Wikimedia Foundation Joins the World Wide Web Consortium | Hacker News Reader

Wikimedia Foundation Joins the World Wide Web Consortium

wikimediafoundation.org

74 pointsjmsflknr14 comments

I believe this is less significant than the headline would imply (and some may expect).

An engineer on their Performance team pushed for this presumably to more actively contribute to the development of WebPerf APIs. https://twitter.com/fullstackjerk/status/1111299749775396864

Personally, I've seen Wikimedia as one of the most mature organizations when it comes to performance--they know and measure their RUM (real user metrics) data well, and experiment with newer standards (like priority hints) to provide feedback to the standards process.

Well, more W3C members with values like WikiMedia is not a bad thing :)

Not that W3C makes many controversial specs :)

EME is the only one I can think of. Which seems like something that Wikimedia would oppose (?)

Exactly ;)

I hope Wikimedia Foundation can act as a balancing force against corporate interests inside W3C. I wouldn't expect the membership to tie the foundation's hands in any way.

Wikimedia has already enabled W3C to have a bigger positive impact: before Wikidata, I hadn't seen much practical use for Semantic Web technologies such as SPARQL, and now we're here: https://query.wikidata.org/

I don't know what Wikimedia expects specifically from becoming a member at this point, but there's nothing wrong in showing support (via financial contributions) for standards on the web per se I guess.

Seems like W3C can use all the money it gets as there's not much activity in web standardization these days, with core efforts being taken elsewhere. Maybe that's even a good thing after 25 years of attempting to shoehorn HTML/DOM into an application scene graph. W3C's ongoing efforts with HTML 5.3, SVG 2, Payment, SOLID, etc. are all stalled as it seems, with only the CSS WGs pushing forward. Not that there aren't areas that could benefit from standardization. For example, I can see an emerging need of a standard for copyright and privacy policy metadata (or even enforcement) in light of recent EU legislature.

Question is if W3C is the right organization to take this to, whether its organizational structure with paid memberships is a good fit, and whether it has good standing and authority as organization for standardization.

I'm pleased to read this. This is like the Bajorans and the Vulcans joining forces to fight for freedom in the Mirror Universe.

But I thought 'everyone' hates the W3C and instead prefers WHATWG? Does having the Wikimedia Foundation join W3C only count as a nominal change rather than affecting the development of new technologies like SOLID, Semantic Web, and so on?

Opinions of the W3C normalised after they adopted WHATG’s HTML5 spec. I haven’t seen much following of other WHATG projects besides HTML5.

Kind of disappointing to see so much fanboyism of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Try reading up on hr.wikipedia.org (the Croatian Wikipedia), which is run by illiterate Nazis (and it shows).

Or maybe something more directly related to the WMF, like the research by Gregory Kohs: https://wikipediocracy.com/2014/07/06/look-whos-visiting-the...

Why on earth would a company that actually makes a difference join a glorified media company that has DRM rules written by the exact companies that would benefit?

Honestly asking, why is Wikimedia joining W3C a good thing? If anything, I think, it forces Wikimedia's hand to cave when the DRM pressure hits again.

Isn't that kind of a moot point now that WASM would allow for effective DRM? Also, wasn't DRM proposed 6+ years ago? Meanwhile, WHATWG is run by Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Mozilla. Would you feel the same if Wikimedia decided to join WHATWG instead of W3C?

> WASM would allow for effective DRM?

This doesn't make sense to me - obfuscated code that is handed over to people to decompile isn't "effective" DRM. "Effective" DRM uses things like physically tamper-resistant chips and remote attestation (Chrome OS has a pretty nice implementation of this with TPMs, IIRC). And it's not like obfuscated code on the web is new with wasm; obfuscated JavaScript has been around forever.

> Why on earth would a company that actually makes a difference join a glorified media company that has DRM rules written by the exact companies that would benefit?

You've omitted that the latter organisation is also extremely influential. Which is presumably why Wikimedia deemed it worth joining.

> why is Wikimedia joining W3C a good thing?

Because Wikimedia's influence will probably be good for the open web.

I'm disappointed and concerned by this. The Wikimedia Foundation has long had a policy of ensuring that their projects use free and DRM-unencumbered formats to make their content available to the broadest possible audience, whereas W3C is now supporting the notion that DRM-encumbered media (in other words, media that is, by design, made permanently inaccessible outside of some proprietary and easily-monopolized HW/SW combination) can somehow be part of the "open" Web.

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