Metagov Panel Standards Governance On The Internet Today
Speaker 1: Wonderful. So, yeah, there are a lot of service bodies, and I think we wanna restrict ourselves to those that are doing something adjacent to the Internet. I was a little surprised to to find out that ISO, you know, is involved and so so, yeah, about division of labor. I could I could, like, take a rough stab at the difference between WPC and IP ETF on the, like, web Internet...
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Transcript
Wonderful. So, yeah, there are a lot of service bodies, and I think we wanna restrict ourselves to those that are doing something adjacent to the Internet. I was a little surprised to to find out that ISO, you know, is involved and so so, yeah, about division of labor. I could I could, like, take a rough stab at the difference between WPC and IP ETF on the, like, web Internet distinction. But maybe, Charles, just, like, at a high level, keeping quick to save time for the really meaty, sexy questions, could you just kinda describe the kind of biggest main yeah. Maybe describe w three c I t f and and then we can get John to kinda complement where ISO ISO maybe I triple e fit in in terms of defining the Internet. Oh, you're muted.
Yeah. So IETF has been around for, you know, a very long time, relatively speaking. And it, you know, was, hey. We're we're gonna organize this Internet thing, and we, you know, we wanna do it differently. And then people like w three c started up deliberately copying a lot of that philosophy. One of the one of the
kind of things is, you know, they've set up
and said this should all be voluntary. This is not about, you know, imposing standards or, you know, having some countries say this is, you know, like these countries think. And at one level, they've, you know, they have spawned quite a lot of, you know, very small standards organizations.
So in
in the kind of blockchain space that I'm I'm doing a bunch of work, you find there are standards processes of some kind or other, like the the EIPs, the Ethereum Improvement Processes, which sort of copies the way that some software some programming languages, you know, set up standards and and make decisions for how do we improve this language as a as a kind of open participation process. But I think w three c and and IETF are the core ones for the Internet. To a certain extent, you know, w three c focuses on the web. You probably would like well, the the What Wegie is, you know, doing stuff that's basically very browser centric. The specifying HTML, specifying the DOM, a few things like that. And that's, you know, things set up by four browser companies, which are probably, if you're American based, the first four browser companies you think of. And they kind of claim that, you know, they are special. And in their own way, they're all special. So, yes, I'll I'll throw in as many acronyms about my own pack.
Great. And I guess the the the bite sentence I was fishing for a little bit, w three c is in charge of the web, which is just a tiny part of the Internet, and IETF is in charge of the Internet, which is both an an abstract thing. All the other ports besides HTTP and also a physical thing? Is IT ETF involved in the physical, the big tubes on the ground?
No. It's more I mean, there's a there's a sort of the the wire protocols, but they they as far as I know, they're only they're only responsible for the the signal the electronic signals that get passed sort of bit level.
Okay. And how do ISO and and n triple e and ISO fit into the Internet?
Well, they have a I can you know, I'm passing acquaintance with them. Not a pleasant one. I, you know, definitely prefer the IETF model. But they're they're also involved in this game because they're they have memberships that pay attention to what has been blessed by ISO and NISO. So what it matters to them, to their, like, the contracts that they have with governments and so forth that ISO and NISO have recognized things. And often, they've taken protocols that have been developed in the IT app and largely just copied them. Yeah. Made a change way small changes.
I wanna take one step back to note that I kinda did a a pretty cold open because that's my brain. But I wanna welcome everybody joining this conversation and thank John and Charles who both have a lot of experience with what we call it standards governance. Standards governance is one way to govern. As as Charles gave us a hint, it's a kind of a hands off way. It's based on voluntary adoption, no coercion. People you just say you all it seems to be is a bunch of people saying, if you wanna do things this way, you can. Maybe some other people do it that way too. And if a bunch of people are doing it that way, there could be any other way, but we said that way, then you might be able to talk to each other.
