Reflect the reality that some W3C standards are voluntary and some not

[darobin]

Fixes #177

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[chaals]

Suggested change

	on global standards, some voluntary and some not, for Web technologies.
	on global standards for Web technologies.

might be simpler.

[chrisn]

I agree, if voluntary is controversial, better to just not say it. Otherwise the PR as proposed opens a question in readers' minds about what's voluntary and what's not.

[darobin]

I completely share your concerns and debated it with myself (and so I'm glad to do so with others — they're usually more interesting :). I think that there are two defensible positions:

1. It's controversial, and therefore we shouldn't mention it.
2. It's controversial, and therefore we should mention it.

My initial instinct was to go with (1), but then I wondered what we should expect from this document and changed my mind. Do we want this to be a document that helps us have hard conversations or one that pretends the hard conversations don't exist?

With respect to the question of voluntary standards, we should constantly be asking ourselves questions like:

• Is this something that should be voluntary or not?
• Are we respecting the Priority in how we deploy enforcement?
• Is this a cautious and responsible use of the power we have?

We demonstrate leadership when we face these questions; we fail our community when we pretend these questions aren't to be asked or don't correspond to the experienced reality of millions of sites and billions of people. I believe that this document would be stronger if it did more of the former.

I don't disagree that it makes the sentence clunky. One alternative would be to apply @chaals's change above and then include an additional bullet point under Operational Principles. Something like (wordsmithing welcome):

• Prudent Enforcement. We take great care to deploy the coercive power of standards thoughtfully, responsibly, and in accordance with clearly established principles.

I don't believe that the reality is on par with this principle, though several of us are trying, but we should be aspirational!

[chrisn]

I'll follow up in #177...

[darobin]

I'll respond there but see the change here.

[cwilso]

I am exceedingly uncomfortably with adding a new principle around "Enforcement" for an organization that does not currently appear to perform any enforcement of its standards.

[mgendler]

I think that

Prudent Enforcement: We take great care to deploy the coercive power of standards thoughtfully, responsibly, and in accordance with clearly established principles."

introduces severely more disagreeable ideas than the original suggestion of removing voluntary, which I already disagreed with. In particular because I have zero idea how you would operationalize this. While the other principles have been introduced and referenced by the team in the 'smoke testing' that's been done over the past year, which gives us much more certainty that they have a place in the vision. Introducing a new principle as we try to push this to wide review prior to an eventual AC vote for statement is not ideal. Maybe we can re-open this after the initial vision publication, but I would strongly disagree with adding this now.

[darobin]

@cwilso As I said, I'm not married to the writing. If you have a better word than "enforcement" that means "we work together to prevent other people from doing things" I'd be more than happy to take it.

@mgendler

I have zero idea how you would operationalize this

The only part in this that we don't already operationalise is doing it prudently and (to some point) based on principles. Have some faith that we can change that?

While the other principles have been introduced and referenced by the team in the 'smoke testing' that's been done over the past year, which gives us much more certainty that they have a place in the vision.

This reads like the vision is only a vision of the past. It also contradicts the proposal that the vision should support challenging discussions.

Introducing a new principle as we try to push this to wide review prior to an eventual AC vote for statement is not ideal.

That's backwards. You want content to be available for wide review, with the option to remove or change it should it prove problematic.

[darobin]

@mgendler I forgot to add. You mentioned in the thread that you understood "voluntary" as voluntary participation in standards-setting. If that's your understanding, I can certainly understand (and agree) why you wouldn't want it dropped. But I'm pretty sure that that's not what is meant here.

If I'm wrong and the idea is voluntary participation, then this calls for a different PR.

[frivoal]

The fact that participation is voluntary is maybe distinct from, but related to the idea that implementation is voluntary. If standards were to be de-jure compulsory, "whoever wants to" would not be an adequate answer to "who should write them".

[tantek]

I find myself strongly agreeing with @mgendler's comments and concerns.

First, I object to removing "voluntary" as it has always been since the foundation of W3C and the naming of "Recommendation", part of W3C culture and practices. It would be misrepresentative of past and current practices to remove it.

Second, the proposed new principle of "Prudent Enforcement" neither reflects what W3C has done, does today, or in my opinion should do in the future.

Whether W3C should or should not get into any form of "enforcement" or even "certification", or whether that would be good or not has been many times debated in the past, with always the same community conclusion: No.

As has been pointed out, there is no current practice of the sort proposed by the new principle. Stating it would not be aspirational based on ideas being tried, but rather stating pure fiction, which we must not do in the Vision.

