Re: Please Keep Our Decentralized Web Standards Open

Thank you for such a thoughtful email!

> Decentralized Web standards deserve to be developed in a truly open and
> inclusive manner - rather than a top-down approach where all concerned
> voices cannot possibly be heard, simply because they don’t actually have
> access to the process.

I completely agree.

We have seen success with an open approach in the IndieWeb community. Over the last six years, we have had several people implement standards produced by the former Working Group and have incubated improvements to standards that have also received multiple interoperable implementations. The barrier for participation is indeed much lower. We maintain a process via GitHub Issues, community discussion, and wikifying to ensure implementations, ideas, and discussions are widely available. This is somewhat akin to the FEP process for ActivityPub.

The IndieWeb community adopted a "Living Standard" mechanism by which documents could be improved outside of the W3C. The canonical example of this is IndieAuth, which is maintained by the community at https://indieauth.spec.indieweb.org/, but was originally published as a W3C Note https://www.w3.org/TR/indieauth/.

There is work the IndieWeb needs to do to document the Living Standard process, but it is perhaps a model of interest to parties here. The process hinges on there being spec editors or implementers with extensive experience participating actively. Access is open to implementers and people working with standards, decisions are consensus-based, and there is no membership or invitation barrier.

With that said, there has been some interest in Living Standards becoming W3C standards for the rigor that goes into the process (TAG review, etc.).

> To that end, I think it would be a tragedy to move any decentralized
> social web standard activity from the current open, consensus-based
> process to any closed, member-only process.

Quick note: Working Groups are able to invite Experts to contribute to work. Experts do not need to have W3C Member status. Work of a WG is documented, informed by the CG, consensus-based, and follows the W3C Process (https://www.w3.org/2023/Process-20230612/).

The CG would continue to exist and follow through with its work, such as creating a test suite, continuing to raise issues implementers and users run into, triaging and working on errata, etc.

James


------- Original Message -------
On Thursday, September 21st, 2023 at 06:53, Lisa Rein <lisa@lisarein.com> wrote:


> Hello Everyone,
> 

> Lisa Rein, Co-founder of Creative Commons and Aaron Swartz Day here.
> 

> I have strong concerns about moving any open social web work out of the CG
> process and into a WG because it means less folks will be able to
> participate.
> 

> The whole point of creating a Decentralized Web is to have a more level
> playing field where independent groups can interoperate and flourish,
> which requires the process for creating Decentralized Web standards to be
> as transparent and inclusive as possible.
> 

> To that end, I think it would be a tragedy to move any decentralized
> social web standard activity from the current open, consensus-based
> process to any closed, member-only process.
> 

> Decentralized Web standards deserve to be developed in a truly open and
> inclusive manner - rather than a top-down approach where all concerned
> voices cannot possibly be heard, simply because they don’t actually have
> access to the process.
> 

> Only a transparent process, that is truly inclusive, will have any hope of
> being able to address the concerns of the numerous, diverse and often
> marginalized communities that will be depending on these very important
> Decentralized Web standards.
> 

> Thanks,
> 

> lisa
> 

> 

> Lisa Rein
> 

> Co-Founder, Creative Commons
> Co-Founder, Aaron Swartz Day
> 

> Chelsea Manning's Archivist
> Digital Librarian, Dr. Timothy Leary Futique Trust
> 

>