Add draft W3C Working Group charter for Solid

[barath]

As requested in Issue #311, this PR adds a draft W3C Working Group charter for Solid.

[tomhgmns]

Thank you for the proposal. Looks great!

Could there also be a chairperson who represents Digita/use.id?

[woutermont]

Suggested change

	Recommend a set of protocol behaviors and best practices for the use of W3C Verifiable Credentials for access to data stored in Solid Pods.
	Recommend a set of protocol behaviors and best practices for the use of W3C Verifiable Credentials to request and grant access to data stored in Solid Pods.

I presume this is what is meant? If so, this wording better distinguishes it from VCs as authentication mechanism.

[barath]

Great suggestion; changed.

[woutermont]

In light of the step in Solid-OIDC from Connect to Federation, we might mention the latter instead (or additionally).

[woutermont]

Also, i.m.o. this seems to fall under the previous point, since OIDC is an example of one of the existing authentication standards.

[barath]

Great point; added a mention of Federation.

[woutermont]

Not entirely sure what is meant by 'synchronization' here. Does it mean 'notification'? Then I would use that term. If not, please elaborate.

[barath]

We had received feedback that notifications are the mechanism but not the high-level goal, and that this should list high-level objectives. So you are right that this is about notifications, they are just one mechanism for achieving synchronization.

[woutermont]

Why not? A lot of the community's standards actually specify a (new) vocabulary and/or shape to structure data.

[TallTed]

Vocabulary/ontology and/or SHACL/SHeX definitions are not generally considered to be "linked data formats", while RDFa, Turtle, TriG, JSON-LD, and the like are. The latter would be a substantially greater effort, and generally require rather different expertise, than the former.

[barath]

These could, in the future, be in scope, but initially the idea is for the working group to be very focused.

[woutermont]

In the assumption that we plan to take Solid-OIDC (an authentication protocol) in the Working Group, this is an incorrect statement.

[barath]

This statement of scope, as you point out, may be too definitive and we need to leave room for developments on these topics, so I've removed the line.

[woutermont]

Suggested change

	In order to advance to
	In order to advance to a

[barath]

Addressed.

[woutermont]

[...] a test suite enabling interoperability testing

Interoperability testing specifically, or testing in general (including interoperability testing)?

[barath]

Clarified.

[woutermont]

Suggested change

	The Solid Working Group will deliver the following W3C normative specifications:
	The Solid Working Group will deliver the following W3C normative specifications.

[TallTed]

The colon (":") is appropriately used here. I recommend against this change.

[woutermont]

My suggestion is not meant to say it was used inappropriately. Rather, when introducing a larger body of text (that is not a quote), it is more advisable to use a full stop (at least at the European institutes I have studied and worked).

[woutermont]

Of course, since in concerns a definition list, one could say that in this case the large body of text is a list, which would be okay to introduce with a colon.

[TallTed]

W3C Style Guide uses US English spelling and other US-based guides for punctuation, so I suggest that the examples of European institutes are irrelevant.

In this case, your latest comment is correct — this introduces a list, hence the propriety of the colon.

[woutermont]

I might also add that it puts into question whether lists should be used at all in cases where it would contain multiple sentences per list item.

Sometimes list format may not be the best choice. For example, when items in a list consist of very long sentences, or of several sentences, and the list itself does not require typographic prominence, the items may be formatted like regular paragraphs of text, each paragraph beginning with a number [...] [CMOS 17 § 6.130]

[woutermont]

That said, I am perfectly fine with the colon, given that it is indeed a definition list; so my suggestion can be ignored.

[TallTed]

Regrettably, I have not seen my CMOS hardcopy in a few years. I hope it's in one of the umpteen boxes still packed from my last move, but I may give in and buy a new copy before they're all unpacked. I am not currently interested in registering for an online account, even with their offer of a 30 day free trial.

That said, I'm fairly certain that their advice to use a colon sparingly was in the context of putting it between independent clauses, where I believe a semicolon is appropriate — as may be seen in the quote you provided! — even though they also say that in some cases either mark may work as well as the other.

