W3C Process & W3C Mission

[fantasai]

The introduction to the W3C Process says:

W3C work revolves around the standardization of Web technologies. To accomplish this work, W3C follows processes that promote the development of high-quality standards based on the consensus of the Membership, Team, and public. W3C processes promote fairness, responsiveness, and progress: all facets of the W3C mission. This document describes the processes W3C follows in pursuit of its mission.

The quoted aspects of the W3C mission don't seem to be captured by the Vision, and maybe they should be. :)

Relates to w3c/process#555

[cwilso]

Although it does not use those words, I would disagree:

1. the Vision makes multiple statements in order to define "fairness", and enshrine that equity in principles. (User-first, multi-stakeholder/not dominated by ..., diversity, consensus, open participation, etc.). Just saying "be fair" isn't particularly helpful here imo. Can you suggest what's missing?
2. I'm not entirely sure what "responsiveness" means in this context; "the quality of reacting quickly and positively"? How would you see this added?
3. "Progress" is also covered in more detail, I think, starting with the basic tenet of "work together to evolve the web", but also through incubation. Maybe this needs more focus, but I worry that "move fast and break things" results from focusing too much on progress rather than the consensus needed to make that progress happen.

[cwilso]

#163 will cover this.

[cwilso]

@fantasai ping on above.

[fantasai]

From the perspective of the Process:

• Fairness is about giving participants equal opportunities to participate: not valuing proposals or approvals from one member over another, not valuing one person's opinion over another, not having the chair play favorites but rather encourage the participation of everyone confident and shy... It's about evaluating proposals, statements, suggestions, contributions, and observations on their own merits, not based on who made them. If I make a stupid suggestion in the CSSWG, I expect it to get shot down. If a 12-year-old, or Putin himself, makes a good proposal, I expect it to get adopted (assuming IPR commitments get sorted).
• Responsiveness is about responding to people who engage with us, with use cases, critiques, questions, suggestions; and not ignoring them. (We can be a bit slow here to be honest, since the backlog of issues and requests can be long, but we still try.)
• Progress is about making sure we don't get stuck. The Process for example emphasizes consensus, but it has various escape hatches if you really can't get it: calling for a vote, processing formal objections through the Council, etc. Both the W3C Process and the culture we've developed around implementing it values moving forward and not getting stuck, just as much as it values working really hard to get consensus.

These are operational values that were foundational to the Process, so they're in the intro of it; I'm not seeing them quite captured in the Vision though.

[cwilso]

See above on fairness: I think fairness is pretty well covered.

Responsiveness and progress are less directly covered. I see what you're saying, I think they're heavily related... and I think they're not something we have well-defined principles and value around. I'm not opposed to developing them, but I think that should be deferred to vNext.

[fantasai]

I don't think we do cover fairness, actually. I don't see it in any of our operational principles. The closest we have is "Open Participation", but it's not quite there.

I would be OK with deferring responsiveness and progress, but I do think we need to cover fairness somehow. The fact that it doesn't matter who is contributing, what matters is the quality of the contribution, that is something I think needs to be in v1.

[cwilso]

As per above: "the Vision makes multiple statements in order to define "fairness", and enshrine that equity in principles. (User-first, multi-stakeholder/not dominated by ..., diversity, consensus, open participation, etc.). Just saying "be fair" isn't particularly helpful here imo. Can you suggest what's missing?"

[fantasai]

As per above: "The fact that it doesn't matter who is contributing, what matters is the quality of the contribution, that is something I think needs to be in v1." :)

User-first is about what kinds of proposals we value, not what sources of proposals we value. Multi-stakeholder and open participation and diversity are about who gets to participate. None of these are about whether we tie the value of a proposal to where it came from vs its inherent qualities.