Clarify intended use of the Vision document #53
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Thanks for opening this issue, Michael, I was about to. This is a difficult topic, but I'd encourage the AB to listen carefully to Robin's concerns. I also suspect that if we can clearly articulate what the intended use of the document is, it might be easier to get broader participation. To extend the issue just a bit -- once we understand the intended use, we will then need to assure that how it was created is appropriate to that use. Saying that an AB document represents consensus isn't workable -- the most it can do is represent what the AB thinks. While the AB has consulted across many folks, the decisionmaking process is firmly in the hands of the AB; there's no mechanism to appeal decisions about it (and if there were, I suspect Robin would avail himself of it). As a result, the document is effectively capturing what a set of long-time "insider" W3C participants think, not a community consensus. Yes, the AB could take it to the AC for ratification. That's not a substitute for a legitimate consensus process during the document's formation. I can see two alternative paths forward for this work:
Personally, I think we need (2), and I think we need it yesterday. |
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That AB document does represent consensus of the AB - painfully so - and much of what you're seeing is a reaction to the suggestion that it is not a worthwhile effort, and should simply be thrown out and replaced by one person's work. If you want to propose a Working Group, be my guest. I would point out that it isn't "re-scoping the Vision document", it would be "establish a Working Group to build consensus from the ground up on the Vision of the W3C, the principles by which it should operate, and some rule of rules to be binding on decisionmaking" (which sounds painfully like it would have to be embedded in the Process as well) - and it would need to start with a blank slate. I will put it mildly - I have concerns about the productivity of such a group, and I think it would be a mistake to start over. Getting real engagement and real work on building consensus, not just writing text, has been the hardest part of the AB Vision effort thus far. I would say that I would expect the same credence paid to the AB's work as the TAG's Ethical Web Principles and Design Principles - not binding, perhaps, but pretty strong guidance. (And if you believe the EWP is binding, explain why, as it is not "consensus" either.) To Mike's point, I think these documents need to be pulled together so that we at least have a guide; making anything binding on decision-making at this point in the W3C's evolution is going to be a gargantuan effort. I'm concerned by the characterization that the Vision is "what a set of long-time "insider" W3C participants think, not a community consensus" and "there is no mechanism to appeal decisions about [the Vision document]" - because while technically that's true (the AB has not even published this as a Note), we have not been ignoring feedback and input. Robin offered input, responded once, and then went silent on his own principle. You make it sound like Robin has been ignored systematically - this is not the case. We've been trying to agree on basic principles prior to detailing how we expect the organization to enforce those principles. I agree that the Vision needs to be turned into actionable tactics for the W3C. I disagree that that step comes before even agreeing to the basic principles. To answer Mike's questions:
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(Merging with w3ctag/ethical-web-principles#54 to try to help make this saner.)
Chris, it would help a lot if you tried to present facts in a manner more conducive to making progress towards some common ground. The topic at hand is the general approach to how to do values & vision, which is specifically called out as a key motivating factor in the PR: "this PR seeks to do two things: 1) to experiment with a longer format" all the way to "I am eager to hear what your take on this is." I specifically broke out the PR in a separate file because it's an experiment, to make it easier for the AB to evaluate it as such. The whole of the feedback from the whole of the AB on this is David's "I think we're going to have enormous fun taking grand statements of high principles, in a Vision document, and working out what they mean in detail and practice." Hey, I agree, and I like the sentiment, but can we agree that that's not a lot to go on? Looking more specifically at the interactions on the issue over time, there was a first short discussion in April 2021 which I participated in and that ended with David talking about drafting something, which seems like a satisfactory direction to me. Then there's a flurry of further comments fourteen months later in August 2022, and not about the issue at hand. Again, I'm not trying to blame the AB or anyone, we all get busy. I'll be the first to admit that I dropped the ball in August — life happened, I was distracted with interviewing for new jobs and death in the family, and I expect that life happens just as much to others. What I'm getting at here is that, however, I don't think that it's accurate to represent the current doc as supported by the intensive work of a vibrant community. I also don't think that it's accurate to represent that my input is being seriously considered when the entirety of the feedback is that it would be fun to do, and then going entirely dark on the question. Again, to repeat the point because I would very much like to get past the wall of defensiveness here: no matter how much consensus there is inside the AB, and no matter how painful that was to achieve (which I totally, totally believe and sympathise with), that does not mean that the document is supported by broad consensus in the community that gives it some kind of protected status. Revisiting the approach is legitimate. Does the doc have more consensus than a proposal I wrote yesterday? I would hope so? Is it useful to compare the consensus of 3-4 people here and 9-10 people there? I really don't think so. Mark rightly points at the issue of legitimacy. I think that's the absolutely core issue. It's a key part that my proposal tries to address by grounding our values in a process we already have, that has stood the test of time, that has been developed by a huge community — and seeing how we can use that as a platform to build more of that. It's entirely possible that my proposal isn't the right one or is a bad implementation even if it's the right one, but it's at least a constructive and I believe credible attempt to get at this. I don't want to go twenty rounds discussing whether the AB should have processed my input this or that way; I only brought that up to explain that I don't think it's fair or justified to claim that the process has been diligent. Bygones, etc. I don't care. But can we please, please move to a constructive place where we agree that it's not hostile or disrespectful or insulting to think that the current approach needs rethinking in order to get a legitimate outcome? I'd be happy to put energy into helping corral public discussion, but that's going to be a lot less pleasant if the AB doesn't agree that we can make significant change along the way. |
