Proposal to re-organize the Mission/Principles/Values bullets

[michaelchampion]

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

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

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

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

Vision for the World-Wide Web

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

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

Vision and Mission for the W3C

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

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

[cwilso]

Mike, I'm not sure what goal you would have with this. The TAG's EWP document - which this document is clearly intended to build on, not replace - has a lot more detail on a number of principles, some of which (even though I agree with them) I'm not sure are necessarily important or even appropriate for the "vision of the W3C". (E.g. 2.10 The web is transparent). I also think they are in some cases repetitive, or worse, seem repetitive but are really making different points. For example, you reorderded the Vision's bullet points, putting "there is one interoperable WWW" at the top, thinking it was a mirror of EWP2.1 - but it's not. It's a small bit of what's in 2.1, but it's really more aligned with EWP2.4, which seems to cover the same ground to me. In fact, I deliberately DID order things pretty closely aligned with the EWP principles we thought were important to pull into the Vision: to use your example, it's ordered:

The Web is for all humanity. (a little bit of EWP2.1, mostly EWP2.4, which I feel is REALLY important to lead with - and imo duplicates 2.1 but is better worded.)
The Web is designed for the good of its users. (EWP 2.2)
The Web must be safe for its users. (EWP2.3, EWP 2.5, EWP 2.8)
There is one interoperable world-wide Web. (EWP 2.11)

As to the rest of it, the principles and values were deliberately ordered into two sections, as the first set is things we aim to achieve for the Web, and the second is things we aim to achieve in the organization itself. This was an intentional part of the last reorganization.

[michaelchampion]

I find the 3 sets of bullets in the vision somewhat confusing, and a bit redundant.

Re-reading the EWP, I found it clearer and more persuasive even thought it doesn’t really have a lot more detail than the Vision. My intention was to suggest I structure I find easier to understand, and to help uninitiated readers understand how the EWP and Vision complement each other.

I do think “There is only one web” should come first irrespective of the other points.

If others don’t share my confusion about what the current draft is exactly trying to say and don’t care that it has only a vague relationship to the EWP, feel feee to close.

[michaelchampion]

Apparently not a useful issue, closing

[cwilso]

@michaelchampion you said "I do think 'there is only one web' should come first". Are you saying that the EWP point ("we will build [new web technologies and API] to cross regional and national boundaries. People in one location should be able to view web pages from anywhere that is connected to the web." needs to be here first and isn't? (Because I thought "the Web is for all humanity" kinda covers accessing over regional/national boundaries, but also language, etc.)

I would point out that whole section - "Vision for the WWW" was intended to be a reminder, not a "this is everything that we mean for the web". Frankly, I'm starting to think that section should just be removed wholesale.