Robert Nyman and Vlad Alexander have published An Open Letter to WaSP, in which they call for a unified way of promoting web standards through a web standards charter.

Agreeing on “Best Practices” seems to be what you are asking for. The specifications often already give the right way to implement things, but are sometimes difficult to grasp by the “Web developers”. This point is taken. If more people like you were participating in the review process of specifications that will help to leverage the quality of these documents, to make them more user friendly, and to have better implementations in the future.

The thing is that we often hear about the problems of specifications already done, created and used (which we have to give answers) but this is also the result of a lack of comments and reviews from the community before hand. Basically what you are saying will happen again if the community doesn’t review the specification which are in development now.

So two efforts to drive at the same time:

* Review of specifications in development.
* Creation of Best Practices guides for old specs in use.

It seems a very good mission for the W3C Education and Outreach (QA IG) group which is in rechartering and that will restart in a few weeks. You will be welcome to participate. Stay tuned.

Andy Kirkwood’s statement …”defining key audiences and creating support materials that talk to the concerns and responsibilities of each audience…” is one of the most important tenets of Social Marketing and Social Change Advocacy efforts-he nailed it.

The vast undiscovered country for web standards at my company is the development community. In other words the people who are J2EE and XML gurus, but as part of their job are required to write HTML. They look at it as a crude presentation language. I’ve always wondered if presenting web standards as “design patterns” might get their attention.

We are not necessarily “Preaching to the Choir” either. We are bringing together designers, developers, and consultants. Our goal is to educate the local web designers and developers and give them to power to influence their own companies from the inside out. We do this with face-to-face meetings. The internet is great, but meeting people in person is even better.

For me the best way to teach people is not by sending them a link to a site somewhere, but to actually meet them in person to enlighten them. I know I can’t do it all my self, but I now have my group of almost 70 by my side fighting the good fight.

If you are in the Philadelphia area and want to help out with our mission, go to http://www.phillystandards.org for more information.

An Open Letter to WaSP Robert Nyman posts an open letter to The Web Standards Project to create a web standards charter…

In fact, I am thrilled. Some are actually brilliant in that they are citing some of the guiding principles used in Social Change and Advocacy work.

Ian Lloyd’s comment “…Stop preaching to the converted” is spot on. I add to that, stop preaching to those who disagree with the same passion and conviction on the OTHER side. They are both “unmovable”

However, they do NOT represent the majority in the first place. The “undecided in the middle” consists of the majority on most social issues. Winning them over, or enough of them, to constitute the overall majority or critical mass will determined the outcome: They win (with the exception of the 2000 Presidential Election. Bush won without a majority vote and by stealing-an oddity).

Andy Kirkwood’s statement …”defining key audiences and creating support materials that talk to the concerns and responsibilities of each audience…” is one of the most important tenets of Social Marketing and Social Change Advocacy efforts-he nailed it.

It is clear that certain members of the Web “community” are starting to understand that this is a “social change” issue; it needs media and communications advocacy if it is to go anywhere. Advocacy involves people, not just technology, specifications, valid code, etc.

This means gaining knowledge and experience about human behaviors; specifically, how people form opinions, how to influence and change these opinions to become decisions to take a “desired action.” While this could be as simply as taking a certain position on an specific issue, there usually involves more than just “picking a side.” For instance, actually going out and voting on a proposition of some sort vs. just deciding to take a position on the issue.

I wrote an article for Digital Web Magazine titled The Web is a Human Creation. It deals with this very issue. I use Web Standards as the main example in the second part of an article which applies principles used in Social Marketing Advocacy campaigns to issues of concern to Web professionals.

I don’t have the solution to this “controversial” issue, but applying some of the ideas, principles and effective strategies that are used in social change efforts is a good place to start. If you want to “win.”

But what is “Win” in this case? This needs to be clearly defined and there is certainly no consensus; but that’s what advocacy is all about.

Anyone involved in social change advocacy efforts would suggest that you must have a strategy that identifies key goals, key obstacles, key target audiences to reach with messages that are tailored for different audiences and communicated in ways that speak directly to them. (not the same message across the board). These messages should inspire and motivate them; set examples, assert values and ideals, provide knowledge and act like a winner.

Well, I practically wrote an article here, given the length of this comment, so I should stop. Last thing I will say is “get some help from people and organization who have worked in this area for decades. For now, I’m just so pleased to see a change amongst ourselves. Thank you.

I really think that spreading the word is more important.

Not to go into detail, but the Charter isn’t supposed to be the single solution to everything, nor is it meant to be instead of education or spreading the word. It is rather intended as a starting point and a unified approach to web standards. Then, naturally, we need to build on that.

All these details will have to be thorougly discussed, and I eagerly anticipate such a debate! Please continue to write your comments here, as I’m sure they will be valuable feedback for WaSP.

Molly,

I plan to go to the SXSW, but it’s not a 100% confirmed yet. I really look forward to you having an open meeting there, and also to you having commenting functionality on the new WaSP web site.