So yeah. So so I'd like to actually riff off that a little bit. There's yeah. Because they're all voluntary things, you you get what people call standard shopping or venue shopping, the standards. So people who are trying to influence what gets developed. We'll look at, you know, what is the what is the place where I want this work to happen? And and that can be important. You know, if you're a if you're a company trying to decide where to do the work, then who gets to do the work, how a particular organization accepts people, and and who is actually active there at the time is a thing that companies, you know, do play with and do try and, you know, I guess, manipulate is a strong word, but I'll use it because it's not that not inaccurate. So you so you get these organizations being set up or or being chosen because they suit particular players in the space. And then you get, you know, a thing like Oasis. Oasis produces a whole lot of standards. It's it's a very easy organization to join and to say, we're gonna work here. And probably not the fundamental standards for, you know, the Internet for the web, but they they make a lot of business business oriented standards for specific kinds of work. In a sense, they overlap with ISO. And there's another bit that John mentioned how, you know, some countries, some governments, some, you know, very big company contracts and stuff, it matters whether you get stuff in ISO. So people like w three c, OASIS, probably IETF, have this pathway into ISO where they can basically take a piece of their work and say, hey, ISO, bless this. And ISO does go through its processes. They're, yeah, they're not strictly a a rubber stamp, but if something is working and running on the Internet and people are using it and, you know, has been developed at w three c over over a number of years, ISO is generally unlikely to say, oh, yeah. But, you know, we're going to turn everything into a left handed version of that. They they generally do just bless it in the end. So That's
all the some fast Space is what you tracking. They had some fast tracking things that are they they've I think ISO and ISO both tried to imitate, I think, a little bit of the IETF processes that their people are calling for more lightweight, more open things. And so they're they've introduced some fast tracking, so something only may only take a year to fast track an already blessed standard. So that's relatively fast for them. But there's a whole different culture of, you know, voting. The the the ISO and ISO have voting members. Right? And the ITF explicitly doesn't believe in voting. They believe in rough consensus and working code. IETF has changed a lot. When I first got involved, it was, you know, very collegial. People were kind of, I think, intimidated by the the big the big shots that were present, and there everyone was sort of more or less a little bit more ethical, I think, than they are now. And but we've got currently I haven't gone to IETF meetings in a while, but the rumors are, like, in toxic work environments, you know, the big the big companies are there. They're and as Charles said, they're manipulating trying to manipulate standards, get a get a develop an advantage for themselves. These are all rumors, so not firsthand experience for me.
We're a bit skipping to the last question, which, I'm excited to learn more about. And, because, you know, John, you've referred a bit to the IETF style, and and this distinction, between yeah. I guess what? The principle of working code, the principle of rough consensus compared with formal voting. It'll be fun to get into that, but I wanna do a bit more origin story work. Oh, we're also getting into something I wanna reserve for the next meeting, which is sort of failure modes and modes of capture. The way the the all the different ways things can go wrong, which I wanna reserve as a theme for for Wednesday. I would be oh, and and, again, just to back out some vocab. I so I think of they say how long the meter is. Right? They're very, very general global standards organization. And what what's something kind of comparably general to give a sense of I, Triple E's scope that they define?
I know very I know a lot less about I, triple e.
And and then, I don't know what NISO is, actually. I've just been saying it because you say it.
The national The US National Okay. Information standards organization. I see.
So so ISO has this model of this is an international group. ISO started out defining screw threads and stop signs. Yeah. Because these were important things to industry across the world at the time. There's a there's a beautiful story about stop sign, which was standardized by ISOs, that, you know, octagonal thing that we all recognize. There is actually another version in the standard or alternative option, which you may have seen if you go to Cuba. Apparently, Cuba uses the other version, but the rest of the world, to a first approximation, uses the standard octagonal stop sign in yellow, as you will have not noticed. And the reason why it's yellow is because when writing the standard, the good folk of Montana went to the the Department of Transportation, something in Montana, went to NYISO, which is the US representative and said, all the red paint freezes off in winter, and we'll have to repaint, you know, every winter. We cannot make stop signs in red. And the good folk of NISO said, oh, that's a problem. Went to this global organization where everyone was saying red, red, red, red, red, and said, look, we cannot do this because if we do, we can't put stop signs in Montana. And the world said, okay, we we will accept yellow and finalize the standard as yellow in the next year. This is the forties. The people in Montana got some red paint that stayed on over winter and said, yeah. Red's easier to see. And and so,
you know,
the the story, which is some years old and may have been outdated, it can show some limitations of standards. I realize that's answering the wrong question, Seth. But it's also yeah. This is how the things work out. People people pick up on these things. They're trying to do the right thing. They make a decision. And I think, you know, it's not uncommon that if the world has figured how to do something out and the standards body hasn't got it right, the standards body is typically just gonna throw up its hands.
