We’re excited to announce that we’re becoming a member of the W3C, the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web.

Founded by Tim Berners-Lee in 1994, W3C works with hundreds of organizations to ensure that the web’s basic building blocks—like HTML or CSS—remain consistent across browsers, platforms, and more. You can learn more about what W3C does over on Wikipedia.

Joining the W3C fits right into our 2030 strategy, which calls on the Wikimedia movement to “become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge, and [ensure that] anyone who shares our vision will be able to join us.”

The underlying technologies and standards of the web are a core part of the infrastructure that can facilitate knowledge equity, and so to achieve our vision, we need to participate and collaborate in designing the future of the web.

As part of working groups, we will be collaborating directly with other major stakeholders on the web. Through attending meetings, providing feedback, helping with the drafting of standards, and performing some of the technical work necessary to put standards together (as well as participating in the decision-making process of their design), we’re going to contribute to shaping a future of the web that helps everyone create and share free knowledge.

“We are pleased to welcome the Wikimedia Foundation among our membership,” says Alan Bird, W3C’s Global Business Development Leader. “With their 2030 strategy and interests in so many of the areas we advance on the web, we anticipate that the Wikimedia Foundation’s participation will be key in building the services and structures that enable web users.”

And we too are looking forward to collaborating with them.

Gilles Dubuc, Senior Software Engineer (Contractor), Performance, Technology

Wikimedia Foundation