refocus scope of vision #102
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The ethical web principles is one of many documents that expand on the basis Vision. Our current Vision for the world to read is the one sentence "to its full potential", and that's no longer enough. If we are ever to seek external funding sources, we also need to be able to explain why we matter, our vision for the world. I don't see a pressing need for a vision of how the w3c will be internally, but if others do, I won't stand in the way. If you want to split this and work on both, or leave our public-facing short Vision to another group, I'm fine. But dropping explaining why we matter is not something I can support. |
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Here's a look into history; this is on my disc from sept 2020, and it has only one bullet point about our internals. It's too long, but the focus was on explaining where we've come from and where we're going. We still need to do that. Vision for the future of the W3CThe World Wide Web was conceived more than 25 years ago as a tool for sharing information. It has become much more than that; it is a fundamental substrate for the lives of much of the planet. It provides instant access to information, certainly, but also commerce and shopping, social experiences, civic functions, entertainment, and more. The W3C has curated the Web platform during two key periods of the Web's development: its invention and bringing it to society; and then the stabilization of the Web platform, making it solid and interoperable across many environments. It is time to recognize and engage consciously with a third task, on a timeline of the next 10 years. The Web must have a path to continue to grow, while realizing and adjusting for its role in society. History: Inventing the Web Platform - 1995 to 2005For the first 10 years or so, members of the W3C were working together to invent an open platform that used the internet protocols to share information to all humanity. We figured out what technologies from various existing (often proprietary) systems could be made to work via HTTP, how they might fit together, and which ones really got real world traction. We:
By 2005 or so the overall architecture was fairly clear. HTTP serving HTML, CSS, DOM, and Javascript became the core technologies for the Web. Alternative ideas - XML, RDF, XSLT, Java/VB, SOAP, etc. remained viable in some (often large) niches and enterprise-scale applications, but clearly failed to become part of the core Web platform. History: Making the Web Platform Solid, Open, Interoperable - 2006 to 2019Once the W3C and other open communities had proved the Web's potential, businesses, governments, and users around the world began to depend on it. However, the Web struggled with many of the details:
The businesses which depended on the Web generally believed that they spent too much developer time just making their websites work across the range of devices and browsers their customers used. A significant number of major IT, telecom, entertainment, and other businesses have thought it good business to invest in the W3C to help make the Web platform work better. The Present: Our SituationWe have treated the Web as only a force for good; and indeed it has been a major catalyst for social change. We are proud of the positive changes: e-commerce, online publishing, instant access to facts, social engagement, entertainment. It is time to engage with fundamental questions:
The Web's phenomenal success has led to many unintended consequences that are starting to inflict significant pain on society:
In addition, the successes of the Web don't ensure that members will keep supporting the W3C to perform its functions. Far from there being a need to convince people of the value of the Web, it has become "too big to fail." The Web is a clear public good, and sometimes suffers from the tragedy of the commons, where its maintenance and development is taken as a given, and fewer organizations can economically justify investing their time and expertise in improving it for everyone else. The consortium must become much more conscious of its role, more careful to analyze the unintended effects and consequences of the specifications it publishes, and the technologies they support. We must investigate and address security problems. We must ensure that privacy is universally valued. The W3C can no longer ignore the places where regulation and technology meet, and our duty to inform public debate and regulation: we must establish a forum to discuss and publish technical considerations on social issues. The W3C must look more carefully at our contribution to major challenges facing humanity, particularly sustainable development. At the same time, the W3C must curate technical development at the same or a greater pace. From the internet of things to online commerce, the W3C will continue to be the venue where innovators gather to share and critique new ideas. The Web platform has become too complex for any individual to grasp fully, or logically analyze, so the omniscient Director model must morph into a scalable decision-making approach. To do all this, the W3C needs to be a standalone international consortium, no longer hosted by academic institutions or reliant on a powerful Director, but self-governing and managing its own destiny and infrastructure. It must do this by returning to its core values, and expanding on them. Vision for the Future: Focusing on the Integrity of the WebThe W3C must rise to the challenge of improving the Web's platform's fundamental integrity, while continuing to expand its scope. We must define, publish and embody in our work the core values of the Web itself, which include:
