Positive Work Environment Community Group

The W3C's mission is to lead the web to its full potential. We not only want a web that works for everyone, but we want everyone to be able to work for the web. Participants in W3C activities should expect an environment of respect, professionalism, fairness, and sensitivity.

Towards that goal, W3C is creating the Positive Work Environment (PWE) Community Group. This group will guide revisions to the W3C's Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct (CEPC), replacing the PWE Task Force (a W3M Member-only group). Oversight will be provided by W3C Management (W3M), the Advisory Committee (AC), and the Advisory Board (AB). Since CEPC is governed by the W3C Process, any proposed changes to it will require AB and AC advice and Director approval.

The PWE CG will be chaired by Angel Li of Alibaba and Tzviya Siegman of Wiley. We thank Ann Bassetti (former W3C Advisory Board member) and Amy van der Hiel (W3C Team) for their leadership of the PWETF over the past several years, and hope they will continue contributing to this work; and past chairs of the task force, Coralie Mercier and Daniel Dardailler of the W3C Team.

Why shift to a CG? Community Groups hadn't been established when PWE was first formed. The CG structure makes it simpler for people to join. The Process CG has had success in allowing anyone to join and holding regular calls to sort through issues as the Advisory Board improves the Process Document. When the AB and W3M discussed how to proceed with PWE and CEPC, we concluded that it was best to follow the Process CG model.

We will focus on the proposed changes to CEPC from the last year, taking a close look at the CEPC to make sure that it is current, and working to ensure that the CEPC is widely distributed. We want to make sure that everyone in the W3C knows where to turn if there is a problem and feels comfortable working on a daily basis. We welcome you to join the community group and comment on the public GitHub repository.