Ian,

Intriguing idea! Definitely something I’d go for (and I’d love being part of writing such a tutorial).

If you really want to increase the number of sites using the W3C recommendations I suggest the following:

* Adopt your favourite CMS manufacturer and help them out with their WYSIWYG tools and template system.

* Give presentations at developer conferences where actual developers go instead of designer conferences where everyone already knows about web standards. Developers create software (such as CMS tools) that output HTML.

* Talk to your country’s government organization that coordinates public web initatives. Teach them how to evaluate a CMS tool with the ATAG2 specification. Make sure guidelines for public web sites promote the W3C recommendations.

* Volounteer to do presentations at your local media college/high school. These young souls will be developing web apps soon. Teach them how to get it right from the start.

I realize this may have turned into a rant, but I am getting tired of reading S5 presentations on the advantages of HTML+CSS handed out at media conferences for the already initiated.

There, I feel much better already.

And how many people’s names do you recognise either personally or professionally who are commenting on this very post? When I see posts like this, or rather the comments on posts like this, it reminds just how much we can be ‘preaching to the choir’. We could debate/argue/discuss amongst ourselves, but it’s ‘the other people’ that we want to get the message out to. As you correctly say, only the people who ‘get it’ will go to WaSP or similar standardistas sites.

Try this for size - imagine you are a beginner, imagine you know *nothing* about web standards. Whgat would you search for on Google to find out more ‘beginners guide to HTML’, ‘how to build a web page/site’, ‘how do i make my own website’. Give that a whirl and see what bad advice you get back.

So, perhaps something we could consider is this - a tutorial of some sort, perhaps hosted on WaSP site (note: I haven’t even floated this idea yet with WaSP members - stream of consciousness here!) that a number of peers agree on. It would not be a spec, but a subset of that a - a best advice, covering the absolutely unambiguous right ways of doing things. Then, we collectively do our best to link to said articles with the most appropriate phrases so that we hijack thoses dodgy articles that would currently come up for those search phrases mentioned above. Wouldn’t it be great if searching for “how to build a web page” came up with a WaSP-approved tutorial? We *could* make this happen, folks. Comments?

I think that WaSP should start a task force, similar to the one they have with MS and the former one with Macromedia. Start fixing the tools the forms the web as many people have no clue at all, and is not even interest in this ‘technical’ talk about standards. I know a few websites ‘owners’ that are only interested in communicating and content, they care less in what is behind the site.

The only way web standards and accessibility can become commonplace is if publishing tools generate standards-compliant, accessible markup. Beginners use WYSIWYG tools. After a while they start looking at the generated markup to learn. If that generated markup is bad (which it usually is), they will write bad markup when they start hand-coding.

Of course, another prerequisite is that browsers support web standards. If Microsoft deliver on their promises for IE7, that may become reality in a few years. Opera, Firefox and Safari are almost there already, but that doesn’t matter as long as the majority keep using the browser that comes with the computer.

But I would hope compromise could be achieved at least with a document stating what is considered best practice I guess. What about a situation where the W3C say one thing and WaSP another? And I did note the comment mentioning elitism - something to avoid as it can quickly alienate some developers quite effectively.

But I’m tired from overwork today so I may just be seeing the negatives when I know there are also positives as well. I guess you can only sit down with Molly at SXSW and see what comes out - and don’t forget to take a devil’s advocate.

(Educating folks) is a far more important activity [than writing a charter]…

That is where my energies lie and will for the forseeable future: spreading the word and helping more people understand and use standards methods on their sites. Ultimately the spread and increased usage of standards will begin to tip the scales and make them the true “standards” for the web of the future.

If the charter idea helps with education, them I’m all in. Otherwise, it’s a waste of energy in my humble opinion.

Rather than fragment the discussion and implementation of a web standards approach further, perhaps pressure/guidance (or even collective assistance) could be provided to the W3C to create more meaningful ‘views’ on the specifications. This would involve defining key audiences and creating support materials that talk to the concerns and responsibilities of each audience. Why web standards matter to your business manager, how a web administrator can maintain web content integrity, etc.

I’m not convinced that a charter for WaSP’s views on web standards would be a productive or meaningful exercise. A voluntary ‘code of conduct’ (no pun intended) for web developers when discussing or promoting web standards would not doubt seed some fascinating blog comments, but would be unlikely to moderate the more vocal egos that are a necessary evil when engaging with web communication issues. Voices of dissent [2], at the very least, provide food for thought, and challenge the assumptions that are core to a prescriptive, checkpoint-based (or chartered?) approach.

The promotion of embedded validation tools, such as the HTMLTidy extension for Firefox [3], is perhaps a more meaningful step toward empowering clients (those who are keeping this whole industry afloat) to participate/contribute to the web standards discussion. Without visible feedback as to code validity, the concept of web standards quickly becomes academic to the web administrator, browsing with Internet Explorer.

References
[1] Defining a web standards approach
[2] March to your own standard
[3] Firefox HTMLTidy extension