The W3C has long been recognized for its own core values that support the values of the Web itself:
We must build on these two sets of values and expand them:
We must remain committed to developing open and royalty free standards with a high focus on interoperability, social responsibility |
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I don't think that is the point at all, David. In fact, it's precisely that Tzviya and I looked at the current document, and it's not clear enough why we (the W3C) matter. This is not at all about "how the W3C will be internally" - it's informed by the discussion we had a couple of weeks ago looking at various other Vision/Mission statements that were considered well-written (like https://www.redcross.org.uk/about-us/what-we-stand-for and Our "vision for the Web" is already being worked on - that is the ethical principles of the web. We need to explain why W3C matters, EXACTLY - and that's what we're saying. What we have is too meandering - between vision of the Web itself and the principles we think should be behind it, and the why the W3C matters and how its operational principles lead to "full potential", to do a good job of getting to that latter bit (which is, as you say, what we need to do.) Give me a few to sketch something out. |
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Having the framing of why W3C matters vs why the web matters is so helpful, thank you @TzviyaSiegman and @cwilso. Thinking of it that way, it's clear we point to the Ethical Web Principles as our vision for the development of standards, leaving the remaining question as: what is the vision for W3C as an organization? This can probably be broken down further into a vision that answers:
With all that in mind, the vision might look more like:
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I'll give you time to work on it, but we need to explain why the Web will continue to matter, and that pulls in the W3C for one thing only: the Web matters, and it's curated by the W3C, and thus the W3C matters. That's it for the W3C. Principles of inclusion, diversity, consensus, incubation all matter hugely but in a different context – why are we a body you can and should engage with, for example – but they are zilch to do with our vision of why the web will continue to matter. |
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I don't have a strong opinion on exactly how this document relates to the TAG EWP. Clearly the EWP and Vision together should present a coherent and consistent story of what the Web's fundamental principles are and how W3C plans to curate the Web to promote those principles. In a better world the same group of people would work on both of them: One would focus on the Web itself, the other would focus on W3C. 🤷🏽♂️. In the world we live in, the TAG and AB/Vision TF definitely should not work at cross purposes. If I were BDFL I'd ensure the Vision very briefly summarizes then normatively references the EWP but I believe my issue along those lines got closed long ago for lack of support. Perhaps the 2020 Vision @dwsinger posted is too long, but I liked (and miss) this framing:
I'm not personally interested in writing a marketing blurb for W3C, Inc. ("Why should someone join the W3C?"). But sure, the reader of a good Vision document would be motivated to participate to help achieve the vision. So, I generally agree with @TzviyaSiegman's proposal at the top of this issue. Perhaps we need to clarify that it is NOT about W3C "internals"? "Operational Principles" sounds too corporate-speak-ish for my taste, and "Vision and Guiding Principles" is clearer. #86 |
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I think the TAG EWP, HTML design principles, Privacy Principles, and quite few more documents yet to be written (or already written but I forgot to name) should be conformant with the vision and more detailed for specific areas and fields. Yes, we're in a sense back-calculating from the existing documents to the Vision for some of those. "You say that user privacy is fundamental, what do you mean by that and what will you do?" should result in "We have a whole document on just that question!" I'm not personally interested in marketing blurb for W3C either. But once someone says "yay, I'm on board with how you will change the world – I'd like to donate, join, support, evangelize, … : but I can only do it if the organization is X" (where X is fully inclusive, consensus based, multi-stakeholder, open, international, or whatever), yes, we need to be able to answer those questions as well. But it's a different question. |