As to their advice that Sometimes list format may not be the best choice, I do not believe it pertains to the content of these lists, as these contain multiple levels [CMOS 17 § 6.128, as quoted here]

[woutermont]

I'm aware of their advise on multi-leveled lists, but the discussed list is a single-leveled one (one definition per list item, no nested list in those definitions). Since this single-leveled list has items with a lot more text than a short sentence, it would personally follow CMOS in treating it like a labeled paragraph.

[TallTed]

Suggested change

	The Solid Working Group will deliver the following W3C normative specifications:
	The Solid Working Group will deliver the W3C normative specifications listed below.

[woutermont]

Suggested change

security with the relevant Working and Interest Groups, and with the <a href="https://www.w3.org/2001/tag/" title="Technical Architecture Group">TAG</a>. Invitation for review must be issued during each major standards-track document transition, including <a href="https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process//#RecsWD" title="First Public Working Draft">FPWD</a> and at least 3 months before <a href="https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/#RecsCR" title="Candidate Recommendation">CR</a>, and should be issued when major changes occur in a specification.

security with the relevant Working and Interest Groups, and with the <a href="https://www.w3.org/2001/tag/" title="Technical Architecture Group">TAG</a>. Invitation for review must be issued during each major standards-track document transition, including the <a href="https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/#RecsWD" title="First Public Working Draft">FPWD</a> and at least 3 months before the <a href="https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/#RecsCR" title="Candidate Recommendation">CR</a>, and should be issued when major changes occur in a specification.

[barath]

Done.

[woutermont]

Suggested change

	Additional technical coordination with the following Groups will be made, per the <a href="https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/#WGCharter">W3C Process Document</a>:
	Additional technical coordination with the following Groups will be made, per the <a href="https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/#WGCharter">W3C Process Document</a>.

[TallTed]

The colon (":") is appropriately used here. I recommend against this change.

I might suggest this (I think clearer) alternative structure:

Suggested change

	Additional technical coordination with the following Groups will be made, per the <a href="https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/#WGCharter">W3C Process Document</a>:
	Per the <a href="https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/#WGCharter">W3C Process
	Document</a>, additional technical coordination will be made with the following
	Groups:

[woutermont]

In this case, the colon is absolutely not appropriate. It is the end of the introduction of that section, and is followed by the section heading of the first subsection.

[woutermont]

I agree though that the alternative grammatival structure is somewhat more elegant.

[TallTed]

Again, the line ending with the colon is introducing a list, albeit a list which the boilerplate split into two sections with H3 elements (and which could probably lose the first H3 and the entire second section, since the second is commented out).

It might be clearer that this is the case (and that the colon is appropriate) if the H3 elements were converted into an outer UL enclosing the DLs.

[TallTed]

In other words, the semantic meaning of HTML tags is not always appropriate for the semantic meaning of the content being presented via that HTML. A great many people use the HTML that makes the most immediate sense for the rendered presentation they desire others to see in their browsers — regardless of the semantics implied by that HTML markup. We might hope that W3 documents were not constructed in such fashion, but that hope will always be forlorn, due to the (strongly desired and encourage!) breadth of the background experience of the Authors and Editors of those documents.

[woutermont]

I entirely agree that markup should be done semantically, disregarding any style commonly associated with that specific markup. If, as I think you suggest, the section introduced by the H3 should be in fact marked up as something else (a list, one or more paragraphs ...), though, I still believe a full stop would be better, given the discouragement of the Chicago manual for introducing anything larger than a few sentences with a colon.

[TallTed]

Please provide a complete quotation of the CMOS "discouragement" to which you refer, as I think "discouragement" is a misunderstanding of what is written there.

[woutermont]

It's the same text as in the other comment:

A colon introduces an element or a series of elements illustrating or amplifying what has preceded the colon. Between independent clauses it functions much like a semicolon, and in some cases either mark may work as well as the other; use a colon sparingly, however, and only to emphasize that the second clause illustrates or amplifies the first. (The colon should generally convey the sense of “as follows.”) [CMOS 16 § 6.59]

I interpret this as discouraging authors to use colons, i.e. it suggests one to think twice, and consider other punctuation, before using a colon.

[TallTed]

Different wording helps with the pain of using a full-stop instead of a colon, which I still believe to be the most appropriate punctuation here, even considering all other options.