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@mnot wrote:
I'm retired from the Process CG and AB, but as I understand it the AB plans to propose elevating the Vision document to W3C Statement Status https://www.w3.org/2021/Process-20211102/#memo once it is stable, widely reviewed, FOs processed, and the AC approves. That's exactly what a WG would have to do. So, the AB Vision would be as much of a "consensus document" as any Recommendation. I agree the document needs some work to be "scoped to be binding on decision making" |
Exactly. The first step along that path would be to publish it as a Note, which we should do soon. Reasons it has not happened yet include:
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At the risk of irritating all parties to this discussion:
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I like your "irritate everyone" approach Mike, thanks for putting that together. (I'm not irritated though.) One thing I want to insist on and get out of the way: I did not "start from scratch in my own repo," I put together an illustration of what I think a more robust & usable approach would be because just describing it was clearly not getting across. Just a few quick points:
I would like to encourage us all to focus on making the vision document unassailably legitimate. This will be even more irritating, but I think that requires:
Is this work and pain? Yup. Is it irritating? Almost certainly. But we can't just ship a vision document that is produced in a manner that contradicts what it's saying. I realise that this offers nothing more than further blood, toil, tears, and sweat. I hope that we can be swift; I'm adamant that we can't be insular. |
Right. My involvement with the Vision work as a retirement hobby starting around TPAC 2020 started from a sense that W3C was at another inflection point: In its first few years, It really DID help "lead the web to its full potential" by defining the open web platform (HTML, CSS, DOM, the "web apps" APIs) and did a pretty good job of ensuring they were accessible and internationalized. Then it was fairly successful for another 10-15 years focusing on making the implementations of the web platform truly interoperable. But now it needs to pivot again: is clear that the web enables fraud, abuse of personal information, and misinformation as well as enabling commerce, facilitating communication, and sharing knowledge . Can W3C really do anything about that? I'm not sure, but the first step is to acknowledge the problem, resolve to re-focus on the integrity and not just raw functionality of the web platform, and implement that resolve in the actual operation W3C's standards and advocacy work. To be blunt, I'm not AT ALL sure W3C can pivot to become a referee of the web's integrity rather than a cheerleader for web technology, a technocracy for incrementally improving it, and perpetually seeking the "next big thing" that will attract and retain paying members. I have SOME hope that strong and clear vision of the principles that would guide chartering, reviewing, and communicating about web platform standards can help. I'm not happy about the changes to the draft vision document the AB has made trying to make it more less "annoying" to the broader W3C community. But holding workshops, inventing WG-like groups to take responsibilities away from the AB/TAG, worrying about abstract governance philosophy, etc. seem more like bikeshedding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality than getting on with the hard work and figuring out what principles (e.g. privacy) are worth fighting for. As for legitimacy, I suggest focusing more about the beneficial consequences https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/legitimacy/#BenCon of a coherent, operational Vision than the process of creating it. Strong consensus (everyone in the community can live with it) is not likely; there is no Director to appeal to to resolve objections. W3C has (or hopefully will soon have) a Director-free process that can plausibly get "W3C consensus" on a Vision, that that will work roughly the same whether it is an AB statement, a WG Recommendation, or some new process. So their relative "legitimacy" doesn't seem worth arguing about. But what ULTIMATELY gives the Vision legitimacy are the benefits to the organization, the web, and the larger society from adopting and acting on vision/values as soon as possible. So let's resolve to file substantive issues to improve the current draft's guidance to spec developers, reviewers, and advocates. |
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I totally agree that W3C needs to pivot; what I believe it needs to pivot to is governance. Governance (of automated human/computer systems at planetary scale) is the biggest unsolved problem in tech. The majority of our more pressing problems boil down to the fact that we've built a world in which might makes right, in which collective action is near impossible, etc. The W3C needs to decide if it's just standardising the Web SDK, or if it own stewardship of the Web. If it's the former, then governance doesn't matter much, but we also don't need a document that says our SDK is "for all humankind." That's kinda weird for an SDK. I think we (and many in the the wider community) largely want the latter. I also think that a strong, credible story about governance for the Web — not just that we are pivoting to it but that we have a treasure trove of experience with how to go about it (as offered by horizontal review) is a powerful hook to get funding. Setting up the Board, updating the Process on a cadence, going Director-free — all these things are headed in the same direction. This doc should be part of that. But we can't pivot to the thing without doing the thing. I can be convinced that we might not have to do all the things I listed, but not that a small coterie of insiders are legitimate in setting the vision for the web. We just aren't. I can't pretend that we are. I'm repeating myself, but the key feature of the approach I have repeatedly advocated is that it relies on building from the massive successful investment in practical values that we already have as developed by the whole community. The specifics of the text don't matter; what matters in that approach is that we can establish the most lightweight frame possible with which to enshrine the outstanding work of the community, work that is supported by extensive consensus and that impacts real standards work every day. And having done that, we can use the existing process to keep iterating. |
I think we've reached the heart of the matter here: I originally saw agreement in the community as the first step toward W3C becoming an effective steward of the web, and the Vision is the vehicle for getting internal consensus to make that pivot. You apparently think there is much agreement already on the stewardship mission and it's time to get on with the specifics of a governance system. The TAG thread discussion and your proposal that spun out of it did convince me that the Vision needs to be less abstract and exhortative, and offer concrete, practical guidance to steer charters and PR transition reviews toward stewardship. Yes, we can do a better job of building a critical mass of support for a stewardship mission by being specific about what the values we are promoting and how W3C standards work can help.