Yeah. Oh, well.
Oh, well, it's got this. I don't have as I don't have as colorful as story for the URL. You
John, your connection's pretty poor. We're not get we're only getting every other words. So I'm afraid Thank
to Maybe every four or four. People finally passed. That's a whole separate story. I'll try this. Can you I got you. Just say Yeah.
That that that improves things a lot. Thank you, John.
Okay. So the, yeah, the URL passed for there was a a separate story about that. But, basically, when it was finalized, more most of the browsers were out of compliance already because stuff gets in that it's just just not that practical. So everyone is already sort of beyond the scope of it, and it's okay. It's terrible. And, you know, one example is, you know, you're not supposed to put you know, every URL is supposed to be preceded be preceded by HTTP. And then, you know, buses, billboards, everyone's using their the small, you know you know, you know, a meta.gov or, you know, they're using domain names. So they're they're out of compliance right away. The whole world is doing it. Every browser supports the noncompliant version. You're not supposed to do it according to the standard.
That's that's so ironic and fascinating. I actually so, I would say, yeah, it is it is the case that you answered the wrong question, but you did it very much in the right way. And I'm gonna emphasize, a ground rule I I wanna set that I'm really pleased with. I think this gathering, no matter how badly, I do in organizing, is gonna be fascinating if we stick as much as possible to anecdotes, anecdotes and stories and such. And so with that spirit, I'd I'd love to hear from both of you your first experience contributing and something that sort of surprised you or took you a while to understand as you're getting started.
I'll just I'll
let them get this.
Thank you. Yeah. What sort of shocked me was how easy and how open the ITF was. You know, it's so like, oh, how do you get one of these Internet drafts going? How do you publish this saying this is my stake in the ground? And how do I how does one create an Internet standard that seems so daunting? Well, it turns out anyone in the entire world can do this if they know have some word processing skills, can get the boilerplate right. You know, you can be five years old and publish an Internet draft, which says, this is my proposed standard. Now let's get some discussion going. So you they are the IETF, Internet engineering task force, offers a publishing platform for anybody. You publish it, and the draft is immediately available. They do some rough check for spam or you know, probably, but, anyone can do it, and it expires in six months. So most most of these things go away because no one has a few people have the discipline to follow it up. But what you do is you generate discussion. You form a working group. This takes, you know, adult skills. And if you're if you actually wanna pursue that, then you gotta build a community around it, and you keep renewing it. Again, so already you left a whole bunch of people in the dust who don't have that ability or the interest or, in fact, you know, they couldn't get any kind of consensus run. So many Internet drafts get winnowed down to a few proposed standards proposed. And and in the ITF terms, that is the the request for comments. It sounds like not a standard, but that's as close as you get to a standard. And there are I'll just end with there are two main tracks. There's one that's easy to get through, and that's the community based information track standards or informational RFC, and the other is the standards track RFCs. And those are actually get a lot more scrutiny because they're it's considered a kind of core working part of the Internet. So you can go you can go either route. And so I was you meant the question was what surprised me the most. One was how easy it is to get on the board. Anyone can do it, and and that's a beautiful thing, very democratic and open. And then you sort of prove yourself with your by having some discipline in getting through this and building community. And then the second thing is how relatively easy it is to get one of these community based standards. So there are bunch of important things that you would be surprised to learn are community based standards, not standards track with the IETF. So I'll stop.
Such as?
Well, the first metadata standards were Dublin Core, and I had the pleasure of working on those, and they are informational RFCs. The the entire world uses Dublin Core as far as I can tell, or or they're or just they're using descendants of Dublin Core. And all of those standards are not standards track. There are RFCs that are not standards track, but they have become ISO and NISO standards.
How how old were you, and how did you kinda get shuttled into the process? Were you encouraged, pulled? Were you just precocious, just randomly stumbling through the Internet on the ITF? How how did it happen for you?
I was working at UC Berkeley on information systems, basically rival rivaling the World Wide Web. I said, where how do you have the most impact? You start going to these IETF meetings I'd heard about. So there's Tim Berners Lee trying to standardize the URL. There's this unknown this big gap in the whole metadata world. And I got excited, interested, got involved in standardizing the URL, with some and, you know, and related standards. And I I found out how easy it was and how open. I said, this is cool. How old was I? Let's say about 30. In my early thirties.