Suggested change

	Additional technical coordination with the following Groups will be made, per the <a href="https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/#WGCharter">W3C Process Document</a>:
	Per the <a href="https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/#WGCharter">W3C Process
	Document</a>, additional technical coordination will be made with the Groups
	listed below.

[woutermont]

☝️ Some minor questions and suggestions. Great draft!

[TallTed]

Suggested change

	<p>
	Cloud services in use on the Web today (2022) often require users to store their data and place control over that data at a third-party cloud provider. Solid adds to existing Web standards to enable user control: to realise a space where individuals can maintain their autonomy, control their data and privacy, and choose applications and services to fulfil their needs. Solid defines the notion of Pods, in which users place their own data and control access to that data, and a suite of interoperable protocols for managing Pods, applications that use pods, and interactions with existing protocols for authentication.
	Solid presents several advantages over more traditional architectures for data use by Web services today, including:
	<p>
	Cloud services in use on the Web today (2022) often require users to store their
	data and place control over that data at a third-party cloud provider. Solid adds
	to existing Web standards to enable user control: to realise a space where
	individuals can maintain their autonomy, control their data and privacy, and
	choose applications and services to fulfil their needs. Solid defines the notion
	of Pods, in which users place their own data and control access to that data, and
	a suite of interoperable protocols for managing Pods, applications that use pods,
	and interactions with existing protocols for authentication.
	</p>
	<p>
	Solid presents several advantages over more traditional architectures for data
	use by Web services today, including:

[barath]

Thanks for these formatting suggestions; this and the others will be done using a linter / formatter as a final pass, after this draft is completed.

[TallTed]

@barath — Given that it's going to be done by an automated tool, I strongly encourage running it sooner than later, as shorter lines make for a MUCH easier editing process, and this should not substantially increase workload by needing to be run again later.

[TallTed]

Also... I don't think I only changed whitespace, though I believe my other changes were small. GitHub seems to get confused about what's changed by a given suggestion, and so doesn't highlight all changes as desired, in either split or unified view. So, I'll need to do my own manual diff to be sure all my suggestions get picked up. :-/

[TallTed]

Suggested change

	W3C Members that would like to learn more about the motivations that led to this work may find the <a href="https://solidproject.org/about">About Solid</a> page useful. The Solid project consists of a <a href="https://solidproject.org/TR/protocol">draft specification</a> and a <a href="https://solidproject.org/developers/tools/">suite of implementations, tools, and libraries</a> for developers.
	</p>
	<p class="mission">
	The <strong>mission</strong> of the <a href="">Solid Working Group (LINK TBD)</a> is to standardize the Solid Protocol and its use of associated data interoperability and authentication schemes. This effort will culminate in open standards that can be used by developers of servers and applications to continue to build a rich ecosystem that returns control of data back to users.
	W3C Members that would like to learn more about the motivations that led to this
	work may find the <a href="https://solidproject.org/about">About Solid</a> page
	useful. The Solid project consists of a
	<a href="https://solidproject.org/TR/protocol">draft specification</a> and a
	<a href="https://solidproject.org/developers/tools/">suite of implementations,
	tools, and libraries</a> for developers.
	</p>
	<p class="mission">
	The <strong>mission</strong> of the <a href="">Solid Working Group (LINK TBD)</a>
	is to standardize the Solid Protocol and its use of associated data interoperability
	and authentication schemes. This effort will culminate in open standards that can be
	used by developers of servers and applications to continue to build a rich ecosystem
	that returns control of data back to users.

[TallTed]

Suggested change

	The design approach for the Solid specification will continue substantial efforts undertaken previously in the Solid community to specify a set of interoperable protocol standards for enabling the use and development of Solid Pods and applications across a wide range of use cases.
	The design approach for the Solid specification will continue substantial efforts
	undertaken previously in the Solid community to specify a set of interoperable
	protocol standards for enabling the use and development of Solid Pods and
	applications across a wide range of use cases.

