PUBLIC MARKS with search trust

Trust is an essential building block of any economic and social system.  Systems that attempt to operate without it inevitably fail.  A loss of trust typically preceeds a collapse in legitimacy.

The Only thing, that keeps me from moving my photos to Google+/Picasa is “it’s Google”, and that the only company I have less trust in than Apple, Yahoo or Facebook.

When we first started Airbnb, I told my mom about our plans for the business and she said, “Are you crazy? I’d never do that.” But when I told my late grandfather he said, “Of course! Everyone used to stay in each others’ homes.” We’re bringing back this age-old idea with new technology. Now each day, you and the rest of the community are creating meaningful connections around the world.

Interactive map: 100 Great British woods and forests

With the help of the Woodland Trust we've chosen the best woods and forests around Britain. Use our interactive map to find your nearest woodland

Giving site visitors an easy-to-find, easy-to-use “report an error” button is a way of saying to them that you care about accuracy, you want to know when you make errors, and you’re conscientious about fixing them. It’s like putting a “you can trust this” badge on everything you publish.

It never ceases to amaze me how we web designers — who would never trust a web host that doesn’t explain how it stores our sensitive data (user records, registration information, etc.) — are so quick to ask our own users to hand everything over with a mere "Trust me!"

With P1817, product ownership is perpetual, and the tethers are severed that connect your purchases to their vendors. No one can restrict how you privately use or share them. However, because they are copyrighted, rightsholders retain the legal right to control public dissemination of their works. Just as a printed book can be lost if you share it publicly (i.e., with strangers), you must be careful to share only privately (i.e., with those you trust.) That's because anyone who shares either of your playkeys can take both of them and move them to his own device and his own online playkey bank! The availability and mobility of playkeys lets you electronically share, lend, borrow, give, take, donate, and resell digital property, just as you do with your physical possessions. And since playkeys remain singular, unique, and protected from counterfeiting, copyright holders know that your sharing will remain a private, non-public matter.

3. Posted by karl

on Tuesday 2010-06-15 at 17:58:27 PST

Many of your questions are contained in this unique sentence "How will they fulfill this commitment?"

The W3C was modeled at a time where it made sense to create a consortium (inspired from what X Consortium did). W3C has been started in October 1994. It started "with support from DARPA and the European Commission." [1] Then to be able to be independent, got enough paid Members for moving the work forward. The organization never charged for the specifications and pushed very hard to create the Royalty Free license for Web standards. The RF policy has been a tough fight in between different categories of W3C Members (and Web community included). W3C lost Members in this decision (which was good for the Web). Losing Members mean losing money.

It's why I come back to your question. "How will they fulfill this commitment?"

Basically, you can narrow the question to "Does W3C need permanent staff and infrastructure to achieve the work?" The W3C gets money from Members and grants which help finance some activities or some areas of work.

The money is used to pay the People working at W3C. [2] Some of these people are not even paid by W3C. The W3C is not rich[3], quite the opposite and it is sometimes difficult to reconcile different objectives. Many times, people have suggested to raise funds through campaigns to be able to pay People on something specific issues. For example, W3C tried to raise money for the validators through donations[4]. It doesn't work to the point to be able to pay the salary of an engineer for it.

The W3C staff includes people for servers, communications, administration and technical staff in charge of keeping the W3C Process on tracks. It is not very rewarding as a job. A lot of issues to deal with, and being the target for attacks by proxy. If something is wrong, this is W3C's fault. I often compared the W3C staff as UN peace keepers. No right to shoot, and in any circumstances trying to accommodate all point of views.

So basically, the question you have to answer are how to organize the manpower and the infrastructure in a way that will make possible to work in trust and peacefully. It is not easy to find the right *concrete* model which will actually work.

For example, some people ask for more documentation, tutorials. Some people require lively Web services such as the validators and others [5]. Managing a big group under the patent policy such as HTML WG is a daunting task. Having enough time to deal with issues and animating discussions is also difficult when not enough resources. More resources mean more money.

Where does W3C get the money? Or How do we change the infrastructure so W3C can work with the money? This is the real question to answer.

[1]: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/facts.html#history

[2]: http://www.w3.org/People/

[3]: http://www.la-grange.net/2008/12/12/w3c-budget

[4]: http://www.w3.org/QA/Tools/Donate

[5]: http://www.w3.org/Status

I used to trust John Gruber. Now I will just read him.