Great. Thank you. How about what's what's what's your origin story, Charles?
So I was I was in
my late twenties. I was I was working at a university in Melbourne, RMIT, which is a it's a fairly prestigious university in Australia. It's somewhat analogous to MIT in The US if if The US was sort of its own little bubble and no one else looked at it and knew about it. And I was working on teaching people, you know, how to build stuff for the web, and so I was trying to get it, you know, right up to date and right in line with new stuff. And I I came across a thing that made no sense to me in in CSS, Cassianic style sheets, which pretty fairly cool thing. And And I went and talked to my boss who happened to be my mom and said, so this thing, this bit just makes no sense to me. It's crazy. We should fix it. And she said, you're coming. You're showing. And I was like, yeah. No. Really. It's it needs to be fixed. And she said, oh, well, you know, talk to Bert or or Al. I said, He explained who these people are, and and so Bert Bos was the guy who, with Hock and Lee, wrote the first CSS specification, and Al was the guy working on accessibility, leading an accessibility working group at w three c. And my issue was accessibility. And at that time, w three c was essentially had to be a member. I I was waiting for RMIT, and RMIT happened to be a member largely on the strength of my mom was working there, and she knew a bunch of people who were behind setting up w three c. So she said, yes. Of course. We're going to join. So I, you know, went into the WBCC website, got myself, you know, member access because I was a member, signed myself up to this group, turned up to yeah. Actually, I started emailing the group cause it worked by email. A little bit like the the Medigov Slack thing where you, you know, pop in and start chatting anyway. And so I turned up to some telephone conferences and started arguing the case, and and that was it. You just you're in. The I guess the the difference between then and now, Robin, who's unfortunately not here, about fifteen years ago maybe or more, give or take five years probably, suggested to w three c that we set up a a community group process. So to run a thing in w three c, you normally set up a working group. That's a proposal where you go and say, w three c, you guys should invest time in this working group. A bunch of people wanna solve this problem, and you write a charter for a group, and that group is gonna decide, you know, what deliverables. But its charter will tell it what deliverables it can work on to some extent, then it goes and does its work. That's a slight difference from IETF. And and so it's not like anybody can do stuff in a w three c working group. In practice, anyone can join now. You no longer have to be a member. But community groups are just you know, that translated into the anybody can set up a community group. You go to the website at w three c. You say, I wanna set up a community group. You get five people to, you know, support your community group existing, and it exists. And then you can, you know, do nothing very much, talk amongst yourselves, produce a document that no one cares about, or, you know, equally, you can actually, you know, produce a draft specification that, you know, people think is really crucial. So there's things like the the the decentralized identifiers, the DID specs, the verifiable credentials work. A lot of that actually, you know, starts its life in a community group. There's been various community groups around payment options and and payment systems that have been important in starting up work that then moves into you know, people say, yeah. We want this to be a proper WCC recommendation. And and to be a recommendation, you have to come from a working group. So you get this community group creator thing, chat as a working group gets going. The, yeah, the the question that at company this is, you know, what are the things you had to learn to do? And I think it's important. I was, you know, twenty twenty lots, I guess. I was very smart. You know, just ask me. I I knew everything almost. I, yeah, was very passionate about certain things, and so I had to learn to listen. And and I had to learn to listen again, and I had to learn to listen again. I had to learn to put myself in a position of understanding people who were really not me. So at one point, w three c was doing payment stuff, and they were doing mobile stuff, and they're thinking about how, you know, we can solve the developing world's problems. And people went off to the developing world. And, yeah, essentially, the the message on offer there was, sounds great. Thanks, but we've already got one. You guys are behind. And and I watched a bunch of people not listen to that message and go off and do a heap of work that they thought would be really valuable, and it was useless largely because the people they thought it was, you know, going the people they thought would be the market couldn't care less. And the the other skill I had to learn is playing werewolf or there's a game you can buy called the werewolves of Sleepy Hollow or something. And it's based on a game called mafia. You should look up the mafia game on Wikipedia. It's a social game where you basically sit around and, you know, try and figure out which kids play the the trivial version called Wink of Murder. You gotta figure out, you know, who done it. And so it's about people are, you know, mostly telling the truth and a couple of people are lying. And for the good of the community, you have to sow you have to figure out who is who. And and that so that game, Werewolf has played an awful lot of W3C meetings, and it's interesting to play. But it also feels exactly like, you know, you're just doing the same work you've done all day. You're trying to work out who is in there as a corporate shield, who is there, you know, trying to break the process, who is there acting in good faith. Because in a very diverse group, you'll get ideas that seem completely crazy when they turn up. And you need to you're figuring out, you know, who do we listen to and and whose objection do we take seriously because of something we really none of us understood, and whose objection is really just a, you know, piece of trying to block work from going forward. These are these are things that no one's ever managed to write good rules for, but but playing werewolf is good practice.
