Scott, you said,
for me as a developer to take the W3C seriously, i need at least some sense of ownership,
Ownership is important, as you say, and this is why I support web standards. Because it's not just one corporation deciding what to give us. It's a process of winnowing, from developer wishlists through discussions, proposals, feedback to implementation. Geoff Deering has explained it all in lucid terms.
There are those, like you, who are cluey enough about this stuff to get involved and make a serious contribution. There are others, like me, who will pop in a suggestion or comment from time to time if I really know what I'm talking about. (And this may be never!)
I'd be happy to vote on emerging standards 1) if I was sure that I understood them fully enough in the abstract, which ain't easy and 2) if I could be sure that the other voters really understood the purpose and philosophy of standards.
Perhaps another way of saying this is that you need to work out how to establish standing for voters. And perhaps the current system already does this adequately.
The web, with its vast range of authors and contributors, is such an amorphous thing that you'd be hard put to it to do more than what organisations like this group are doing, in encouraging implementation and, for some, involvement in standards creation.
-Hugh Todd
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