholders.
• Work to ensure Web is trustworthy, by ensuring security and privacy for users.
• Aim to reduce centralization in web architecture, minimizing single points of failure and single points of control. Implement a unified, extensible, Web architecture, which continues to address evolving use cases for the general public.
• Remain focused on interoperability and ensure our work is supported by open test suites.

While the current vision includes the need for consensus I would also include something around the "adequate implementation experience" ; a bit like the "rough consensus and running code" of IETF to say we value practical, working systems and standards that can truly be implemented.

If 'Vision for the W3C' stays (see #4), it would be good to emphasise that we come to consensus as a whole community, based upon shared principles -- e.g., in a separate bullet point.

I suggest this because we're seeing a concerning trend of folks suggest that WG charters should be treated as contractual -- that once they're given a letter of marque (as it were), they have the right to public a Recommendation, even if implications that go against principles and/or consensus are found after chartering.

We need to explain to the outside world what the values we hold for the web are, without entangling the values we have for how we treat our members. The current document mixes them. This is confusing.

These are principles for the web

Ensure the Web is trustworthy, by ensuring security and privacy for users.
Ensure the Web does not favor centralization.
Implement a unified, extensible, Web architecture, which continues to address evolving use cases for the general public.

These are principles for the consortium

Remain focused on interoperability and collective empowerment, and ensure our work is supported by open test suites.
Encourage incubation in new areas and industries with open platforms for discussion, collaboration and innovation, making it more structured and improving consensus-building among key stake holders.
Strive for the broadest participation, along axes including worldwide participation, diversity and inclusion, facilitating balance, equity and cooperation among the participants from different industries, user groups and organizational sizes, and thus establishing W3C as representative of the whole community.
Increase involvement of under-represented key stakeholders such as end users, content creators, developers etc.
Ensure transparency, equity and fairness. Our work will not be exclusively dominated by any person, company or interest group.
Establish and improve collaborative relationships with other organizations in the domain of Internet and Web standards, including building and maintaining respected relationships with governments and businesses for providing credible advice.

Filed at WebStandardsFuture/Vision#22.

Originally filed at WebStandardsFuture/Vision#43.

Originally filed at WebStandardsFuture/Vision#2.

... desperately needs improvement. I can't even tell if it's syntactically valid, I think it's not?

The fundamental purpose of the W3C is to provide an open forum, where diverse voices from around the world and industries come together, incubate, and build consensus for global standards for Web technologies, including organizations of all sizes (from single-person companies to multi-nationals) and considering public feedback.

Maybe something like this? I'm not sure it's particularly improved but at least it's less of a linguistics puzzle...

The fundamental purpose of the W3C is to provide an open forum where diverse voices from around the world--including organizations of all sizes (from single-person companies to multi-nationals) and varied industries--come together to incubate and build consensus, with consideration of public feedback, for global standards for Web technologies.

Discussion surrounding a now-closed issue in https://github.com/w3ctag/ethical-web-principles/issues suggests that the Vision document more explicitly state how it can be applied to W3C's opperations. Presumably some understanding of W3C's Values/Vision drives WG decisions, horizontal review, AC review of charters and PRs, and formal objections and their resolution. That's implicit in W3C practice today, but isn't spelled out AFAIK.

When there was an engaged Director, Sir Tim Berners-Lee was the ultimate definer and applier of values/vision for W3C's work. Without his engagement going forward, It would be useful to write down the Values/Vision that the Team, AC, FO Councils, etc. should consider authoritative. I had always assumed that was the purpose of this document, but I don't see it stated anywhere.

I don't have draft language to propose, but some questions:

• Am I missing something in the document stating how the Values/Vision are supposed to be applied in practice?
• Do others agree this document's purpose is to define the core set of principles the W3C community SHOULD apply in reviewing proposed charters and standards?
• Would it be useful to strongly suggest that team decisions, formal objections, FO resolutions, etc. be explicitly justified (at least when challenged) with respect to how they promote the values and vision outlined in this document once it is ratified?
• Do other foundational documents such as the Process, Bylaws, Member Agreement, etc. need to be modified to define or reference an authoritative Vision/Values statement, or can this document suffice to guide consensus-building?

Filed at https://github.com/w3c/AB-memberonly/issues/108 and WebStandardsFuture/Vision#42.

We need to write down contribution instructions, e.g.:

• How to request discussion on a topic
• How to file issues - scoping, size, etc.
• What types of issue is simply filing a PR a good idea

Per PR #21, we should remove the "etc." from the bullet point

• Increase involvement of under-represented key stakeholders such as end users, content creators, developers etc.

(I'll do this once #30 lands.)

Filed at WebStandardsFuture/Vision#21.

@darobin suggested this in WebStandardsFuture/Vision#37. His proposed text for addition is replicated below.

