PROPOSED Internationalization (i18n) Interest Group Charter

The mission of the Internationalization Interest Group is to support a community that discusses issues and gathers requirements related to the internationalization of the Web.

Join the Internationalization Interest Group.

This proposed charter is available on GitHub. Feel free to raise issues.

Charter Status See the group status page and detailed change history.
Start date [dd monthname yyyy] (date of the "Call for Participation", when the charter is approved)
End date CFP + 3 years
Charter extension See Change History.
Chairs Martin Dürst
Team Contacts

Richard Ishida (0.03 FTE)

Fuqiao Xue (0.02 FTE)

Meeting Schedule Teleconferences: No teleconferences for the IG as a whole, however, task forces within the IG are expected to hold teleconferences at least once a month, at times that are convenient for their participants.
Face-to-face: No IG FTF, but task forces may opt to meet occasionally face-to-face.

Scope

The Interest Group helps the W3C Internationalization Working Group by providing advice and opinions from a larger group of people with knowledge in different languages and cultures as well as different aspects of Web architecture. The Interest Group also provides a forum to discuss issues related to the internationalization of the Web.

The Interest Group also allows IG participants to come together in task forces to investigate specific aspects of international support for the Web. Any documents produced by these task forces are published by the Internationalization Working Group. See a list of current task forces.

Deliverables

The Interest Group as a whole does not produce any deliverables. Individual task forces may produce gap-analysis documents, and layout requirements documents, or other information that will be reviewed by and published by the Internationalization Working Group. See the GitHub pages for the individual task forces for links to such documents.

The IG produces no Rec-track documents. It only produces documents that are published as web pages or by the Internationalization Working Group as Working Group Notes.

Success Criteria

This Interest Group expects to follow the TAG Web Platform Design Principles.

Coordination

The Internationalization Interest Group provides a forum for announcements, discussion and advice for the Internationalization Working Group. Members of the Internationalization Working Group are automatically subscribed to the Internationalization Interest Group. The WGs use the i18n IG to obtain input from a larger group of people with knowledge in different languages and cultures as well as different aspects of Web architecture, and to report progress on their work, and solicit feedback.

Participation

Membership of the Internationalization Interest Group is open to the public; W3C Membership is not a prerequisite.

Membership of the IG is signified by subscribing to one of the mailing lists managed by the IG. These include www-international@w3.org, and any of the specialist lists used by task forces or other special interest groups. To subscribe to a mailing list, send an email to <list>-request@w3.org, with 'subscribe' in the Subject. There is no time commitment for participation in the Interest Group.

Task forces are created and dissolved by the IG team contacts after consultation with the IG chair.

There may be more specific recommendations for participation in any task forces of the IG. These criteria are defined by the informative charter for that task force.

Participants in the group are required (by the W3C Process) to follow the W3C Code of Conduct.

Communication

The main list of the Internationalization Interest Group is www-international@w3.org (public archive). There are also a number of specialised mailing lists for topics such as bidi, indic, CJK, etc. They are listed in the groups page of the i18n site. Technical discussions, however, normally take place on one of the GitHub repositories used for internationalization work at W3C. The IG mailing lists principally receive digests from those repositories notifying subscribers of changes to issues or of pull requests, and the minutes of the Internationalization Working Group are sent to www-international.

Task forces within the IG also have (publicly visible) administrative lists for internal, practical discussions.

Technical discussions for this Interest Group are conducted in public. Working Drafts and Editor's Drafts of documents will be developed in public repositories and may permit direct public contribution requests. The meetings themselves are not open to public participation, however.

Information about the group (including details about deliverables, issues, actions, status, participants, and meetings) is available from the Internationalization Interest Group home page.

The public is invited to review, discuss and contribute to this work.

Decision Policy

Task forces within this group will seek to make decisions through consensus and due process, per the W3C Process Document (section 5.2.1, Consensus). Typically, an editor or other participant makes an initial proposal, which is then refined in discussion with members of the group and other reviewers, and consensus emerges with little formal voting being required.

However, if a decision is necessary for timely progress and consensus is not achieved after careful consideration of the range of views presented, the Chairs may call for a group vote and record a decision along with any objections.

All decisions made by the group should be considered resolved unless and until new information becomes available or unless reopened at the discretion of the Chairs.

This charter is written in accordance with the W3C Process Document (Section 4.3, Advisory Committee Review of a Charter) and includes no voting procedures beyond what the Process Document requires.

Patent Disclosures

The Interest Group provides an opportunity to share perspectives on the topic addressed by this charter. W3C reminds Interest Group participants of their obligation to comply with patent disclosure obligations as set out in Section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy. While the Interest Group does not produce Recommendation-track documents, when Interest Group participants review Recommendation-track specifications from Working Groups, the patent disclosure obligations do apply. For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the licensing information.

Please note that the proceedings of this Interest Group (mailing list archives, minutes, etc.) are publicly visible.

Licensing

This Interest Group will use the W3C Software and Document license for all its deliverables.

About this Charter

This charter has been created according to section 3.4 of the Process Document. In the event of a conflict between this document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.

Charter History

The following table lists details of all changes from the initial charter, per the W3C Process Document (section 4.3, Advisory Committee Review of a Charter):

Charter Period Start Date End Date Changes
Initial Charter 1 January 1998 31 December 1998 -
Charter Extension 1 January 1999 28 February 2000 -
Charter Extension 1 March 2000 28 February 2001 -
Charter Extension 1 March 2001 31 August 2001 -
Charter Extension 1 September 2001 31 March 2002 -
Rechartered 5 September 2002 31 August 2004 -
Rechartered 7 January 2005 31 October 2006 -
Charter Extension 1 November 2006 31 December 2006 -
Rechartered 20 February 2007 31 January 2009 -
Charter Extension 27 January 2009 31 December 2009 -
Charter Extension 22 December 2009 31 December 2011 -
Charter Extension 1 January 2014 31 December 2015 -
Charter Extension 1 January 2016 31 March 2016 -
Rechartered 31 March 2016 31 March 2018 -
Charter Extension 1 April 2018 30 September 2018 -
Charter Extension 1 October 2018 31 December 2018 -
Charter Extension 1 January 2019 30 June 2019 -
Rechartered 1 July 2019 30 June 2021 -
Charter Extension 1 July 2021 30 September 2021 -
Rechartered 1 October 2021 30 September 2024 -
Rechartered @@@ 2024 @@@ 2027 -