Woo... I think the best we can do for now is to harness W3C's collective brainpower and connections to actual product and policy makers to wrestle with the larger (possibly unsolveable) problem while doing what we can to nudge the web in a better direction. But again, that starts by getting a critical mass of the web/W3C community to accept the negative consequences of the web and the need for a stewardship mission. From what I can tell from this repo, e.g. #22 and #14 which continues WebStandardsFuture/Vision#12 ), that is still controversial. I hope we can close those issues (and this one) with an acknowledgement of the web's serious problems and a consensus to pivot W3C's mission toward addressing them. In other words, to craft a Vision that is NOT a "document that says our SDK is for all humankind" but an acknowledgement W3C needs to move beyond 1990s techno-utopianism and adapt its culture and processes to both improve the web's technology and address its adverse consequences. The more specific and concrete the vision, values, and criteria for improvement are, the better the Vision will be. |
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I am actually fairly lost in what Robin and Mark see as problems here, and I think there may be misconceptions. For example, I'm not even sure whether the concerns are about the content of the document, or the way it's being developed. If it's the content about the vision for the web, which of the following would more closely capture the concern?
If it's that the document mixes a vision for the web with a vision for the w3c, that's already been noted, and also that the two do have overlap or intersection. If it's about the process of development, I think there is a fundamental misconception here and I don't know how it arose. Mark says, above "Saying that an AB document represents consensus isn't workable -- the most it can do is represent what the AB thinks." There's an assumption in here that it is an AB-owned document. On the contrary, the AB (among other things)
So, the AB listened (e.g., on the values point, to an ex-AB member, Mike here), and took the initiative, got text written, brought it repeatedly to the membership explicitly asking for input, supplied an editor, and have curated the process of consensus. That the AB took the initiative is not something to complain about, but applaud. It would not have happened otherwise. Complaining that proposed edits didn't simply get accepted side-steps the question of whether the proposed edits got consensus. After some years work, getting consensus that something is an improvement isn't always easy (I've had to work at it). Complaining that it represents itself as a consensus document is also missing the point: that's the target, and that's how it's being developed, but it's not done. The AB started this and sees this as a document the community needs. No, it's not "done", and the AB has not yet asked to get more formal community buy-in for this. I think the plan there is to make it into a Note and then take it through the Statement process to get consensus. If the vision is fine as it is, but we have not yet done the next level of work, to work out how it becomes actionable, how our processes and actions will be modified to take it into account – make a suggestion. Please don't reject it because it's lacking something – supply that something. Likewise, I have a concern that we don't have enough 'specific features' or 'new things' in there, and that in some sense it's a 'mitigate harms' vision which could be seen as addressing a negative rather than proposing a positive; perhaps these could be addressed (e.g. by the TAG?). In summary, I strongly agree that we, the W3C community, do need a new sense of vision for the future, and I think that the AB and the many contributors here have worked on it for and with the community, and we should be thanking them and helping. |
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Chris,
Of course. My point is that the AB's consensus -- even if ratified by an AC vote -- is not a great reflection of community consensus, especially on a document that's so foundational. Yes, I understand that you've asked for feedback and consulted with various folks -- however, it's a document that reflects what the AB thinks about that, not one that the community has significant ownership of. This happens sometimes in the IETF; the IAB comes up with a document purporting to reflect the consensus of the community, and are firmly reminded that there's a process for that and exactly one way to do it. However, they're more than welcome to write documents reflecting what the IAB feels (often after consulting with the broader community).
So it sounds like your intention is path (1) above -- the document is advisory / persuasive, not binding, and it reflects AB consensus, not community consensus. I agree this is a pragmatic path forward to getting something out without a massive delay (and likely much gnashing of teeth), if we acknowledge its limits. However, it's not clear that that's what's happening; Mike seems to have the impression that it's going to be a Statement, which is more like path (2). I think turning this document into a Statement at some point in the future after some community review process that's more than waving it by the AC might be a good step, but that's not going to happen anytime soon.
There's a huge gulf between "we take feedback and input" and "we followed a process with broad stakeholder involvment, oversight, appeals mechanisms, transparency, and consequences for abuse of power." I would think that folks had seen enough of the former approach in recent times.
