First Draft Note request for W3C Vision

[fantasai]

Document title, URLs, estimated publication date

Vision for W3C
https://www.w3.org/TR/w3c-vision/
https://github.com/w3c/AB-public/tree/main/Vision
Next publishing opportunity

Note: I don't know how to set up the draft to be served as HTML, but I guess if you download it locally it should work?

Abstract

This Vision attempts to help world understand what W3C is, what it does and why that matters; and in particular to articulate the principles by which it operates and that guide its decisions.

Status of the Document

See https://github.com/w3c/AB-public/tree/main/Vision#user-content-status-of-this-document

Link to group's decision to request transition

https://www.w3.org/2023/03/16-ab-minutes.html#r05

Is it intended to be a W3C Statement?

Yes

[ianbjacobs]

Hi all,

Thanks for working on this! I have a few comments and suggestions; I'm happy to do a pull request if that's appropriate.

• "it must increase its respect". I don't think the Web has respect. Or, for that matter, ethical integrity. These are matters for human. What about something like "We will improve Web technology to foster people's trust in the platform."
• Under "Vision for W3C" it says ""The fundamental purpose of the W3C ... provide an open forum." I don't think that's the fundamental purpose of W3C. The fundamental purpose is to work to ensure the long-term health and utility of the Web. I do think that the primary activity of the W3C is to provide an open forum. We also do (or have done) other things like develop software and tools, develop educational materials, and so on.
• After talking about the fundamental purpose (or primary activity) there is a list, but no explanation for it. What about something like "To best carry out this activity:"
• The second bullet uses third person singular, all the other bullets use first person plural.
• Under "Principles and Values": Instead of listing some principles for Web architecture here, could you instead refer to TAG documents (even if you name a few principles like decentralization while doing so)? That would shorten the intro and allow readers to more quickly reach the points about how the organization functions to achieve those architectural goals.
• There some redundancy between the elements of the list under Vision and the elements of the list under principles and values. For example, horizontal review is mentioned in both places. There may be reasons to put them in both places, but the characterization should be more distinct. For example, the vision could be inclusion of all users, regardless of ability (just as one example). And in the second list the characterization would be that we seek to create an accessible environment for collaboration, we conduct accesibility reviews of specifications as part of the standards process, and we develop guidelines to help developers create accessible Web sites.

Lastly, a few years ago we worked with the IETF, ISOC, IAB, and IEEE to create a set of shared principles:
https://open-stand.org/about-us/principles/

I would not expect these principles to be sufficient for a W3C vision document, but they might provide some inspiration, and ideally a W3C Vision document would remain consistent with the Open Stand Principles.

[frivoal]

@ianbjacobs Feedback on the content of the document is very much welcome, but the proper place for that would be in https://github.com/w3c/ab-public/, according to the work mode (lightly) documented at https://www.w3.org/wiki/AB/VisionTF

This is just a request to publish the existing content as a Draft Note, so that we can keep iterating on it, including addressing feedback like yours, all while publishing our work artifacts at a stable and archived URL, as required by https://www.w3.org/2023/Process-20230612/#report-stability

[ianbjacobs]

Added feedback here:
w3c/AB-public#104

[frivoal]

Thanks @ianbjacobs . Are you in charge of putting the draft note on TR as well?

[ianbjacobs]

Hi @frivoal,

I'm not aware that I am in charge of that, but if you need a staff member to do that, happy to help.

[plehegar]

Approved for publication.

[plehegar]

@frivoal , we didn't assign a proper team contact for publication. @ianbjacobs , if you're willing to do this, go for it. Otherwise I'll find someone else.

[plehegar]

One more note: use Process 2023 for the upcoming publication.

[ianbjacobs]

@plehegar, happy to help out. I assume next steps are to send a publication request to the Webmaster and install the document.

[ianbjacobs]

@fantasai,

Thank you for converting to bikeshed for publication. Would you mind re-running to get the new process template? (I tried to do bikeshed update locally but got a 404 on ttps://raw.githubusercontent.com/speced/bikeshed-data/master/data/ )

Thanks!

[frivoal]

@ianbjacobs The latest Bikeshed version doesn't have update links for the AB boilerplate yet, but I just did a manual update in place to point to Process 2023 rather than Process 2021. Let me know if that's enough or if you're still missing something.

[ianbjacobs]

Thanks, #frivoal.

It looks like the change was merged yesterday:
speced/bikeshed-boilerplate#46

[ianbjacobs]

@frivoal, I made two additional tweaks to ensure the doc complies to pubrules:

• I moved the W3C style sheet for DNOTEs to the end of the head.
• The trailing slash on the AB home page link caused an error; I let the Webmaster know as I'm not sure if it's a tool issue or a data issue. UPDATE: The Webmaster indicated this is a pubrules issue and will be fixed.

I will proceed with a publication request aiming for 25 July.

Ian

[frivoal]

I moved the W3C style sheet for DNOTEs to the end of the head.

Is that required by Pubrules? Seems unnecessarily strict.

[ianbjacobs]

Is that required by Pubrules?

Yes.

[ianbjacobs]

Hello all,

The document has been published:
https://www.w3.org/TR/2023/DNOTE-w3c-vision-20230725/

Home page news:
https://www.w3.org/news/2023/draft-note-vision-for-w3c/

[frivoal]

Thanks! Good to close.