Manifesto/1.0 Changes

	THIS PAGE IS A WORKING DRAFT
	The page may be difficult to navigate, and some information on its subject might be incomplete and/or evolving rapidly. If you have any questions or ideas, please add them as a new topic on the discussion page.

This is a list of possible changes to make to the Mozilla Manifesto to move it from 0.9 to 1.0. It's an attempt to capture all concrete proposals I could extract from the write-ups of the interactive sessions in 2012. Presence on this list is not an indicator of support for the proposal by any particular person.

The overall aim of the change is in the title. The concrete Proposals are for discussion and are, in many cases, only examples of what could be done to achieve the aim. Feel free to make alternative proposals for any of them.

Text

Include explicit reference to privacy

Rationale: this is an oft-commented-upon omission. Originally, we thought "security" would include privacy, but people don't read it that way. And Mozilla is very active on the privacy front.

Proposal: change bullet 4):

 Individuals' security on the Internet is fundamental and cannot be treated as optional.

->

 Individuals' security and privacy on the Internet are fundamental and cannot be treated as optional.

Against: no good arguments, unless we decide to make no changes at all.

Change "the Internet" to "the web" throughout

Rationale: People understand and identify with "the web" more than "the internet". We talk about "the open web" a lot.

Proposal: Replace all instances of "the Internet" with "the web" (lower-case w).

Against: The Internet is more than the web - email, IM, apps, games and media centres all use the Internet but not necessarily the web. We need these two words to remain distinct, and we should use the right one. Also, switching terms will be read by others as a narrowing of focus by Mozilla.

Reduce all principles to < 140 characters

Rationale: it would be good if every principle was tweetable. If we want to promote them in snippets, shorter is also better.

Proposal:

Character counts are as follows (assuming we stick with "the Internet"):

 1.  157
 2.   78
 3.   64
 4.  100 (including "privacy" change)
 5.   81
 6.  174
 7.   92
 8.   87
 9.  146
 10. 117

So principles 1, 6 and 9 would need shortening. Here are proposals:

 1: The Internet is an integral part ofto modern life – a key component in education, communication, collaboration, business, entertainment and society as a whole. (131)

("collaboration" is the item which adds least to the overall effect, and is partly covered by "communication")

 6: The effectiveness of the Internet as a public resource depends upon interoperability  (protocols, data formats, content), innovation and decentralized participation worldwide. (139)

 9: Commercial involvement in the development of the Internet brings many benefits; a balance between commercial goals and public benefit is critical. (127)

Against: It's unnecessary churn; people will assume we are making semantic changes, or it's a cover for something.

Add reference to "making great products"

Rationale: making something great that people want is central to our impact and a big source of our power.

Proposal: Add an 11th principle covering this.

Against: this is a core tactic and strategy that Mozilla uses to achieve its goals, but making products is not a goal in itself. It's covered by the "Advancing the Mozilla Manifesto" section below the manifesto itself.

Beef up references to "web literacy"

Rationale: web literacy is very important, and Mozilla wants to promote it. This is what Webmaker is all about. Principle #5 ("Individuals must have the ability to shape their own experiences on the Internet") sounds a bit like "web apps must be skinnable". Can we reword to make stronger?

Proposal: Change to shaping the Internet, not just one's own experiences. Reword principle 5:

 Individuals must have the ability to shape their own experiences on the Internet.

->

 Individuals must have the ability to shape the Internet, and their own experiences on it.

Against: change does not have significant enough impact to be worth the churn.

Page

Update manifesto page to be more interactive

Rationale: we're not in 1998 any more; the web has awesome capabilities and we should make use of them.

Proposal: audit the manifesto for places where appropriate, long-lived links to Mozilla activities can be inserted. Brainstorm other options for interactive elements.

Against: The US Constitution was not hyperlinked. It distracts from the gravitas. Also, the manifesto is supposed to be bigger than Mozilla; linking to Mozilla stuff damages that. And interactive elements pulling in content from today's web will be outdated or irrelevant tomorrow.

Update manifesto page to look more beautiful

Rationale: we're not in 1998 any more; the web has awesome capabilities and we should make use of them.

Proposal: increase font size to something readable; find and use an appropriate web font (like we've done with the MPL 2)

Against: user choice means using the user's font and size settings.

Social

Add social media buttons to page

Rationale: This is how users communicate today; we need to make people more aware of what Mozilla stands for, and allow them to easily share that with their contacts.

Proposal: Add social media buttons of various sorts - Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest. Perhaps use various hacked versions which are better at protecting privacy.

Against: these services change over time; they are also not all good embodiments of the manifesto principles. It's not great to have a Facebook tracking button on a page extolling user privacy.

Allow people to pledge support

Rationale: online petitions and statements of principles often allow companies and individuals to pledge support. A list of supporting organizations would be a powerful indication of who the good guys are.

Proposal: add signature form to bottom of page; make page of signatories; monitor it and call out particularly significant companies.

Against: requires significant web development; curation of "best of" list is politically sensitive; does it actually achieve anything?

Allow people to add comments

Rationale: We want people to give feedback on the document.

Proposal: either link to placeholder blog post with comment section, or embed comment section below manifesto (one per language).

Against: the 1.0 manifesto is a static work, not a blog post for discussion; we don't want someone's asinine comment appended below it for ever more; we don't have an embeddable comment solution until the Persona-based one is done.

Allow people to sign up for activities

Rationale: if people are inspired by the manifesto, we need to direct them to become contributors and advance it.

Proposal: Add final inspiring paragraph which ends with a link to the Get Involved page.

Against: manifesto is already too long and wordy.

Bring Mozilla's daily activities to the page

Rationale: we want to show the daily work of the Mozilla project bringing the manifesto principles to bear on the real world.

Proposal: Display Planet or other RSS feed in a sidebar.

Against: the manifesto is supposed to be timeless; having feed content there works against that impression. Also, there isn't a single particularly suitable feed; Planet is too noisy.

External

Add manifesto references and links to our products

Rationale: we want to bring ordinary users into contact with the manifesto principles.

Proposal: Add link to the principles in our product's about: and/or about:rights and/or about:license pages

Against: Why bother? Few people read those pages.

Make principles into snippets or Facebook updates

Rationale: we want to bring ordinary users into contact with the manifesto principles.

Proposal: put the 10 principles in low rotation as snippets, and get the Facebook team to turn 1 a month into statuses for the "Firefox" and/or "Mozilla" pages and monitor feedback.

Against: this sort of communication may not be appropriate for these two channels.