That that's a amazing analogy. I guess that's something that suggests the big question my mind. Well, first, it's very fun to hear that, for you, standards building is a family trade. And, it it'll be an absolute delight if we can, get your mother, around on Wednesday. If if, yeah, if if if she's got the, you know, stories to tell, that sounds fascinating. There is there is kind of, like, an understanding that, you know, consensus doesn't scale. And even the Moxie doesn't scale, in large part because of bad actors. And Wikipedia kinda stands out as one of our big counterexamples of a of a kind of consensus organization that's managed to, you know, be successful at scale despite bad actors, despite all kinds of adversity. Can I put IETF in my very small canon of organizations that have succeeded at doing that, or are there some ways that somehow, like, been more a victim or less robust to werewolves and and other bad actors, Charles?
Well, I can I can only comment that
Yeah? Please.
The the ITF in the early days was a very collegial much more collegial than I recall than than I I hear that it is lately. So I think as as the engine head has scaled, you these scaling problems have shown up more. I really don't know how functional it is. I think it may it's it's still pretty functional, I think, but I will also mention that that I think you can put it in the the Wikipedia class. I'm I'm like you, I'm surprised that Wikipedia works so well. I'd love to know why, and that's worth understanding. And, I'll also say that so that when the URL was being standardized, that was Tim Berners Lee was was driving this, and he was extremely frustrated by the process. The ITF was had before this, it the this is a URL is like an application. It's a high level protocol. And below that, you know, you've got transport network, you know, wire level protocols, very sciency, very, you know, math. The math doesn't work. You know? If the signals don't get through, you you know, it's not working. But at the human level, there are many more opinions and speculation are driving things. So he was so frustrated. That's when he decided to create the w three c. And, he was he was trying to make it different. My understanding is how it worked out is it's now kind of similar because the getting the sociology right is hard. So I'm I'm not sure what I I haven't really worked with in the with the dynamics of it, but it it may not be as rosy as he thought it would be.
To repeat that back to you, are you saying that, you know, IETF was essentially designed to handle standards that have a ground truth and where reality gets a vote? And that kinda made certain things easy. But in on with w three c, it was designed for things where reality doesn't get a vote, where there's a lot more opinions, and it's gonna be harder to get maybe people on board. And, therefore, it was designed with a different governance structure to kind of accommodate that more social reality component. Is that what you said?
Yeah. I can't comment on how it how exactly it was designed, but I could tell you that's the the motivation where it was to make it somehow easier and less less prone to the the impasses that the IETF got into. It was new area for the IETF. The IETF has gotten better at it. I assume w three c has got its own ways of dealing with it.
