Thread · 4 tweets · 2 Dec 2021

Web people! I have a question for you. The WICG has existed for a little over 6 years now. How do you think it is doing as an institution to help democratise Web standards?

The reason I'm asking is this: it was created to make access to the standards process easier for developers, with the explicit hope of balancing some of the power of browser vendors. I hoped to build a polity of web devs who get real-world problems better.

No such polity has emerged, that much is clear, but the WICG could still be useful regardless. I'd like to hear from people if they think that's the case, if it should be changed in some way, or if we would be better without it. Be candid! It was meant *for* you.

(I will return later to how naive it is to think that opening access is the same as democratising and that decentralisation eliminates the concentration of power. In the meantime, you can make fun of 2015 me to your heart's content!)