Collaborative Policymaking
Examples
Logistics
- Content stored as markdown a near-plain text markup language for non-developers
- Document(s) can be published using a custom HTML/CSS/Javscript template using GitHub Pages, or displayed simply as rendered (unstyled) HTML
- Encourage editing via the web interface or via prose.io
Encouraging Contributions
- Expose process: publish pre-release revision history, have discussions in public, memorialize meatspace discussions, leverage Issues, strive to maintain one class of contributors
- Explicitly encourage contribution: in your project documentation and along side the published content.
- License the content as appropriate, usually either Public Domain (CC0), or CC-BY
- Communicate the big picture: roadmap, timelines, goals, vision, current status
- Whenever possible, open source the problem, not the solution
- Provide encouragement, feedback, and gratitude with each contribution
- Minimize friction through tooling
- Describe requirements and how to preview changes locally
- Automated testing via Travis CI
- Decentralize decision making authority to technical- and subject-matter experts as appropriate
- See also community building best practices
Releases
- Whenever possible, agency should regularly accept/reject proposed changes and cultivate community feedback
- If necessary, if a document cannot be changed, community feedback can be curated on a seperate branch from
master
community branch can be “released” (merged) on a regular release cycle in line with agency goals