So so some of the differences, w w three c was very explicitly set up by, yeah, by by a handful of people at MIT as a vehicle designed for corporate membership and designed to give influential corporations a clear way of having a say in how the web worked. I I have so so I have read a bunch of, you know, the the foundational sort of faxes and pre establishment jockeying notes between the people who set the thing up and, you know, the down to the how easy or how to it's gonna be to recruit Tim into this thing, you know, and and how do we set it up? And and so they were set up with a a slightly different approach to what they wanted to achieve. Our ATF claimed it was, you know, not at all about corporations, and my read is slightly different to John's. Certainly, corporations have, you know, have a big place in our ETF because they pay a lot of the people who turn up. And, you know, but but I don't think any standard organ, I don't think any consensus org is, you know, really measuring the consensus of the universe. They're they're all getting pushed around and gained by people who have a stake, and they all have sort of social processes to try and correct that, or or at least, you know, break break free of the the worst parts of the problem. And so I think, you know, the the yes. I agree with John absolutely that in in some ways, they think they're very different from each other and and they're fairly close. The there's a lot in w three c that's very, very clearly inherited from IETF. And and and yet, you know, there are there are some some really core differences. So so w three c has always talked a lot about rough consensus and running code, you know, about the importance of reality actually getting a a say. And and at the same time, you know, he was set up with Tim as the the benevolent benevolent dictator for life. The core structure of w three c was all about, you know, Tim makes decisions and gets advised by, you know, a a team who do, you know, have a very strong role in the development work. And so the history of w three c has this shift of, first, the the members asserting their power. You know, the the the members sort of setting up in in the early days, w three c was a very simplistic organization. You pay your money as a company, then your people can turn up. They set up working groups. The working groups produce things, and Tim decides whether he likes them. And the the members got together at one of these twice yearly meetings in Peabody in 1996, I believe, and said, hey. Yeah. This isn't really working. We need a we need a a better documented process. We wanna see how this works and how the members get a say and, you know, how we balance each other out. Over the the course of the last couple of decades, a parallel process has been repeated, which is, yeah, how do we give people a say when they're not members, when they're not a corporation that can afford to send, you know, highly paid engineers halfway around the world seven times a year to sit down for a week with a a bunch of colleagues who mostly agree. I can see your question, sir. So so what what social processes attempt to deal with the politing in w three c? The idea that you have a, you know, a dictator, a sort of a decision a single decision maker, I guess, to call it, at the end means that you you start this process where you develop what seems like consensus. And if there's a, you know, if there's a strong objection, you can still, you know, move ahead and say, look, you know, we we have rough consensus. There is a strong objection. This is noted as a formal objection. Traditionally, Tim Berners Lee dealt with the formal objections, and he really hated that and made it clear that he didn't want to. So there were a few of them. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of pressure on groups to resolve objections and figure out, you know, how to actually reach agreement. Tim essentially has stepped away from w three c. The for a long time, you know, he hasn't resolved direct objections himself. And in instead, you know, there's this process of essentially arguing in that amongst the membership and saying, well, you know, we've gotta do this a couple of sort of extreme cases. One was a spec called EME. I can't tell you what EME stands for, but it it's about allowing allowing for the use of what you call copy protected systems, copy protected videos. And this was this huge thing of, yeah, DRM is bad for the web. And the the the arguments, you know, basically went along the lines of and there's there's technical work in there about what it does and how you incorporate this stuff in a in a browser. Spoiler, DRM people want. But they are gonna basically went along the lines. The DRM is terrible and you will, you know, destroy the universe if you allow. You know, if w three c says DRM can be, you know, implemented in a browser, the web will fall apart and people will hate everything. And and on the other side, people said, look. DRM is here in Nvidia, and you're not getting, you know, good video without DRM, so we're not actually gonna have it. The Yeah. This was an objection that the Royal W3CN took up massive amounts of discussion time. It was It's clearly the most contentious decision they've ever taken in terms of it's the only one where a resolution of a formal objection was appealed because there's an appeal process. There's these sort of endless or almost endless processes to, you know, try and say, well, If people really, really, really are unhappy, then we can, you know, reopen this. And so w three c sort of has votes. They're they're not actually binding until very, very recently. But in in the appeal, the votes went sort of about sixty, forty against blocking this work. So, you know, a lot of w three c members said w three c should not do this. A lot of other w three c members, a majority of them.
I was gonna
say Actually, you have to. So, John, go ahead.
Sorry. I go ahead. I got excited because I just I just noticed that to I your mother is Lydia Neville, and I know her. And I've probably been in your house.
Yeah. Well, you've been probably in your house.