Origin Sovereignty

Origin sovereignty is the principle according to which the operator of a given Web property
(traditionally listed as the "author" though these operator entities vary widely in nature) should
be the sole and exclusive controller of information pertaining to that Web property (typically a Web
site, often mapped to a domain or origin). Such information covers two primary aspects: the content
that is published on that property, and knowledge of the audience for that domain where the audience
is the set of users who intentionally interacted with that property. Origin sovereignty leads to two
primary considerations for how the Web must work:

• The Web must be defined on the assumption that in the vast majority of cases the content published
  by one Web property should stay with that property and does not need to be aggregated or
  republished elsewhere, nor does it need to be integrated into a portal. The Web is built on a
  foundation of hyperlinking, and it is architecturally dubious to uproot content from its origin in
  order to provide it in a different context.
• The Web is built on the expectation that information about the online behaviour of users as it
  takes place on a given Web property, being the property that users intended to interact with, must
  remain under the exclusive control of that property's operator, which alone must determine the
  means and purposes of its processing. Where that property's operator works with third parties,
  those third parties must only ever be service providers to that operator and must not be able to
  independently reuse data obtained from providing their service. No other monitoring on online
  behaviour is compatible with the well-being of the Web.

These considerations ensure that website publishers can operate a business without unfair
competition from other parties that can impose tracking, force their content into aggregated
experiences, or rely on their control of infrastructure such as operating systems, ad serving, online
portals, or user agents to unfairly extract knowledge about others' audiences.

Exceptions can be considered to sovereignty when legitimate systems of collective governance exist
that can support the common good (eg. a data trust of appropriately anonymised online behaviour in
support of greater end-user security).

The document needs to have a clearer, more flowing narrative.

Proposed structure:

1. (introduction)
2. Vision for the Web
3. Vision for the W3C
4. The Mission/purpose for the W3C: (e.g. purpose: we are a forum, etc. Our mission is to make the forum work as per the principles.)
5. Principles

This should also address #25.

Filed at WebStandardsFuture/Vision#27.

The Title used to say what we were going to say, but it's gone. It needs a title, please

A New Vision for the W3C: The integrity of the world-wide-web

or the like

[Editing and re-opening to focus on Sustainability]

I have been cross-referencing the points in the TAG EWP https://www.w3.org/TR/ethical-web-principles/ and the draft Vision. Most correspond pretty well; the TAG states some principles for the Web, and the Vision (in principle) applies them to W3C's work.

2.6 The web must enable freedom of expression

I suppose this is a question about W3C's relationship to policy makers, which is a thorny issue. I have no proposal for how the AB Vision should align with the TAG Principle.

2.7 The web must make it possible for people to verify the information they see

The Vision does mention the disinformation problem in the Introduction, I suppose that's sufficient.

2.9 The web must be an environmentally sustainable platform

I would like to see Sustainability called out as a W3C Value in the Vision document. There is a Community Group working on concrete guidance. The the Vision should explicitly endorse this principle with some "aspirational" language about working to incorporate it into W3C's review system in the future.

Specifically:

• Add "The web must be an environmentally sustainable platform" or something similar to the "Vision for the World-Wide Web" bullets
• Add something like "Encourage web standards, implementations, and best practices that minimize the energy consumed by web infrastructure" to the "We must" bullets
• Add some text crafted/vetted by someone from the Sustainability community to the "We will do this by" bullets

originally filed at WebStandardsFuture/Vision#39.

Some of the discussion in #53 seems to revolve around the question of how a document outlining W3C's vision comes into being and is accepted by the community.

There have been people in the AB working on a document that aims to act as a basis for the work, and there are suggestions that this is the wrong model, and the full Working Group model should be used for this work.

There are other possible approaches (incubate it in WICG, appoint a new Director, ask the Board/Comms Team/next-door neighbours to do it...).

How do we pick the right one, and what are the criteria?

W3C’s vision on Web:

1. One interoperable worldwide web;
2. Accessible and safe for everyone;
3. Good for the humanity;
4. Implements a unified, extensible web architecture which continues to address the evolving user’s needs.

W3C’s vision for the organization:

1. Serve W3C’s vision on Web;
2. Be a non-profit standards setting organization sticking to the principles of global, open, fair and transparent;
3. Be an organization centered on human beings favoring accessibility, safe, security and all that matters;
4. Be an organization leading and driving the evolution of web architecture timely addressing the needs of the web community including users, developers, service providers and all other stakeholders.

Filing this as an issue for discussion since we did not have immediate consensus on a minor edit PR (and closing that PR accordingly #49, to shift discussion here). As part of the goal of transparently admitting significant existing harms of the web, it makes sense to add “malvertising” somewhere near misinformation to the Introduction, per https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/02/until-further-notice-think-twice-before-using-google-to-download-software/ for example. Note this is a "modern" (year 2000+) problem, and the term itself is clearly defined in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising (which we could add as a reference in the glossary as part of work on #1).

The PR discussion had a few suggestions for how to add “malvertising” as a known harm, and they are worth considering in my opinion.