How Robin interacts with the AB is not my primary concern on this issue; I suspect the AB and Robin need to work that out separately. I'm concerned with what happens when this document is relied upon to support a contentious decision, and stakeholders come away feeling that it doesn't represent them, and that it couldn't have because of how it was created. Since Robin mentioned the Board -- this is not wearing my Board hat; at this point I believe that while some aspects of this might have impact on the Team, they're operational. |
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@michaelchampion said:
I like this framing, Mike, thanks. I would suggest taking it one step further: I don't think that we can produce or prove agreement on either the stewardship mission or the specifics of governance without driving that work in a manner that aligns with what the stewardship itself entails. Irrespective of the level of consensus in the AB, this has to come from and be made by the community. @dwsinger wrote:
A key point is that these two cannot be separated, or at least cannot be separated given the intended values. One way to understand the double concern is in terms of input and output legitimacy:
My suggestion — and again, it is only a suggestion, which I've been trying to explain in several ways — is that we can make a different trade-off. Instead of starting from scratch and listing all the values we could aspire to, we start from what we already have: a foundation of detailed, concrete values documents that already enjoys both kinds of legitimacy, a tried and true method to enforce them, and a process to produce more. I suggest that we then give that existing foundation a lightweight frame to enshrine it as such, and possibly list the areas that it doesn't cover which we would like to see some work on (and this could use the AB's doc as input). |
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@darobin said:
As I understand the situation, there is no "foundation of detailed, concrete values documents" at W3C. W3C was guided by Tim Berners-Lee's values and vision for a worldwide web in the early years. It wasn't written down AFAIK, but the Team and other participants developed a reasonably clear shared understanding of the fundamental values as they applied to web technology. The problem is, the web's technology and business models have evolved rapidly, as Tim disengaged. The AB, as I understand it, is trying to make the shared values more explicit, and (one can hope) specific enough to guide tradeoffs among between traditional values like "free", "private", "secure" and emerging values such as "sustainable". I see the AB leading a community effort to do more or less what you are suggesting. Have they missed some concrete values documents to normatively reference? Have they missed some values they should reference? Have they invented some that aren't real W3C community values? If so, this is an open GitHub repo, anyone in the "community" can file issues or PRs. |
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@mnot wrote:
Could you point us to the IETF community's "exactly one way to do it" community consensus process? And maybe examples of it working well for a "human" matter like values / vision as opposed to a "technical" protocol standard? |
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(Guessing here) the IETF uses RFCs for a lot of things; and moving a document from I-D to RFC is well known. We have group drafts (working documents), group Notes (group consensus) and W3C statements (W3C Consensus). I think we are or are planning to follow that route. |
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@michaelchampion wrote:
On this point I disagree. We have a wealth of documents in our horizontal review activities telling us in very actionable detail what it means that That's why I'm advocating a different path:
Is this perfect? No, and it's just a suggestion. But it does have some benefits:
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Since the TAG is an elected body, same as the AB, how is any document they produce more "consensus" validated than what the AB could produce? |
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I think @darobin is on to something with enshrining W3C's horizontal review areas as a starting point. There are now CGs looking into how to approach horizontal review or at least self-review for sustainability and equity. I'm sure there are others as well. W3C has not succeeded in some areas internally, like actual global reach, but that gets to internal facing values vs external facing values. I also agree that it is a good idea to get this document in shape to be statement-track. |
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Agree that values in the Vision document should align with current horizontal review areas. Are there any not mentioned in the Vision? The more interesting question is how new horizontal review criteria get added. CGs can incubate criteria that could be used in wide review. But who decides, for example whether "sustainability" is a core W3C value that MUST be respected in Recommendations? Or whether the TAG Ethical Web Principles is just the TAG's opinion or whether it is a W3C value statement? Having a Statement referencing that Value approved by the AC (and that survives the formal objection process) seems appropriate. |
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And that, Mike, was precisely why we wrote the Vision starting where we did; because we needed to agree on WHAT the values and principles were, before we detailed how they would be enforced. Indeed, we specifically focused on privacy, security, internationalization, equity, accessibility, and more. Those things DO align with HR groups, on purpose; and the strategic structure of that is the next step. |
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@cwilso asked:
How the group is convened is only a small part of the legitimacy of its output. The TAG's work on, say, XML Versioning has very little legitimacy because it's just the output of a few TAG people, bright as they may have been, and while they spent an inordinate amount of time and energy on it and presented it to the AC, it never garnered broader support. Conversely, when the TAG publishes the Web Platform Design Principles, these have been through a veritable crucible of consensus-building. The PoC has been used in practice over and over again, etc. I do not doubt that the AB can also produce this kind of battle-tested document; I am pointing out that we have documents that are load-bearing of our values and already exist as battle-tested, enforced, staffed, etc. It strikes me as a good idea to build on that. |
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@darobin you didn't answer my question, and did not describe how the TAG design principles are any more of a "crucible" than the AB's open vision discussion has been. |
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@michaelchampion wrote:
If there is an intention to align with HR areas, it's not written into the document. If we don't write it into the document, we hit the problem that we're ignoring very significant work in the community and arguably one of the W3C's (and the web's) strongest assets. It also might produce values that aren't aligned with what we actually enforce in those areas. If on the other hand we do write it into the document, then we hit the problem that some of the document maps clearly to a thick and solid foundation of enforced values with a strong consensus base, and some of it maps to nothing.
