W3C

Wikimedia Foundation is a member organisation of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as of March 2019. Any Foundation staff member, or Foundation-vetted volunteer, may join and participate in W3C Working Groups, W3C Interest Groups, and W3C Community Groups on behalf of WMF.

AC rep

The Foundation has a single point-of-contact for W3C matters, who in W3C lingo is called the "AC rep". This person is responsible for approving people that join individual W3C groups as Foundation-representing members, and for casting WMF's vote in W3C elections and consultations.

The current AC rep for Wikimedia Foundation is Roan Kattouw, as of Oct 2023.

Previous reps:

Larissa Gaulia (Aug 2023 - Oct 2023)
Kate Chapman (until Aug 2023)
(unknown)
Greg Grossmeier (July - Dec 2021)
Gilles Dubuc (Dec 2020 - July 2021)
Evan Prodromou (March 2019 - Dec 2020)

What is the W3C and what do they do?

The Wikipedia article on the subject is of course quite helpful to understand the W3C as an organisation. Broadly, they are responsible for new and existing web standards, such as Web APIs exposed to HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Note that the standards for HTML and DOM itself are nowadays driven by WHATWG instead.

Cost

As a non-profit organisation we pay a special rate and this membership costs us $7900 per year (as of 2019), currently coming out of the Performance Team's budget in the Technology department for historical reasons.

Purpose of our membership

Being members of the W3C gives us a seat at the table where many decisions that define the future of the Web are made. Commercial browser vendors (Google, Apple, Microsoft) tend to be the main participants and driving force in most W3C working groups. Our participation helps counter-balance the for-profit motivations for their heavy participation in web standards. In addition, we are one of the few member organizations that directly represent the interests of a website and its web developers that consume Web APIs, rather than the interests of browser vendors that build them. We are among other members that represent major Internet properties in working groups (eg. Salesforce, Akamai, and Facebook) but most of those have their own for-profit interests as well.

If we want to keep the web open, and have standards that work in the interest of open knowledge, equity, and privacy, it's crucial that we participate in the standards work that defines what technology ends up in web browsers and the shape they take.

Wikipedia, as highly visible Internet website, is read and followed by web developers all around the world, young and old alike. Our technology and implementation choices, and the way we talk about them, inspire and influence the tech industry at large. Often following our example, or looking at us for ideas how problems have been solved before.

Our voice in working groups is highly valued by standards writers. We have a global audience, responsible for a significant portion of Internet traffic and browser usage (which browser vendors care about), with mission that is respected, highly visible, and with noble intentions (which W3C cares about).

How to participate

Create an account

Request an account on the W3C website. You need to use a @wikimedia.org address when doing this, and enter "Wikimedia Foundation" as your parent organisation when asked. This step is required only once, after which you can join any of the working groups. You can also change the email later to a personal address, or add multiple addresses to your account.

If you're not sure if you have an account and want to check without entering a working group at the same time, you can try logging in via My profile, or use Recover account.

Join working groups, interest groups, or community groups

Listed at: https://www.w3.org/groups. As of April 2021, there exist 39 Working Groups, 10 Interest Groups, and 347 Community Groups.

Open the summary for a group and click "Join the group" at the bottom of the page, which will ask your credentials. After requesting to join, the WMF contact person (AC rep) will review and approve your join request(s) as soon as possible.

Engagement requirements are low. It can be as low as attending a meeting from time to time. Most groups have monthly or bi-monthly online meetings. It can be as high as chairing a group, starting a new group, contributing to existing specs, drafting new specifications, etc.

Each group has a public mailing list at https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ (typically 1 or 2 messages a week). Anyone can subscribe to the mailing lists and read along, ask questions, etc. Participating on the mailing lists does not require becoming a group member, and is a great way to get started in area of interest.

Current participation

To see your current group memberships, or those of other staff, see https://www.w3.org/organizations/114165/participants. This link requires a W3C login, which you can create youself if you have an @wikimedia.org email address. As of January 2023, WMF has 15 member participants across 18 different W3C groups.

Examples of working groups we participate in:

Web Applications Working Group (mailing list: public-webapps)
Web Performance Working Group (mailing list: public-web-perf).
Web Editing Working Group
Privacy Interest Group