[wg/sustyweb] Sustainable Web Working Group

[ianbjacobs]

Is there work being incubated (in a Community Group, Business Group, IG, WG, or outside of W3C) that you'd like to highlight for W3C team attention?

UPDATE: draft charter,

What's the work?

Sustainable Web Design CG Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSG) 1.0

Where is it being incubated?

As of end of July 2023 the group is preparing a (lengthy) document using respec. Pre-respec content is available from the list of committees.

What help does it need?

• The group presented its work during the AC 2023 meeting
• The group plans to organize a TPAC 2023 breakout session
• It will be valuable to start getting review from others in the W3C community.

Where do you think it should go next?

The group will need time to get extensive review of the materials.

[ianbjacobs]

The CG has published its first draft: Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSG) 1.0.

[ianbjacobs]

New guidelines discussed at a TPAC breakout session

[ianbjacobs]

The CG has published a second draft of the guidelines as well as a JSON API that can be used to develop sites and tools.

[ianbjacobs]

See also At a Glance and the Quick Reference

[ianbjacobs]

A draft charter has been reviewed by the CG. I plan to bring this to the Strategy Team for next steps.

[plehegar]

Advance notice: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-ac-members/2024JanMar/0044.html

[himorin]

• in chars list (top table), Alexander Dawson has no affiliation

[ianbjacobs]

@himorin, I think the answer is "Invited Expert"

[ianbjacobs]

Just a note that this effort was covered in a recent IEEE Spectrum article "We Need to Decarbonize Software "

[chrisn]

I have a concern with this charter that the work is much broader in scope than environmental sustainability and would prefer to see it focus in on that. The current report seems to want to be a guide to website development that considers every possible interpretation of "sustainable".

[ianbjacobs]

Hi @chrisn,

Thanks for the input! In the scope section the charter says:

This group pursues the following sustainability goals:

• Reducing global carbon emissions.
• Reducing consumption of energy and material resources.
• Improving resilience of digital products and businesses.

If you do not think that sufficiently scopes the work, do you have any recommendations on what might help? I'm happy to jump on a call with you (and the proposed co-Chairs) to chat further.

Ian

[chrisn]

When I've asked about this in the past, the response has been that the group has taken an ESG approach (which is mentioned in the charter) and the broader scope is a consequence of that.

[himorin]

no comment or request from i18n

(sorry for late, due that I've been on business trip..)

[ruoxiran]

no comment or request from APA.

[plehegar]

No specific comments from PING on the charter.

However, we noted that the Guidelines document do tend to go outside the scope of sustainability, such as 2.11 Avoid Manipulative Patterns.

[chrisn]

@ianbjacobs The example noted in https://github.com/w3c/strategy/issues/420#issuecomment-2037688761 is just one of many that I'm concerned about.

[ianbjacobs]

@ylafon and @simoneonofri, can you let me know what to expect regarding TAG and Security reviews of this charter? Thank you!

[plehegar]

Regarding the Chairs, I believe one of them is the main/sole editor of the spec, which seems unhealthy as a combo. Can we avoid having the chair also being the main editor of the sole/only specification in the group?

[chrisn]

Here's another example that's beyond the scope of environmental sustainability. While worthwhile, this seems to be beyond what W3C should be standardising. Is the group's plan to broaden the charter scope, or de-scope their draft report?

[ianbjacobs]

Hi @chrisn,

This is important feedback. I believe the CG is intentionally taking a broad position on sustainability (cf. for example this section on emissions v. ESG in the intro doc).

I will bring this topic to the next CG meeting for more discussion. I have been wondering whether one way to scope the work is for a subset of the CG's guidelines to make their way into a WG deliverable.

Thank you!

[chrisn]

Thanks, reading that section you linked to, I can see this is the root cause of the concerns I've mentioned here. It may be worth us discussing.

[ianbjacobs]

@chrisn, would you be interested in attending the next CG meeting (24 April @ 13h00 UTC)?

[chrisn]

I would, but I see that the group has a practice of recording meetings, and I wouldn't consent to that. I'm not sure I have much more to add, though, tbh.

[simoneonofri]

I agree with ESG practices generally, and it's good to see them at the Web level as well.

I don't have specific comments on the charter.

Concerning the deliverable, I'm glad security has already been addressed.

On the other hand, I agree with @plehegar and @chrisn that the scope of some of the chapters seems to me to be outside the scope of the Web but more at the organizational level, for some passages (i.e., 5.17, 5.18, 5.19, 5.23) along the lines of the B-Corp questionnaires.

[ianbjacobs]

@plehegar, @simoneonofri, and @chrisn, I am chatting with the CG about model (which would be reflected in the charter) that the CG might continue to take a holistic approach in its thinking but that the WG Guidelines would be narrower (complemented by informative best practices). We are talking about what changes to the charter would help make that clear.

[ianbjacobs]

Hi all, we've updated the draft charter deliverables based on the feedback about scope. The charter now provides more information about the ESG approach taken by the CG and also sets an expectation that the future Rec-track document may not include all of the guidelines. (The choice of what will be included will depend on the WG following the usual W3C Process.)

[chrisn]

I don't think the updated charter addresses the scope question, as rather than reduce scope it adds further explanation on existing goals.

[ylafon]

From last week's TAG minutes: https://github.com/w3ctag/meetings/blob/gh-pages/2024/telcons/06-03-minutes.md#charter-reviews (second bullet)

[ianbjacobs]

Thank you, @ylafon. The group recognizes the importance of focus and that some of the guidelines in the CG report may not be part of a future Recommendation.