This is absolutely, absolutely key, and is a reason why I don't think that the "list values now, figure out how to implement them later" plan serves us well. If (just taking an example) we say that sustainability is a value but we don't stand up HR to define, implement, and enforce it then we're basically lying. I really don't like how that sets us up. Putting up an HR review area is hard work, both in the sense of being intensive and difficult. What happens if we then don't have a credible Sustainability HR after one year? After five years? After ten? Do we then keep it as a value and damage our credibility, or do we remove it from our values after a while because clearly we're not doing it and damage our moral standing? That's why I propose to start from what we have rather than intend to connect with it later. It's also why the suggestion I made had as its change process that you only get to add a value if you can stand up the HR review process. I, and I suspect all of us, would dearly like to have HR for sustainability and equity and a bunch of other things. But standing up a new HR is a significant undertaking and I wouldn't assume that we can get all of these up and running within a reasonable time frame. I think that promising that we have values without doing the work to make them real sets us up for failure. I wonder if a way forward would be the split the approach? Have part of the v&v be "how W3C does values" and include the values that we can prove we have as well as the framework for managing and evolving them. And then a "what are we missing" document that carries out gap analysis and works towards a plan to progressively move values from one doc to the other? |
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@cwilso Then I'm afraid that I don't understand your question? I don't think (and don't see that I have ever said) that the TAG had more consensus (or legitimacy) than the AB, however some document have more consensus/legitimacy than others. I also didn't say that the TAG's WPDP were a crucible, only that they had gone through one that the AB vision doc hasn't. We can debate (and I would, but elsewhere) whether everything that is in WPDP should be, but most of that doc is the result of extensive discussion with a broad community and principles that have been used in practice to resolve contentious discussions. |
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I am not sure why we're having an either/or discussion here. The TAG's ethical web principles and web design principles apply and document the consequence of values. I read EWP to help with my contribution to the Vision. The TAG documents are valuable, indeed to the extent that I think they need to be elevated to Statement status. But they are not the short, punchy, straight-language statement of our values and vision that we also need and that the AB document is attempting to give birth to. The three should absolutely be congruent. |
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Indeed, I agree, and yes, the EWP are explicitly referenced as inspiration and companion in the vision document. I'm trying to understand why a very similar group, following if anything a less openly inviting process, is referred to as having gone through a consensus crucible, while the AB's effort to define a vision statement in the open, over multiple years, is not. (If I'm correctly interpreting Mark's answer, it is that the TAG documents are not more definitive, since they are Notes.) |
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@mnot wrote:
and @cwilso wrote:
At TPAC 2022 Tess said in her lightning talk "The Ethical Web Principles document is on the Note track and we hope to elevate it to a [W3C Statement](https://www.w3.org/2021/Process-20211102/#statement). So I believe the TAG and AB have similar plans for these documents: Publish as a Note to drive discussion and consensus building, then elevate to a Statement to get the same sort of W3C-wide status Recommendations have. |
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@darobin wrote:
Not sure anyone would disagree. I don't see in the current draft of the Vision document any references to values that don't have real horizontal review activities in place. (I do agree it would help to explicitly reference them) The main "value" mentioned that doesn't have a mechanism to make it real is "We put the needs of users first: above authors, publishers, implementers, paying W3C Members, or theoretical purity." I hope nobody is suggesting the Vision NOT reference the principles in RFC 8890 (which is indirectly cited via a reference to the Ethical Web Principles which cites https://www.w3.org/TR/design-principles/#priority-of-constituencies which cites RFC 8890) . I'm not sure how W3C can make this "real" (a Priority of Constituencies Review Board???? ...shudder) but I'd be comfortable with somewhat aspirational language in the Vision saying W3C will be working on how to put users first. Likewise Sustainability. It's not mentioned in the current Vision. I wish it was mentioned, perhaps with a reference to the CG incubating sustaina review criteria, and a caveat that it is not yet "real." This would be useful as a "stake in the ground" -- we have concerns about the sustainability of the web, and are working on making it part of the wide review process. This gives fair warning those whose tech might raise concerns (advocates for Proof of Work blockchain tokens perhaps) that W3C might not be a friendly environment for incubating / standardizing their work. |
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I didn't intend it to be harsh, I'm only trying to be crisp. Maybe a better way to phrase it is how Chris put it in #22: the AB does not expect the Vision doc "to ensure the organization's work reflects [its] values and principles". I'm assuming that your comment is directed at the statement that it won't have operational effect and the idea is to soften that to say that it doesn't ensure operational impact? Reformulating (trying to converge on a resolution):
Do this work better? The rest of my comment holds. Regarding your other question @michaelchampion, I don't think that it would be a good idea for a foundational governance document of a transnational organisation to reference specific laws (possibly with the exception of global legal frameworks, in the cases in which they exist). For privacy, we do have the Privacy Principles that are shaping up. They haven't been beaten up by as much input as I'd like or edited for clarity enough, but they're grounded in research and we're ramping up for wide review. |
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@darobin saith:
I don't think it helps to describe it as an AB document, but maybe we need to if (and I hope they will) the AB puts it on Note and Statement track. I don't think a document can ensure anything, but it can and should be used as a tool by members, team, and particularly when hard questions arise (e.g. FOs, but hard questions come up in other contexts). A companion document could be created that explains:
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The current effort has been focused on gaining consensus on WHAT vision and principles we need to have as a path forward. There was a general understanding (I won't claim a consensus, since I don't recall ever explicitly asking the AB that question, but certainly more than just one or two people agreed) that we needed to continue with how to apply those principles in practice, so I would not say it was a non-goal. This might end up in a separate document, but I think it would be a mistake to plan for that at this point, since it seems the operational advice might easily deviate from the core principles. It is definitely the plan to put this on the Note and Statement track soon. I'm going to mark this issue as "proposed for closing", as it's effectively at this point a duplicate of #22 ; it sounds like there's a request for this to hang around open until there's a pull request for that issie. |
