Re: Next CredWeb meeting in 48 hours!

My comment about “out of date” is that the approach taking in the current spec doesn’t follow what I would consider “current best practices” for such work – so that if we were to look to bring something like trust.txt forward, there are (breaking) changes required (IMO).

Leonard

From: Scott Yates <scott@journallist.net>
Date: Monday, July 14, 2025 at 10:43 PM
To: Leonard Rosenthol <lrosenth@adobe.com>
Cc: Credible Web CG <public-credibility@w3.org>, Sandro Hawke <sandro.hawke@gmail.com>, Dominique Hazael-Massieux <dom@w3.org>, Tzviya Siegman <tzviya@w3.org>, Chris Needham <chris.needham@bbc.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Next CredWeb meeting in 48 hours!

EXTERNAL: Use caution when clicking on links or opening attachments.


Leonard,

The movement with trust.txt has been with the new functionality that I'll be talking about on Wednesday. It uses the current version of the spec. That is, no updates were required of the spec for the new way to use it.

In other words, what seems "out of date" to you seems "stable and reliable" to me.

-Scott Yates
Founder
JournalList.net<https://journallist.net/>, caretaker of the trust.txt framework
202-742-6842
Chair of W3C Credibility Group<https://www.w3.org/community/credibility/>
Member IPTC<https://iptc.org/> and Rebuild Local News<https://www.rebuildlocalnews.org/>
Short Video Explanation of trust.txt<https://youtu.be/lunOBapQxpU>

On Mon, Jul 14, 2025 at 11:47 AM Leonard Rosenthol <lrosenth@adobe.com<mailto:lrosenth@adobe.com>> wrote:
Scott – is there a newer version of the specification?  The one on the site seems pretty out of date at this point…

Leonard

From: Scott Yates <scott@journallist.net<mailto:scott@journallist.net>>
Date: Monday, July 14, 2025 at 4:04 PM
To: Credible Web CG <public-credibility@w3.org<mailto:public-credibility@w3.org>>
Cc: Sandro Hawke <sandro.hawke@gmail.com<mailto:sandro.hawke@gmail.com>>, Dominique Hazael-Massieux <dom@w3.org<mailto:dom@w3.org>>, Tzviya Siegman <tzviya@w3.org<mailto:tzviya@w3.org>>, Chris Needham <chris.needham@bbc.co.uk<mailto:chris.needham@bbc.co.uk>>
Subject: Next CredWeb meeting in 48 hours!

EXTERNAL: Use caution when clicking on links or opening attachments.


Dear member of the CredWeb Community Group,

The fourth in our series of Authentic Web Workshops is coming up 48 hours after I click send on this email, (8 a.m. in California, 9 a.m. in my home time zone in the mountains, 11 a.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. England, and 5 p.m. in France.)

(I know this time isn't great for Japan/Australia. If anyone there would like, I'd be happy to repeat my presentation and take questions at a time that works better for you. Just let me know.)

The project going under the microscope for this meeting is trust.txt, which happens to be my creation. Some of you have heard about trust.txt before, but you'll still want to join us because we have a new feature... For the first time in the history of the internet, there's a badge that can be visible on a web page that can't be duplicated in a way that would undermine trust. At least I can't imagine how it could be, but that's why we're road testing it with this group. Many of you have seen other well-intentioned efforts get misused, so I look forward to having you try to poke holes in this.

Before then, I'll be doing some additional documentation in github and elsewhere. I would have done that before, but my life got somewhat swallowed by a different project.

I was the one behind the new Local Journalism Index<https://muckrack.com/research/local-journalist-index>, which came out last week. It got a ton of attention, which is great. It may not seem like the number of journalists working in the country is related to a trustworthy internet, but I think there's a direct correlation. The less local news people have the more they need to fill the vacuum that's created by the very human need to have a flow of information in. More journalists fill that vacuum with more local news so it doesn't get filled with crap. So, check it out if it is of interest to you, and after we're done with the CredWeb meeting I'd be happy to stay after and answer any questions you may have about that Index.

Thanks very much, and I look forward to seeing you all on Wednesday!

-Scott Yates
Founder
JournalList.net<https://journallist.net/>, caretaker of the trust.txt framework
202-742-6842
Chair of W3C Credibility Group<https://www.w3.org/community/credibility/>
Member IPTC<https://iptc.org/> and Rebuild Local News<https://www.rebuildlocalnews.org/>
Short Video Explanation of trust.txt<https://youtu.be/lunOBapQxpU>