Guiding principles

Basic principles we follow for contributing to the Common Docs.

In order to ensure that we get the most from creating these documents and that we don’t spend more time on this than is necessary (given it is largely a secondary task and activity to our collective research responsibilities), here are some principles to guide our decisions and activity on what documents get created:

  1. All are welcome to contribute: There should be no or little barrier to contributing to the documents and their content, aside from barriers due to technology and skill in its use. If someone has the motivation and desire to contribute, they should be able to do so fairly easily.

  2. Inclusion and participation in community through active contribution: Individuals who want to participate should actively contribute through not just attending meetings, but also in creating, modifying, organizing, editing, and/or developing the content on the website. Those who actively contribute should be included in the community and encouraged to participate.

  3. Content is dictated by direct and active contribution: What gets created or developed should be done by whoever contributes to creating or building it. If someone wants or requests something to be created or modified, they are encouraged and given the power to do so themselves. In combination with the first principle, the barrier to contributing is only dependent on learning the basic technical and writing skills rather than any administrative barrier such as “requiring permission”. If you want something, than you are free to make it! We create and add content to the website based on what we personally want or are motivated to do, rather than what we are told to do1.

  4. Important or significant decisions are based on community consensus: Decisions should not or need not be blocked by requiring permission from anything external to the community. This ensures things move forward as continuously and unrestricted as possible. Important or significant decisions could include things like approving and finalizing a document or deciding on major infrastructural changes (e.g. platform to use for creating and managing the content).

1 …though we recognize that sometimes we must do things we are told to do.