AB
Welcome to the public AB Wiki
The W3C Advisory Board (AB) provides ongoing guidance to the W3C Team on issues of strategy, management, legal matters, process, and conflict resolution. This page documents current AB projects, and is open to suggestions from W3C members and non-members.
Logo: W3C AB (updated with 2023 w3c icon, and updated blue)
Are you a member of the W3C Advisory Committee? You may be interested in this page:
AB Workflow
Overview: Being on the AB | AB Guide | Reaching consensus
📆 Meetings: Official Calendar | Scheduling & Logistics | Upcoming Agenda & Summaries (Member-only)
🌐 Public Resources: AB Priority Projects | Public Issue Tracker
🔵 Member-only: AB Home Page | Member Issue Tracker (archive) | Member Wiki | w3c-ac-forum@ list
🟪 AB-internal: Wiki | Issue Tracker | ab@ mailing list
Open AB Projects
Many critical Advisory Board projects are conducted in the open, transparent to the broader W3C community, who are also invited to participate:
W3C Process Maintenance Community Group
W3C process improvements are discussed in the community group:
Positive Work Environment Community Group
The Positive Work Environment group maintains the W3C Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct (CEPC) and related procedures and practices.
Vision Task Force
The VisionTF is a temporary Task Force by the AB through the end of June 2023 to work on the Vision Priority Project with interested W3C members.
Working Group Effectiveness Task Force
The AB takes an active interest in improving W3C working group effectiveness by documenting and communicating existing good practices that help significantly, above and beyond formal processes, for everyone (especially chairs) participating in working groups.
See the Working Group Effectiveness Task Force (TF) home page:
Ongoing Projects
Miscellaneous Projects
AB Wiki Editing Itself
Things to work on wiki-editing workflow for (Tantek, additional volunteers)
- long lived projects having their own undated URLs
- using redirects for per year priorities
- incorporate stuff in W3C AB 2013 2014 OLD PAGE into specific subpages for more navigable archival.
Cultural conventions for attribution
The new HTMLWG charter allows for working group members to contribute HTML5 Extension specifications using CC-by, and then places attribution requirements on any derivative works.
These attribution requirements are a good start for growing cultural conventions for attribution both inside W3C, and beyond W3C, towards a goal of making attribution founded in cultural norms rather than legal (copyright) requirements, potentially allowing for use of CC0 for contributions to W3C in the future.
See AB/attribution for draft suggested best practices for attribution.
Trademark License
The AB has created a Trademark License task force (Tantek Çelik and Michael Champion) to build broad consensus on a combination trademark / license policy to potentially permit more permissive copyright licenses on W3C drafts and specifications.
Open AB
The AB is working on (as is evident by this wiki page) doing more and more of its work in the open.
Currently Open AB work is occurring in two places:
- https://www.w3.org/wiki/AB (all projects on this wiki page)
- see "Suggestions" section below to contribute
- https://twitter.com/w3cab
Twitter Account
The Advisory Board has a Twitter account: @W3CAB
Nearly the entire AB has access and can post anything regarding AB-related matters. The methodology is to empower individual responsibility and trust by default, especially in such a small group. This method has worked well with the CSSWG (any CSSWG member may "have the keys" to @CSSWG) and it's been hugely successful in engaging the broader developer community.
If you are a member of the AB, contact Tantek Çelik on a secure communications channel and he'll gladly share access to @W3CAB.
- 2013-09-18 access broadly shared with AB members in person W3C AB meeting at MIT.
- 2013-06-04 @W3CAB Twitter created.
Acknowledgement
The Advisory Board has been discussing acknowledging the individuals who have made great contributions for the Web community. And the Wiki page records some initial exploration in this direction.
W3C Community and Tools
W3C Chairs Training
The Advisory Board has established Chair Training as a priority for 2014. At TPAC2013, Chairs had a breakfast meeting and expressed what additional information and skills they required to improve their effectiveness. The W3C Team developed a list of areas which have now evolved into a quarterly Chair Training program.
- W3C, Process, and the W3C Team, Philippe Le Hegaret, 23 January 2014
- Tools, Ralph Swick, 24 April 2014
- The Human Dimension, Charles McCathie Nevile, 17 June 2014
- Focus and Productivity, Arnaud Le Hors, 23 October 2014
- Focus and Productivity, Arnaud Le Hors, 29 January 2015
- Horizontal reviews, Virginie Galindo, September 2015
- New W3C process, its philosophy, and how to use it for agility, Steve Zilles, February/March 2015
- TBC: Making rapid progress in developing specs in W3C despite the W3C process
- IPR Management in a Github age - repo manager training, Kaz Ashimura, Sep 21 2017
Use of GitHub at W3C
The AB looks at use of GitHub at W3C specifically in terms of impacts on process and IP concerns.
Some W3C groups use use GitHub to develop specifications or edit non-normative documents. While the strategy for using Tracker and/or Bugzilla and/or GitHub is left to WG decision, there are some good practices that can be gathered. That section is pointing to effort to federate experiences and good practices.
- Read the GitHub draft guidelines
- Note that some experimentation is happening in WebRTC WG is order to link W3C mailing list and GitHub, based on Dominique Hazael-Massieux github notify effort
- Ask questions here GitHub.
Remote Participation
The AB is looking at issues related to remote participation in W3C meetings.
- See Remote participation
- Including Ann Bassetti's Introduction to IRC
OpenWeb Tools at W3C
The AB has discussed how to increase the use of OpenWeb Tools at W3C itself (a form of dogfooding). Many (most?) presentations at W3C workshops (e.g. the Workshop on Social Standards: The Future of Business) use non-open-web technologies/formats. W3C should work on good practices to encourage more use of OpenWeb Tools instead of, or at least before non-open-web technologies/formats.
- See open web tool
Side Projects
In addition to the above some members of the AB work on additional side projects related to W3C process, culture, etc.
- One-wiki
- ..
Historical Documents
See AB/Priorities for links to past AB projects by year from 2013 to the present.