As the web changes, especially in its impacts on society, and as W3C changes, in both composition of its members, and the kinds of technical work we do, it's reasonable to ask these kinds of questions about "certification" or "enforcement" again to consider new information and conditions.

But there's a huge gap between asking those questions based on new information, trying to collectively come to a different conclusion than we have in the past, and asserting even an aspirational principle to do so in the future.

At best I would mark this a "defer", but I would rather (PROPOSAL) close this PR without changes based on the fact that there is quite a bit of strong pushback on it, and no imminent chance of consensus.

Further discussion on alternative proposals should instead continue in comments on issue #177, as I have also requested in the two other PRs made to address #177 that did not gain consensus and have already been closed (#194 #196).

[michaelchampion]

@tantek wrote:

would rather (PROPOSAL) close this PR without changes based on the fact that there is quite a bit of strong pushback on it, and no imminent chance of consensus.

+1 The Vision work hasn't gone in the directions I hoped when we started 4 years ago. @darobin makes a fair point "This reads like the vision is only a vision of the past.". But the fact remains there has been nothing like consensus on a Vision of W3C that is substantially different than what it has been in the past.

For me the current Vision document does help clarify what the "full potential" of the web is by reference to the Ethical Web Principles and distills some operational principles from them. So it's worth publishing and advancing to Statement in more or less its current state, even if it's not what various participants, apparently for different reasons, would prefer. But that's the essence of what W3C (and "voluntary consensus standards" as I understood the term during my career) is all about -- finding a solution everyone can live with even if it isn't what they would have chosen on their own

[darobin]

It's certainly true @michaelchampion that the Vision would benefit from looking forward and imagining what the web could be. Or if the goal is to document the status quo, it might be better not to call it a "vision" unless the idea is explicitly that things should largely stay the same.

However my issue in this specific instance is that describing what we do as "voluntary standards" isn't even an accurate depiction of the current situation. It would, arguably, have been one some years ago but over time the case shifted. I agree with @tantek that that was the vision and practice a long time ago; it just does not reflect the full reality of what we do today.

I further agree with @michaelchampion that finding what you can live with, even if it's uninspiring, is key to the work. But we also need to have red lines. In my mind, misrepresenting what we do to the world, in a Statement, is definitely one. It's not in the EWP but I think that lying is bad, y'know.

[tantek]

It's certainly true @michaelchampion that the Vision would benefit from looking forward and imagining what the web could be.

I agree there is opportunity for more forward-looking or "aspirational" improvements in the Vision.

I suggest looking at considering contributing specific ideas along those lines to the scoped discussions in issues #13 #82 #143, or if none of those seem to fit a particular idea for such an improvement, file a new issue for that particular idea.

However my issue in this specific instance is that describing what we do as "voluntary standards" isn't even an accurate depiction of the current situation.

I think there is both disagreement on your "isn't even an accurate depiction" assertion, and further:

It would, arguably, have been one some years ago but over time the case shifted. I agree with @tantek that that was the vision and practice a long time ago;

At least we have some agreement here.

it just does not reflect the full reality of what we do today.

While I don't agree, I would also ask you to consider this instead then as an opportunity to be re-aspirational, that is, consider this explicit inclusion of "voluntary" in the Vision as an opportunity to be, as you wrote: "looking forward and imagining what the web could be", could be again, in this instance, since we at least agree that it was the "practice a long time ago".

Or if the goal is to document the status quo, it might be better not to call it a "vision" unless the idea is explicitly that things should largely stay the same.

I don't think anyone is advocating for strictly documenting or reinforcing a status quo, so yes, your implied double-negative point here about things should not "largely stay the same" applies to the degree of "voluntary" that is or is not true today.

I further agree with @michaelchampion that finding what you can live with, even if it's uninspiring, is key to the work.

Hopefully we can find a good if rough balance between what we "can live with" as a "key to the work" and how we can aspire and inspire to be better.

But we also need to have red lines. In my mind, misrepresenting what we do to the world, in a Statement, is definitely one. It's not in the EWP but I think that lying is bad, y'know.

As we include some (and potentially) more aspirational text in the Vision, I do not view that as misrepresentation or lying, nor do I think any reasonable reading would come to that conclusion. We have a separate issue on adversarial reading (#176) which folks can contribute specific instances of such concerns.

Since there was some support (and no objections) per the reacji to my proposal to close above, I am closing this PR without changes, without prejudice, and repeating my request to continue in comments on issue #177. In particular I request any proposals to change or add text related to "voluntary" go into that issue so they can be discussed in that broader context to see if we can find at least some consensus around any such proposals.