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Here is a sketch of how I think such a refocus could express itself. Some of the wording still needs a little sanding, and I do think the user principles need to be drawn up through the EWP as well (e.g. we should make it clearer HOW the W3C will improve user privacy), but I think the below is at least a prototype. I do think it is simpler, clearer and more concise. IntroductionThe World Wide Web was originally conceived as a tool for sharing information. It has evolved rapidly into a fundamental part of humanity, sparking major social change by providing access to knowledge, education, commerce and shopping, social experiences, civic functions, entertainment, and more. The Web's amazing success has also led to many unintended consequences that harm society: openness and anonymity have given rise to scams, phishing, and fraud. The ease of gathering personal information has led to business models that mine and sell detailed user data, without people's awareness or consent. Rapid global information sharing has allowed misinformation to flourish and be exploited for political and commercial gain. Technology is not neutral; new technologies enable new actions and new possibilities, and we must take responsibility to address the impacts of the Web. We believe the World Wide Web should be inclusive and respectful of its users: a Web that supports truth over falsehood, people over profits, humanity over hate. The W3C’s Technical Architecture Group's work to clearly define Ethical Web Principles is a strong basis to improve the ethical integrity of the Web. The Web has had a tremendous impact on the world, and will continue to grow its impact in the future, by expanding reach, knowledge, education and services even more broadly. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded as an organization to provide a consistent architecture across the rapid pace of progress in the Web, and to build a common community to support its development. It has become an association where diverse voices from around the world and industries work together to evolve the Web. To build a better future, the W3C must rise even further to the challenge of improving the Web's fundamental integrity, while continuing to expand the Web’s scope and reach. We must embody in our work the core values of the Web itself, by supporting the Ethical Web Principles with Operational Principles of the W3C. The W3C’s impact will be clearly demonstrated by how it leads the Web forward: by being inclusive, principled, and continually striving to make the Web better through these principles and the Ethical Web Principles. As the Ethical Web Principles state, “The web should empower an equitable, informed and interconnected society.” Operational Principles of the W3C
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So, we are taken 360 degrees trip, and back to where we started 4 years ago. No problems, a tour is good if it helps in achieving common understanding. My initial idea was to work on the following items, and for the principles and ethical values trust the TAG's ethical web principles. May be firm them by creating a statement track or something similar for TAG's document. Vision: What we envision web to be? Purpose of W3C: Why do we (W3C) exist? Mission of W3C: Then we had list of goals for achieving the mission. The main idea behind proposing this structure was to clearly explain to external and internal audience, what is our vision for the web, and what is the role of W3C in achieving it. Looking forward to the discussion in the W3C community for further direction of the vision document. |
I really don't think we are. This proposal talks much more about how the W3C works and much less about what we do (and almost not at all about what we have done, which was a major part of the intro 4 years ago, and we agreed to move out). |
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I’m sorry, I still think the principles section needs work, and better clarity about a number of areas. This comment is about disentangling inward and outward facing vision. These are principles that we apply to our deliverables, our output, our impact on the world
It’s not a should, it’s a measure we work against. We strive to create standards with the ethical intent…or For each standard we create, we aim to improve equity…
this mixes inclusion (i18n, accessibility) and other goals that aren’t actually named (protecting user privacy, making the web as safe as possible)
We create standards that can be widely and interoperably implemented
‘expand’ in what way? number of sites? users? technical breadth? I think you mean the last but many would assume the first one or two
These are principles we apply to our internals, how we work
community is undefined and could be read as meaning we do this stuff for people who engage and don’t care about the rest of the world
This is ambiguous; do we mean in how applicable the web is to a diverse population, or how welcoming we are? This is an important distinction (and for a public-facing vision, I think the former needs clearly stating).