From @frivoal:

… generalize a little, for example by grouping this for instance with phishing as well. Both problems seem to be somewhat similar in that they take advantage of the web's broad reach, as well as its general (but imperfect) trustworthiness to show deceptive and harmful content to vast amounts of unsuspecting viewers, some of whom will fall for the trick and cause themselves harm in the process.

From @cwilso:

… malvertising is a harm, but I believe it should come in the "how" section - in fact, I'm not clear how we would directly be addressing malvertising. The most I'd be comfortable with here is adding the suggestion of "deceptive practices" after misinformation, but I still don't think that's an improvement.

Label: Vision

(Originally published at: https://tantek.com/2023/116/b1/)

filed at WebStandardsFuture/Vision#28.

originally filed at WebStandardsFuture/Vision#33.

Filed at WebStandardsFuture/Vision#29.

I wonder whether a quotation or two from the Universal declaration of human rights might ground our vision here?

Some that appear relevant are:

"without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status"

"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."

"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

I see in the acknowledgements (and agree with)

This document builds on the basis of the Technical Architecture Group's excellent Ethical Web Principles. It is not intended to supplant that work nor redefine it, but fit into the same framework and promote many of the same goals.

I wonder whether the Vision for the World-Wide Web section of this document should "normatively reference" the TAG EWP, briefly summarize it (perhaps with the same bullets as now), and focus the rest of the document on W3C's Vision/Values/Principles? Or if this document is promoting only a subset of the TAG EWP goals, it would be useful to explicitly define which goals is it focusing on in the Vision.

I have no strong feelings on how the TAG and AB documents should relate to each other, except to ensure that readers aren't confused by terminological or substantive differences between them.

There are clearly individuals who have contributed to the shape of this document, whether through pull requests or discussions, who are not acknowledged.

Naming people is a friendly gesture and not very hard. Calling them "and the rest of the AB" is not very respectful or gracious.

Many of us in the CSSWG organize our spec source code using semantic line breaks, which is breaking on phrase boundaries, rather than at a particular character limit or not breaking at all. I think this would help the diffs against this document be a lot more understandable and easier to read.

See Semantic Linefeeds for an explanation and illustrations of this concept, and css-text-3 source code for an example.

we should consider splitting, as they have different audiences and different uses. But yes, they need to not disagree with each other

The TAG has recently expressed this in a much better way in https://github.com/w3ctag/ethical-web-principles/pull/87/files:

"We aim to reduce centralization in web architecture,
minimizing single points of failure and single points of control."

This is a much better expression of what I think we were trying to get at, and I suggest we adopt this text.

The current draft does not provide clear guidance to readers about its status. This should include an explanation of where it came from, who has been asked to review and what has been agreed and what is not agreed, and expectations of how it will evolve.

originally filed at WebStandardsFuture/Vision#40.

Every time I come back to this vision and strategy work, the quantity of material in this repository confuses me, what purpose are we trying to solve. I think we have good amount of material, and now we need to make it crisp and concise. For achieving this, it would be good to list what is the purpose of this exercise. I am lisitng some points as a starting point:

1. Clarify the unique purpose of existence of W3C.
2. Provide a compelling and meaningful direction to W3C as an organization and as a community. One should be able to derive long term, mid term and short term goals from the direction.
3. Communicate the purpose and the direction of W3C to external audience in an easy to understand way.
4. Clearly define operational principles for providing a basis for decisions. This may end up in a different document because it should be in more detail. One way can be to have short version in vision and strategy document and detailed version in separate document.

Originally filed at WebStandardsFuture/Vision#32.

Remain focused on interoperability and collective empowerment, and ensure our work is supported by open test suites.

?

originally filed at WebStandardsFuture/Vision#3

It would be good to get it into the W3C template, as a Draft Note

"Vision of the W3C" could be suggestive of the W3C as an organisation, for example it might talk about diversity and inclusion, members representing users of the web, working mode etc. Alternatively, as has mostly been done until now, it could refer to the vision of the W3C's output, its work, and how that meets the vision for the Web.

1. Edit the "Vision of the W3C" heading to clarify which is meant, i.e. the vision of the W3C's output
2. Consider adding a "Vision of the W3C as an organisation" section

We just need to be consistent. Some lists have them, some don't. Please thumbs up if you believe we should have Oxford commas, thumbs down if you believe we shouldn't, and in a week I'll just implement whichever wins.

In my reading the current version of the Vision under drafting , some of the sentences are colloquial, and would like suggest it could be more in literary languages.

(1) 1st paragraph: "It has become much more than that;"
Suggest change to: "It has evolved as a fundamental part of the lives of much of humanity, ..."

(2) 2nd paragraph: "The Web is a force for good; indeed, it has catalyzed major social changes."
Suggest change to: "The Web is a force for good, and it has catalyzed major social changes substantially."

Please add a paragraph describing the status of the draft (and keep that updated as the document is revised).