Manifesto/1.0 Changes

This is a list of changes we plan to make to the Mozilla Manifesto, and its presentation, to move it from 0.9 to 1.0.

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 principle 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.

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:

 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. (119)

 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.

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.

This now sounds like it could be a motto for the Webmaker movement.

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

Page

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); convert to the current standard Mozilla styling.

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

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. It is essential that we use hacked versions which protect privacy. There should be a small link next to them, "protecting your privacy", which leads to a separate page explaining the issue, explaining how we are protecting the reader from it, and commenting that this is Mozilla living out manifesto principle 4.

Against: these services change over time; they are also not all good embodiments of the manifesto principles, even if we manage to link to them in a privacy-respecting manner.

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: High up page in a side column, have an "add your name"/"sign-on" ask, including an email opt-in. Also, provide banners/badges people can add to their own sites, akin to the Internet Defense League. Lastly, provide some sort of visualization of the signers (either scrolling names, something showing geographic breadth & depth, etc.)

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

Allow people to sign up for supportive activities

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

Proposal: We want a link to the Get Involved page somewhere, although not as a featured action. The post-pledge page will be a donation page.

Against: None.

Provide teaching resources

Rationale: we need to help Mozillians explain manifesto values to others.

Proposal: Create teaching resource guide for the Manifesto with e.g. slide deck, talking points etc.

Against: Are the manifesto pages themselves the right place for this? Doesn't a presentation need to be made anew for each audience?

Language geolocation

Rationale: We should take people straight to the right text rather than asking them to choose.

Proposal: Using existing mozilla.org language geolocation infrastructure to make the landing page be, as far as possible, in the user's chosen language, with English as the fallback.

Against: Language and location are not 1:1 correlated. Does this need an override in case it gets it wrong? What does the current site do?

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.