So say hi to her hi to her. But I was thinking I'm thinking, you know, there's a sense of there are standards that can you know, we're talking about standards development organizations and bodies, but there are a lot of standards out there that are sort of de facto. They haven't been blessed by organizations, but we still use them. And some tools out there that are just really exciting are things like, you know, reputation based voting that takes place on, like, Stack Overflow. So the all the developers in the world rely hugely on Stack Overflow for the getting solutions to their technical questions. And there's a voting mechanism, and there's a there's a person who asked the question, and they can have any the answer that they accepted. That means the one they liked, and then that may be different from the most upvoted. But the user approaching it can say, I don't want either of those. I want this third one because that actually matches my use case better. So there's a way in which we get a lot of benefit from this communal big communal brain. There's no document, but that was incredibly useful way of proceeding, to solve problems and build build systems that a lot of people rely on. So I really like to you know, there's a whole bunch of, like, standards work that I wish could be done, but I don't know. You know, Greg, you mentioned how the the the wealth supremacy and the and I talked about the the inefficiency of typical standards development work. And I'm thinking that there's there's gotta be a more grassroots way of doing it, a much more distributed way of doing it. And this is particularly affects things like metadata. So, you know, I've got this tool going that does reputation based voting, and I've got a little some slides, but I won't I'm not gonna threaten you with that. It's but it's I think there's a lot of interesting stuff going on in that area, but that risk getting out of scope for what Seth has put together on the actual organizations. But these organizations aren't gonna they're built in as a kind of closeness in the sense of membership, getting on airplanes. And, of course, you've got all these egos that are competing as people get in the room and they're they're, you know, egos and stealth agendas and all the politics that comes in when large amounts of money are at play for the development work that's ahead for this organization or that organization. So, you know, I'll put a pause
there. Cecile, did you do
you feel
like your question was answered? Do you wanna give another tab?
Thanks, Seth. I I feel like it could be a call in and of itself. And so I began to get a really good sense from Shaul's as to what we're talking about in terms of how to sort of constrain constrain and corral the, you know, the process. But but yeah, I I'm I'm fine for now. And thanks for circling back, Seth. And and yeah, if if there's interest in a larger conversation about that particular aspect of things, that's obviously where I play and would be would love to, you know, have that conversation.
But certainly, I think, on one level, you know,
as I see the framing of Wednesday, it's like what goes wrong and how do you fix it is sort of the the the nature of your question. And, yes, there's there's a lot of material there and a lot of history.
So Yeah.
K. And and we scheduled we scheduled to add that awkward time to to accommodate Charles.
Well, good. Good.
Well, I will certainly listen to that. I won't be there, but and and maybe we can set up a a follow-up conversation. But but thank you for for your contributions.
And feel free to cede some questions. I'm I'm about to post my questions for that session, and I can incorporate yours as well. In our last ten minutes, I'd like you know, so I think a major goal of this meeting is provide our members a way to get involved in the Internet. You know, both of you have said you're just kind of surprised how easy it is to decide to govern the Internet. You just have to decide you want to, and you have to maybe demonstrate your authority and persistence, and interest by engaging with the community, by following some of its practices. So let's say I'm passionate about governance and the Internet, and I have free time, and I like email, but I don't have any experience serving a board or a working group. Kinda as concretely as possible, how do I get involved in helping to govern the Internet?
You you sign you know, you find who is talking about the thing that you care about and and where is it being decided, And you go hang out. Right? It's sort of like, how do you how do you get involved in the local scene for cricket or croquet or whatever your favorite, you know, sport or hobby is, you know, crochet. You go and find the people who are doing it. And in very many cases in in Internet governance, it will be, you know, there'll be an email list or a a Telegram channel or something that's this is where it happens. And if you find where it happens, you usually you know, you can just sort of, like, talk to people, hang out with them a bit, and and away you go. You know, you you get involved.
I I agree. Yeah. I agree. Like, hang out and get learn the lingo, learn how what the sort of the social norms are in this particular group so you don't put your foot in your mouth right away and ask dumb questions, which you can do as a newcomer. Sometimes they're welcome. But I think above all, feel feel a sense of entitlement. You're you deserve to be there just as much as they do, and that's one of the bigger hurdles.