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@dwsinger: I am describing it as "the AB document" because for the time being that is what it is. Evidently I would hope that it is more than that if it comes to fruition. @cwilso: It is evidently the AB's prerogative to close this issue. I think I have made the case and that putting further energy into trying to help improve this document will not be useful. I have literally tried to offer help every single way that I can think of and can only express sadness at the thinly veiled hostility with which it was received. If I played a part in triggering it, that was not my intent. Before parting I will simply note my dissent. I personally do not believe that producing documents without the accompanying means to hold ourselves accountable to them is in line with the practices and values of the W3C, and doing so fails to further its mission. Barring meaningful progress on this issue I don't anticipate to be able to vote in favour of the resulting Statement. |
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@darobin I believe that you have expressed your perspective that the current work is a dead end. A number of others believe (and I would even venture to say "the consensus of the AB is", though of course I have not asked for a formal declaration of that lately) that this work is not a dead end. I understand that you believe there should be a strong focus on enforcement/adherence to the principles. I don't think you have heard me that I agree with you in this; where we disagree is that you appear to maintain that that enforcement must come first, before we even reach agreement on what the principles are. I do not agree with this; however, as I've said several times, I believe the vision won't be useful if is simply stops at defining some aspirational principles; it needs to drive strategy and tactics in the W3C. In my opinion, working out principles that can reach consensus on is a very hard part, and it needs to be done first. Regardless, I would agree with you that producing principles without any means or thought to how we can hold ourselves accountable would make those principles much less useful; it was always the idea to build that progression and provide that detail. I understand there is also additional input you would have on other principles, like the pull request you filed on origin sovereignty a while ago (#17). I will say again - that work was not rejected; I don't think you had built consensus that it should be adopted as a principle, I expressed some concerns, and the PR itself was flawed in that it did not (probably purposefully did not) integrate with the rest of the Vision, but sat alongside as a separate document with no cross references. All that stated - I did not ever consider that issue closed, but something we just hadn't gotten back to. The Vision was effectively laid aside while we spent all our AB time working on bootstrapping the LE. If you care about that principle, I would encourage you to go back and participate in the discussion there, and try to build some consensus - if you feel this work is inevitably doomed anyway, then okay, just close it. As to "thinly veiled hostility", I would encourage you to think first about how you would react if you had been driving a collaborative effort with a dozen or so other people, publicly presenting your work several times and asking for public engagement, and were told by someone (who had not been saying so in the past few years you'd all been working on it) "this is a broken process, the process must start over, here is a document I wrote last night to replace the work you've all been working on." That is dismissive of the work that the entire AB has been doing collaboratively over several years, effectively declaring it worthless; and I must admit that disrespect of work put in to building consensus puts me on the defensive. I did not intend to be hostile, and I would much rather work together. I am attempting to move this issue (and the Vision as a whole) forward with consensus of the AB at the very least, and ideally the Membership - certainly the bulk of the Membership. I will note that it is highly unlikely that the entire Membership will agree with everything in the Vision, especially some of the Principles - in the same way that some of our Members today disagree with other principles expressed, say, in the TAG's Ethical Web Principles (e.g. Sustainability w3ctag/ethical-web-principles#66). That doesn't mean those principles are wrong, or that this Vision is. In fact, I would even go so far as to say if the Vision doesn't garner some dissent, it is probably far too weak and not forward-thinking enough. |
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It is unfortunate that it's really easy to see two "sides of an argument" in this discussion - and more so that they seem to represent entrenching positions. Given the individuals are of good will, and are mature adults who can recognise the need to reset an re-engage in a discussion, I hope it doesn't continue this way. I note that the issue began with
I am still unaware what that discussion was - although it seems there is an assumption that people know that. It's unfortunate that the mention was so vague. It is not obvious to me that there has been a formal effort to reach consensus that, for example "The goal of this document is to define the core set of principles the W3C community SHOULD apply in reviewing proposed charters and standards" (or some other similar or even wildly different goal). I think that would be helpful, because I think we could reach agreement on something like that. Mixed in with that discussion that I think is the core of this issue, there seems to be a question of "how to get there" - i.e. what is the right path to develop such a document. It seems we do not agree on that, and without an effort to reach some better agreement on how this might happen it seems entirely possible that the effort spent on this work will be wasted because we cannot get agreement that the outcome matches its purpose, or that a lot of effort will be wasted because people work very hard on a document, present it, and are told to specify the use case and problem first and then have all the discussions all over again in a different forum. |
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It also seems that this issue is a duplicate of #22. I would support, as part of resetting the framing and trying to do the discussion better, closing this as a duplicate and trying to have a less defensive discussion there. |
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I certainly don't think I have an entrenched or entrenching position, as that would imply that I understood something well enough to oppose it, and I still don't. Perhaps this comment from Robin helps me understand a little better:
I have two problems here. The first is the assumption that if we adopt consensus values, as a consortium (Statement), we'd want to but have no way to enforce them. I don't think that assumption is true today:
