It's really great to see this on HN. Major kudos should go to Eric Mill, Gray Brooks, and everyone else who contributed[1] to these standards (as well as the White House, whose API standards 18F forked[2]). There is a blog post[3] that further explains 18F's goals for these standards, as well as a bit on how 18F evaluates what becomes a standard and what does not.

These were discussed out in the open, and meaningful feedback, suggestions, or pull requests are certainly welcome.

[1] https://github.com/18F/api-standards/blame/master/README.md

[2] https://github.com/WhiteHouse/api-standards

[3] http://18fblog.tumblr.com/post/91868213233/hot-off-the-press...