And and a lot and a lot of us who are there, you know, demonstrate a very strong sense of entitlement. You know? And it it's not based on anything stronger than what you've got. It's just Yeah. It's it's we believe we are entitled. So so yeah. I see in the the chat, you know, is are there formal onboarding and orientation requirements? So there's there's this constant tension between how do you make sure is, you know, somebody pretending you know, somebody intending or claiming to provide the sort of governance of global infrastructure. Yeah, how do you back up? On the one hand, you claim that you're open and democratic, meaning that anybody can come along. And on the other hand, that you're a a reasonable place for people to do stuff, meaning that there is some kind of control over, you know, people just excluding everybody who doesn't agree with their particular extremist and and quite unusual worldview. So again, these are at some level governed by social mechanisms. W three c has spent you know, because they stand all standards move slowly compared to what you think it will. And they've been building, you know, sort of codes of conduct and and standards of behavior and and mechanisms to figure out what to do when people really are like, way out of line, when people are are bullying, when people are, you know, racist or so they've they've been putting these things into place and figuring out how they work. And and that's part of what I think answers that question. Is there any onboarding? Is there any formal orientation? But in general, there's in in w three c, if you if you join as a corporate member, you know, if you go through the full on membership pathway, then they have a a kind of buddying process. So, yeah, you if you represent some company or some library or some organization, and you turn up to their governance meeting, which isn't where all the technical work happens, but it's it's one way in, You know? Then they will assign you a a buddy from, you know, the the w three c team or very experienced people that say, look, here's someone to talk to. Their job is to, you know, answer your questions and help help you do it. In in many
Yeah. I would agree that this is it's important, like you said, Charles, so, you know, learn to listen. It's really important to develop, be a skilled communicator, be polite. You know? My my version is, you know, be polite, be all the things that you're you're supposed to be, good behavior, but listen, be pay develop patience, a lot of patience. And sometimes you have to hold your you know, bite your tongue well. If someone else is gonna say your point, you don't have to spend all your airtime making a point that someone else is gonna make, so it doesn't look like you're taking all the all the air out of the room. That's really important. Sometimes you have to do slightly dodgy things like try to make it look like your idea was someone else's idea so that they won't resist you. I mean, it's kinda like isn't I'd rather not do that, but sometimes I mean, there are egos in the room. But, you know, be patient, watch, learn, listen.
We have maybe a nice final question from Eugene, which kind of points towards some resolution and maybe kind of points towards some of the conversations that have come up on panel two. And, yeah, John is answering some of it now, but, Eugene, if you wanna ask it directly.
Sure. And apologies for for not being on video. I really appreciate the entire conversation. But, yeah, I was just wondering if there were especially as we we get to close out the hour, any particular suggestions for those trying to build these kind of communal, you know, ideally more distributed decision making environments towards standard, and how do you kind of best corral and guide the interest of the big players towards the direction that can be more communally beneficial than what they necessarily are angling to hold?
With a massive amount of patience and, yeah, stubbornness, I think is the the short answer. Yeah. You so so I will I will mention an anecdote. You know, I was getting a standard through what was the final hurdle at W3C, and a company said, Ah, you know, this is just not how it's meant to be. Clearly, the the approach has been ignored. You know? This guy's been I I was a member of the w three c staff, and it was like, you know, I'd I'd been ignoring their contributions, and somebody who someone else who had just come along for w three c. I will name Dan Brickley, in fact. I don't I won't name the company today. But Dan Brickley went and and sat down and went through the minutes and the email list of every single, you know, discussion. Basically, read the entire history of the group for three years and and said, look, that sounds great, except that, you know, I've just gone through the entire history looking for the contribution you made that was ignored or all of this stuff. All of this stuff is documented. All of the discussion is documented, and you are making claims about what you said that you didn't say. And in in fact, the the organization subsequently said, oh, yeah. Sorry. That that that's right. We apologize. We should back off, and we think we will get out of the way. And, you know, that that sort of thing happens. But the the short answer is there isn't any magic here. It's just endless endless amounts of patience and and being prepared to work very, very, very hard over a long time. And, you know, if if you can master good logic and if you can run a good argument, then you may succeed. And yeah, we're we're over time, but I'll point out that equally, I can think of many times when, you know, the story didn't turn out quite so well. Bad things happen, and bad things happen in in all organizations. And, you know, the standards organizations are no exception, unfortunately.
The bad thing is an enticing setup, I think, for our next our next conversation. I wanna thank you, John, Charles, so much for showing up. It's really gratifying to learn that you have a connection. It emphasizes to me two things. A, it's a small world, and b, it's a small world that that someone with the right sensitivities and the right kinda work ethic and the right kinda willing you know, preparedness to to join a community, which which partially means, you know, abiding by that community, that, that anyone like that can join the Internet. I don't know whether to be inspired or terrified, but the fact that the Internet works, gives me a little bit of a a leaning towards inspired. So thanks again. Maybe we can do our unmute on three. Everybody unmute so we do a little physical applause. On three. One, two, three. Yeah. There it is. Alright.
Thank you.
Thanks so much, all. I'll see several of you in a couple days.
Uh-huh. Thank you. Yep. Took you then.