The second aspect that puzzles me is the idea that somehow the order – first, write down your principles, and then consider what procedural changes might be needed so that they become embodied in work – is wrong, and we should do it the other way round. I can't imagine getting a good reaction if we were to introduce provisions designed to enforce values and principles, which were to be defined later. I will continue to oppose including text that either people don't understand, or that hasn't got consensus, and I hope the editor will continue to do the same. That's normal and not unreasonable. Finally, it seems to be way early in the process to be making threats (e.g. "Barring meaningful progress on this issue I don't anticipate to be able to vote in favour of the resulting Statement"), when we're at the stage of trying to understand each other and make improvements based on that understanding. Can we take a deep breath and engage in meaningful discourse, please? |
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@cwilso Thank you for taking the time to write down your thoughts in detail, I appreciate it. I do believe that on at least some important points, we have been talking past one another. I would like to see if we can't at least pare down the misalignment. (Thanks @dwsinger for adding some further thoughts as I was writing.) I do not believe that "the current work is a dead end." I believe that its approach needs to change if it is to have an impact in the real world — or at least the level of impact that I would like to see it have. Making it impactful would require, in my opinion, significant edits to the document so as to define principles in a way that can be used in arguments (generally in support of deciding the things that @frivoal listed). I do believe that the approach of listing principles but not defining them clearly enough that people can agree or disagree with them is a dead end yes (and maybe that's what we agree to disagree on). I think that you might actually agree with that too, though, but that we have different expectations of what that looks like (which might need some digging into)? To make this point concrete: I would want you to be able to use this to go after the Board of Directors for (hypothetically of course) not being transparent enough. After all, it says "Ensuring transparency" in there. But some people will see that and think "a short, sanitised summary of the minutes every quarter is transparency" while others will expect something comparable to GitLab's transparency policy. Absent clarity, both are right to understand it the way that they're familiar with. Both of these people might heartily agree with the principles — but when it comes time for either of them to complain about the BoD, neither will have a principle to back them because "transparency" isn't fleshed out enough and we know that it means different things to different people. Do we really disagree that this is the wrong outcome? Wouldn't you rather have a principled stick to beat the Board up with (in this hypothetical, of course)? Or even better, to not have to beat the Board up in the first place because the principle is clear from the get-go? Regarding hostility, I hear where you are coming from. I sincerely didn't mean providing a doc as "here's a thing, replace yours with it"; I only intended to provide an example for something which I've been trying to convey in different ways. When I heard you push back that the approach is too solidified to change, I concluded that working through an alternative process would be the only way to resolve this. I would much rather work with you and the AB. I'll admit that I am frustrated at not succeeding to convey the issue, though as I said this may well be on me. You state that "I will note that it is highly unlikely that the entire Membership will agree with everything in the Vision." That fully matches my expectation: what I want to see in a mission/values/vision document is crisp, opinionated statements that people will agree or disagree with. I would be a lot more comfortable if I disagreed with the Vision. But that's precisely the problem I'm pointing at: I see too little in it that I can agree or disagree with. For the most part, I honestly don't know what might be meant by the text because I know those terms have multiple meanings in our community. Consider just this: I think we would all agree that the EWP Sustainability principle is way too short if we were to have substantial discussions of sustainability, but on its own it is 60% of the size of your entire "Principles and Values" section which supposedly covers way more ground. I don't believe that it's possible to be that brief yet crisp and clear. I certainly agree very strongly with: "I would even go so far as to say if the Vision doesn't garner some dissent, it is probably far too weak and not forward-thinking enough." But I don't think that it is currently setting itself up for success on those terms. Everyone agrees that transparency, fairness, privacy, etc. are good things. The dissent is in the details. This points to an issue that I can only guess at from the outside and am mentioning in case it can help make progress. In this discussion and several side discussions, it seems that AB members past and present believe that the document as it stands is providing defined principles. But as far as I can tell — and I've read it a few times — it's listing the names of principles but not providing much if any indication as to how to understand them. This would indicate one of three things:
I think that my use of the term "enforcement" may be leading to more disagreement than there is because it isn't (yet) a term of art in our community. @dwsinger mentions using the principles for chartering decisions, grounding appeals and FOs, or resolving FOs. Presumably that means that charters would have a greater chance of being accepted if they align with principles than if they don't, FOs or resolutions if they call upon the principles, etc. That's… enforcement. "If you abide by But for that to work, you need to have principles that give enough material to argue from — it can't just be the name of the principle, especially if it's a principle which we all know is not inherently consensual. If I have a charter that I think (say) "ensures equity" and you object to it on the grounds that you think it doesn't, all we have to go on is the word "equity". It's not that the doc should answer all the questions (as if it could) but it needs to be opinionated if it's going to support arguing. (Once you start defining things more I don't think that it's possible to dodge the question of the relationship to HR — but we can kick that can down the road for now.) Two thoughts that might help:
Regarding #17 I understand that it hasn't been rejected, but to repeat what it says in WebStandardsFuture/Vision#37 (which I only now notice you didn't copy over to #17 when you moved — maybe that's part of the misalignment?):
Without alignment on this, I'm not sure what the rest of the PR would do. If there's agreement on this point, maybe then #17 it maps to some combination of "good for people" and "don't centralize" and can then be removed, or maybe it still needs to exist — that all depends on how those principles are defined. A few further notes on @dwsinger's points:
That's not my point. My point is that the principles are only defined to the extent that they are enforced (and vice versa). Let's say we come up with a fictitious principle that our specs must have ipseity. If there is no point at which that principle can be used to impact spec lifecycle (eg. FOs), then people will just ignore it irrespective of the definition. If the Council says that it will rely on it to decide FOs but we don't define it beyond referencing the word "ipseity" then nothing will happen: you can't enforce undefined terms (it's autocracy when you do). If we come up with a lovely detailed definition but the only thing that the Council (or any other enforcement point) uses is that the text should be fuchsia, then people will act as if ipseity=fuchsia.