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"horizontal review" is an internal phrase that would seem unexplained to a reader from the public |
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I think that @cwilso's suggested text could use some iterating but it's IMHO headed in the right direction and I agree with the thesis of this issue. (We can hammer out details.) Making this a mission statement that grounds our operations is much more tractable. I do believe that it would be valuable for the world to have a document describing "What is the web as a project" (and I'm not sure that that's the EWP) but I am not convinced that that can be achieved with a partial and very high-level list of values. |
Putting this in one bullet implies that there is some link between getting wide participation and making a web that is for everyone. We can (and arguably sometimes have in the past) do one without the other. No doubt our ability to build for all will be better done if we include all, but I am not happy with the implication that our value of building a web for all humanity is in any way dependent on the diversity of who joins: it's not, our intent to build for all is an absolute, non-dependent, value. |
I disagree. I think we have to anchor ourselves in more than "full potential", and it needs to be crisply expressed in a short document. I do not see how we can explain why we matter, to potential members, funders, and so on, without it. "What are you going to do? What are your guiding principles for what you deliver?" are critical questions to be answered. |
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I also think Chris's suggestion is heading in the right direction, and to my reading, achieves a good balance of acknowledging the successes, failures (harms), and describing aspiration for the future. |
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@dwsinger I would like to see something better than "full potential" but I'm not convinced that funders will be swayed by principles, at least not unless they provide a framework to address specific problems. Everyone who pitches to funders has principles and wants a better, more just world; what makes the difference is whether you can credibly succeed (and have a way of making that success sustainable so that you don't come back for money three years later). This is different from for instance an appeal to public charity (that might lean heavily into values). With that in mind, "we have a repeatable, sustainable, and effective process that has enabled us to deliver underprovisioned public goods like accessibility, interoperability, security, or privacy to billions of people — we can apply it to X" is IMHO a much stronger pitch than "we believe in X." A lot of people likely believe X, certainly in the nonprofit sector. Very few can however provably do something about it. |
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I like the direction of @cwilso's proposed text. Like @darobin I think it could do with iterating (and shortening quite a bit), but @cwilso made it clear that his text was only a sketch, so I won't head off into the weeds just yet. @dwsinger I'm not sure we need to explain why the web matters or, by proxy, why W3C matters. Our vision and principles should speak implicitly to those things. The Red Cross doesn't explain why international aid matters or, by proxy, why it matters, but it's principles make both quite clear IMO. @michaelchampion I agree that this should not be a marketing spiel, but you're absolutely right that a good vision should motivate people to want to be part of W3C - to contribute to the vision we outline and/or the principles we stand for. You can bet your last cent that the visions from the Red Cross and GOS both encourage exactly that. |
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Thanks @cwilso, as should be obvious to all I fully support this pivot. Here is a version of principles that I drafted . I believe I left off a few important ones, and I am not tied to any of the wording that I or Chris wrote:
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A fully-structured and supported "Vision" would consist of a number of layered and interconnected things:
(There are probably more than these things.) The current Vision document tried to blend in 3 and 4 with 5 and 6. The sketch above is intending to be more clear on 5 and 6, and rely on the EWP et al for 3 and 4. As an aside, @dwsinger I think your comment above is calling out to the point that we do not take on 1, and more particularly 2. That is true; and I agree, to some degree we should take that on in the future. However, I am also recognizing that even 1 is not easy to do, and MUCH more contentious than, say, "Privacy is essential" (which is contentious enough, obviously). Anyone working on a corner of the Web will want to see their corner clearly defined as in scope, and I think that is a mistake; we need to take a stab at defining this, but right now, I think 5 is essential for "marketing purposes", and 6 is essential for operational setup purposes. That's why Tzviya and I were suggesting focusing there. @LJWatson's comment about the Red Cross mission is 100% on point here. As to 2, well, my crystal ball is on the fritz. :). Or, more to the point, everyone may well have different visions of the future, and any one of them may be right. We can provide a map to what principles we think are critical, but I don't think we need to define the One True Future to be able to use this work as a map for how to function, or as a metric in the future for "did we do a good job". Finally, I do want to be clear that the above was a sketch - although I took care in constructing it, I was feeling a sense of urgency, and it absolutely is not well-honed. Critical review is certainly warranted, and for example, @dwsinger , your criticism of the first principle (as unintentionally linking two things) is certainly valid, as well as many of your other points. Tzviya and I had a long discussion with Robin, and fundamentally felt like looking at this problem from a different viewpoint was warranted; we wanted to discuss with others on the task force to get a sense of others. |
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@darobin makes a good point about "full potential", and mission statements in general. They just need to be short, memorable, and enough of a hook to make people want to find out more. For example, the budget supermarket in Europe Aldi uses:
Fashion retailer H&M uses:
McDonald's:
Starbucks:
Zoom:
Tick tock:
You get the idea. These are not intended to stand up to scrutiny. They're not intended to be airtight, bullet-proof statements of fact. They're not even expected to make a great deal of sense. They're just the movie trailer as a prelude to the main feature. |
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@LJWatson I would agree with mission statements in general, while still maintaining "leading the web to its full potential" is worse than others. The ones you list uniformly are somewhat testable - Can Aldi shoppers live richer lives for less? Yes, if more enriching (unique, broader selection, etc) products can be had for bargain prices. This defines Aldi's mission as not just "offer groceries for cheap", but to expand their customer's experiences of food too. H&M's is packed - to achieve success, they will encourage circular and renewable fashion (https://goodonyou.eco/what-is-circular-fashion/), while being a solid business model promoting equality. McDonald's is a bit weaker - but I'd point out it leads in the space of provide a better experience; they would not achieve success in that mission by simply making products cheaper than competitors. And so on - but "leading the web to its full potential" means little, and it's hard to test either of the clauses. Is the W3C "leading"? How so? What is the "full potential", and did we achieve it? |
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I would point out the best "brief" mission statement I can come up with for the W3C, off the cuff, would be something like: Lead the power of the community to a World Wide Web that is more inclusive and more respectful of its users. or perhaps, to borrow a bit from the EWP: Lead the definition of the Web to empower an equitable, informed and interconnected society. |
That could be a good opening to a Vision/Principles statement that could serve as the elevator pitch. A language tweak might be "Engage a strong community to build a World Wide Web that is more inclusive and more respectful to its users." |
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@TzviyaSiegman 's list in #102 (comment) is a good start. Some quibbles:
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I don't think we need to work on exact wording here. That will come in a PR. We are trying to come to rough consensus about general direction here. |
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The revised version from @cwilso is definitely a step in the right direction, and I do strongly support adding an "elevator pitch" version to open things. One quibble on the point of equity raised in Chris' and Tzviya's version:
In principle I don't disagree with any of this, but one key part of equity work is prioritizing the voices of marginalized communities, an act that can appear similar to privileging one group over another. My main concern is opening ourselves up to someone rejecting this principle when they see that prioritization taking place. Horizontal review does inherently do some of this prioritization anyway (accessibility review is obviously prioritizing the needs of disabled people), but as we get further into equity work more people will see other forms of prioritization they may see as privilege. I would probably remove "not privilege one group of people over another" entirely. I think we should also elaborate a bit on what we mean by equity to say "Standards should be created with ethical intent to improve equity of access and participation on the Web." Something more like this:
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If I had to come up with a mission statement, I would go for something like Furthering human agency in digital spaces. I won't provide the background booklet here, but centring on agency has many benefits in ethics, collective governance, and orienting technological choices. |
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With regard to #102 (comment) : Fair enough. My general direction feedback is:
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I've addressed some of the feedback (thanks!) from @dwsinger, @wareid and @michaelchampion, as well as adding a tagline mission statement, and put it in markdown format at #103. This is for discussion, not to commit as a replacement; I just wanted a clean copy to refer to. |
actually this is the closest to what I look for, not your 1 or 2. I love documents like the Ethical Web Principles, Privacy Principles, HTML Design Principles, and so on (and we ought to have more, or perhaps we do and I don't know, on security, accessibility, i18n, harm minimization, and so on). The problem is that these documents are each many pages, and there is a serious gap between them and any one sentence 'catch phrase' mission. As said here, catch phrase statements can't say much (and often say almost nothing), and readers who want to know what guides and drives us, in general, aren't going to read 5-10 long documents – and iin important areas, I don't think they exist. It's that gap I want to fill; something that inspires us to write those documents and then the specs that realize those strivings, something that lays out a decent number of our guiding principles for the technologies we develop, and hence for the web. |
Nice. I would love to embed this in the Vision (or an improvement of this; I'd insert "ethical" to cover privacy, misinformation, and security, for example). We can then say that "This means we look to make the web more XX, YY, ZZ" etc. (the texts we have had for years now). Such a quotable phrase would be useful. |
That's not quite what I am saying. Why the web's future/development matters, and why we're the right people to support and help in driving it, because we are the curators and we have the vision and underlying principles (enunciated). |
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I have lots of comments about the specifics, but overall @cwilso's proposal to re-scope is heading in the right direction. Let's agree on the scope first and then argue about the individual points. |
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I agree this is heading in the right direction. I like @dwsinger's vision for the Vision document:
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After reading all these comments so far, I wish that we can achieve heavy participation of non-native speakers here. |
Added section labels, as per #102 (comment).
This document has gotten unwieldy and covers too many topics. The TAG's Ethical Web Principles already discusses the Vision for the Web. I think it would be best if we took a step back and refocused our work on the Vision and Operational Principles for W3C. This would resolve the following issues:
#91
#90
#81
#72
#53
/cc @cwilso
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