[TallTed]

Suggested change

	The Solid specification aims to provide applications with secure and permissioned access to externally stored data in an interoperable way. An overarching design goal of the Solid ecosystem is to be evolvable and to provide fundamental affordances for decentralised Web applications for information exchange in a way that is secure and privacy respecting. In this environment, actors allocate identifiers for their content, shape and store data where they have access to, set access control policies, and use preferred applications and services to achieve them.
	The Solid specification aims to provide applications with secure and permissioned
	access to externally stored data in an interoperable way. An overarching design goal
	of the Solid ecosystem is to be evolvable and to provide fundamental affordances for
	decentralised Web applications for information exchange in a way that is secure and
	privacy respecting. In this environment, actors allocate identifiers for their
	content, shape and store data where they have access to, set access control
	policies, and use preferred applications and services to achieve them.

[elf-pavlik]

We have very specific drafts listed on https://solidproject.org/TR/

If not directly in the charter, we should still do triage of those drafts and communicate which ones will fit into the scopes (fully or partially) and which ones not. Once we have that we should review the charter to see if it reflects the scope well based on inclusion / exclusion of the existing drafts.

[TallTed]

Suggested change

	<div>
	<h3 id="w3c-coordination">W3C Groups</h3>
	<dl>
	<dt>
	<a href="https://www.w3.org/2017/vc/WG/">Verifiable Credentials Working Group</a>
	</dt>
	<dd>
	Coordination on mechanisms for granting access to resources.
	</dd>
	<dt>
	<a href="https://www.w3.org/2019/did-wg/">DID Working Group</a>
	</dt>
	<dd>
	Coordination on mechanisms for decentralized identifier use in Solid.
	</dd>
	<dt>
	<a href="https://w3c-ccg.github.io/">Credentials Community Group</a>
	</dt>
	<dd>
	Coordination on other specifications related to Decentralized Identifiers.
	</dd>
	<dt>
	<a href="https://www.w3.org/2018/json-ld-wg/">JSON-LD Working Group</a>
	</dt>
	<dd>
	Coordination to ensure that the JSON-LD syntax meets the Solid Working Group's needs.
	</dd>
	<dt>
	<a href="https://www.w3.org/blog/webauthn/">Web Authentication Working Group</a>
	</dt>
	<dd>
	Coordination to ensure that Web Authentication primitives align with Solid principles and aims.
	</dd>
	</dl>
	</div>
	<!-- <div>
	<h3 id="external-coordination">External Groups</h3>
	<dl>
	<dt>
	<a href="https://schema.org">Schema.org</a>
	</dt>
	<dd>
	Schema.org should be regularly solicited for reviews and comments on the advancement
	of the JSON-LD 1.1 Recommendation.
	</dd>
	</dl>
	</div> -->
	<div>
	<ul>
	<li id="w3c-coordination">
	W3C Groups
	<dl>
	<dt>
	<a href="https://www.w3.org/2017/vc/WG/">Verifiable Credentials Working Group</a>
	</dt>
	<dd>
	Coordination on mechanisms for granting access to resources.
	</dd>
	<dt>
	<a href="https://www.w3.org/2019/did-wg/">DID Working Group</a>
	</dt>
	<dd>
	Coordination on mechanisms for decentralized identifier use in Solid.
	</dd>
	<dt>
	<a href="https://w3c-ccg.github.io/">Credentials Community Group</a>
	</dt>
	<dd>
	Coordination on other specifications related to Decentralized Identifiers.
	</dd>
	<dt>
	<a href="https://www.w3.org/2018/json-ld-wg/">JSON-LD Working Group</a>
	</dt>
	<dd>
	Coordination to ensure that the JSON-LD syntax meets the Solid Working Group's needs.
	</dd>
	<dt>
	<a href="https://www.w3.org/blog/webauthn/">Web Authentication Working Group</a>
	</dt>
	<dd>
	Coordination to ensure that Web Authentication primitives align with Solid principles and aims.
	</dd>
	</dl>
	</li>
	<!--
	</div>
	<div>
	<li id="external-coordination">
	External Groups
	<dl>
	<dt>
	<a href="https://schema.org">Schema.org</a>
	</dt>
	<dd>
	Schema.org should be regularly solicited for reviews and comments on the advancement
	of the JSON-LD 1.1 Recommendation.
	</dd>
	</dl>
	</li>
	-->
	</ul>
	</div>

[timbl]

ooops

[barath]

Fixed.