This isn't a threat. We were discussing closing the issue, at that point one is supposed to know whether the commenters are satisfied with the answer. (We no longer ask people formally, but I believe it remains a good practice.) If this document were progressed now (or in a generally similar state) I wouldn't vote in favour, I would either abstain or object. I'm leaning abstain because if there's no consensus to make it stronger then I would rather move it out the door and switch to another opportunity to build a stronger statement than get stuck in FO processing. Either way, I don't think that it's fair to interpret a statement of dissent as a threat — it's usually helpful to know where people stand! |
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So, if I were to summarize that it's not that the Vision says anything specifically wrong, it's that it needs to be more usable as a bright-line test and/or more actionable, would that capture it? I think it would be great if we can improve in that direction. I would welcome specific edits that amplify the values and make them more actionable. I worry that the text that makes things actionable would bulk up the document in ways that an external reader might find unhelpful; but structuring or splitting the document (as we did once before with the History section) is easy, once we have text. |
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Taking some time to ponder this, I wonder if we're not disagreeing because we have different expectations of what this document is supposed to do. I can try to break this down into three incremental levels:
If the goal is to produce What worries me is that I keep hearing people say that they expect it to work as Let's take a simple and obvious example that I would expect a document operating at the I am an advertising technologist. I care deeply about keeping the Web free and open, and I'm passionate about standards. I know that a lot of people don't like advertising, but I actually chose this path because I see it as providing essential infrastructure for democracy. I can tell that the whole cookies thing is a mess — you don't need to tell me, I'm the one who has to handle CMP strings and cookie syncing code. My company is honest and we respect user choice, but I wasn't born yesterday and I know that a lot of the rest of the industry isn't quite so honest — though it's always hard to prove. We can do better! I come to the W3C with a very simple proposal: we should do on the Web what app platforms have done and create the browser equivalent of Apple & Android advertising IDs (so-called "MAIDs" but I don't like that term). I write a simple spec that exposes an efficient, user-controlled unique identifier over an HTTP header and I've long known about the W3C but I've never participated, and I've heard it said that people there can be a bit idiosyncratic. I prepare ahead of time by reading the vision document. I'm glad to see that my proposal is fully aligned with the W3C's values! To wit:
With that in mind, I really look forward to working with my new W3C friends! There is nothing contrived about this example, in fact I know quite a few people who match that description, who might make that proposal, and who would reach those conclusions after reading the current Vision doc. Just citing from a talk I attended last night:
(If you think that kind of statement is made in bad faith or only by bad people, you're wrong.) There is nothing in the current Vision that can be called upon to reject the above position in a charter or workshop or Council decision that can't also also be used to support it. If you think there is, you're operating on implicit definitions rather than on what the document actually says. Now, I am confident that I can find copious (but scattered) evidence that such a proposal does not match the values of the W3C or the expectations of the Web community. I know that there's a trove of research out there showing that those motivations don't hold up. But whether this Vision doc exists or not makes no difference to my ability to argue that point. This is perfectly fine if the goal is @dwsinger says:
That entirely depends on what it's for. To work for |
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I like the The New York Times Mission & Values presented by @darobin as the sample for W3C Mission and Values, since which are quite simple and clear, as it really deserves. . |
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I think resolving #13 would help address the scenario @darobin sketches out above. i |
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Hi Robin I agree, the document has become overloaded with different purposes, and being clearer about what it is and isn't intended to be will much it much easier to manage. As you say, some of the purposes are in almost direct conflict: an explanation of why we matter, for the outside world, should be written in simple terms and not reference our practices and processes, for example. I think you have probably enumerated these, but I'll try in different terms to see if we align:
Personally, I'd be happy if it did (1) and (2) (because they should be the same principles, the same document); went light on (3) (because the audience and use is different), and explicitly expect (4) to be done in work in the appropriate venue (TAG, Process CG, PWECG, and so on). I'd also be fine if (2) were a worked-expansion of (1), to make it more of an actionable recital (your word). I don't think we'll make much progress on 2-4 without 1, though; with only 'full potential' and no Director to embody values, we're almost a de-magnetized magnetic compass. If there are top-level compass-bearing types of principles that the Vision doesn't state clearly enough, this is a good time to get to them. |
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To reply to David's terminology, I agree that we were absolutely starting out as #1, with the understand that this had to grow into/as the basis for other documents that would put this directly into tactical practice (#2). I believe that we were trying to cover a fair bit of what might be considered #3 as well - notably, we were identifying things that we believe are important in how the W3C focuses inwardly - e.g. community consensus-building, inclusion across a diverse global base, focus on interop - but also with the understanding that what we define as important (e.g. privacy, or sustainability) might change who should support/join. Happy to excise that from the mission. To use Robin's terminology, this document should absolutely function as #1 (a communication frame) - and yes, all we really had before was the tagline "Leading the Web to Its Full Potential". |
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I will note that this should likely be resolved as a duplicate of #22 . |
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agreed to close on 10/26/23. If there are narrow topics to continue to discuss, please open new issues |
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:
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