Resource creator manifesto

Declaration of values and commitments for resource-creators to hold ourselves and each other accountable to our stakeholders regarding the protection and preservation of resources developed from and for these stakeholders.

Outputs

• Minimum viable product: draft manifesto ready to share
• Stretch goals, etc.

Notes

As we started talking about what we are creating. we used the example of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We agreed that this manifesto could be a declaration of this kind (to leave open the possibility of people/orgs signing it or not, and other ways for it to be used).

We started to brainstorm the topics of articles that we want to include in the manifesto. Here are some of those topics (post-it notes):

• Have a vision of success for it
• Follow principles of user centered design
• Put a date on it (created, updated, exp, etc)
• Meta data (date, why, context, who)
• Reference-ready (responsive formats)Planning
• don't be exploitative of communities/beneficiaries
• Community engagement
• Licensing
• Creation and community engagement
• Acknowledging that other expertise has contributed to it
• Re usability
• Accessibility
• Transparency
• Timeliness of resource (benefits and risks of oudated resources)

ARTICLES:

• To the best of your ability, make the resources accessible to communities that would find it useful. Accessibility includes physical access to the resource, language, relevance, findability (reference-ready), ability to reuse and repurpose.

• Be transparent on motivations for creation, including who created it, who supported it (monetarily or otherwise), and the context in which it is created and for whom, and the timeliness of the resource.

• Have a plan for archiving that includes participatory decision-making with the community. For example, when the content is declared obsolete, how will the resource be accessed by the beneficiaries? Ensure that a description of the resource is embedded in the resource itself, including dates (creation, updates, expiration).

• Put community at the center by identifying the benefit to the community and including them in the creation and use of the resource.

• In the creation process, be aware of the format and structure of the resource so that beneficiaries can localize, reference, reuse, repurpose.

• Use license that allows for re-use and modofication. Clarify ways in which the resource can be contributed to, corrected or updated.

• To the best of your ability, attribute all contributors particularly frontline and on-the-ground people. Acknowledge the other expertise that has contributed to the development of the resource.

• The benefits to the community is the foundation for evaluation of the resource.

• We should be accountability to the communities for which the resources are being created.

• We have a responsibility to the resource-creator community.

Remaining questions/concerns:

• In 50 years, where will people go to find archived resources? What info should be included?

Other resources related to this:

• Symantic URLs movement - making content findable
• User-centered design tennants
• Wikimedia model

Audience

Personas, use cases, context

Contributors

Arthit, Dirk, Kristin

Food for thought

• concepts, problems
• questions to ask frequently
• preventions: what do you actually do in concrete terms to prevent these things from happening
• reactions: responsible responses for when things go wrong

Resources (we <3 links!)

Feel free to link any and all background material, additional info, useful resources, etc. The more the merrier!

The post that sparked this conversation: https://www.theengineroom.org/nobody-puts-data-in-a-corner/

First draft of manifesto: https://www.theengineroom.org/manifesto-for-human-rights-resource-creators/