Distinguish our aspirations from what we have already operationalized

[dontcallmedom]

Following up on #78 (comment) - #78 adds sustainability as a goal in the same list as accessibility or internationalization. We have well-established practices and processes for the latter that comes with relatively good clarity of what it means to make the Web accessible or ready for I18N, but we're at the very beginning of understanding what "sustainable" means for the Web.

I think we should find a way to make it more clear what part of the vision is anchored on paved cowpaths, compared to less well-defined aspirations.

[cwilso]

@dontcallmedom the editors and chair discussed, and we think this is covered well enough now (with our sustainability work, etc). Would you be okay closing, or should we keep it on the list?

[dontcallmedom]

We ensure the technical standards of the Web use broad and consistent horizontal review to ensure fundamental attributes such as accessibility, internationalization, sustainability, privacy, security, technical soundness, and architectural integrity.

As much as I wish we did, I don't think we can claim we do this with sustainability, whereas I feel safe asserting we do for all other aspects - the recently chartered Sustainable Web IG isn't planning to conduct systematic reviews of specs, and I think it would be hard today for anyone to make an assessment of which of our specs are helping or not in that regard, without a robust framework to evaluate this.

I understand this expresses what we want to achieve, but it is quite striking that it is essentially the only item in operational principles that is aspirational rather than based on our existing operations (maybe with the exception of "decentralization" - although that one is worded as "aim to").

How about:

We ensure the technical standards of the Web use broad and consistent horizontal review to ensure fundamental attributes such as accessibility, internationalization, privacy, security, technical soundness, and architectural integrity, and aim to expand it to sustainability.

[cwilso]

There is a proposed change in #235 to see how this would look now in context (with the changes in #229). I personally still think we should consider that we are quickly working to make sustainability not just aspirational, the Vision itself is aspirational, and close this issue without prejudice.

[cwilso]

AB reviewed in meeting on 2025-02-20, and concluded that although we agree sustainability is less operationalized today, we have a strong basis for treating it equitable from the EWP https://www.w3.org/TR/ethical-web-principles/#sustainable, and we should work toward defining this better. (Work that is already underway.)