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codeforamerica / civic-tech-patterns

common patterns and anti-patterns for civic tech and civic apps
http://codeforamerica.github.io/civic-tech-patterns
BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License
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I don't understand the Civic CMS Anti-pattern #7

Open kmcurry opened 11 years ago

kmcurry commented 11 years ago

If I may set aside the fact that boringest is entirely relative and interpretative...CMS for civic use might be one of the smartest patterns I know.

Civic CMS is what updates...

This: http://kgcl.org/orig/

To: http://kgcl.org/

...which is epidemic in my city, alone: https://delicious.com/prestidigital/Virginia%20Beach+league+home http://www.aeriesonthebay.net/

And then there's the emerging pattern of hyperlocal resource portal: http://www.bmorepipeline.org/

If I've gone off topic from the intended meaning of the proposed anti-pattern please let me know.

I think civic-tech-patterns is a valuable project. That it is ALL README + LICENSE is oh so apropos.

bensheldon commented 11 years ago

After some tweets from @mheadd I think it's clear that the anti-patterns need some context: not that they're intrinsically "bad" but that they are either difficult to pull off (often because they're success relies heavily on non-tech stuff like community outreach, content creation and community management) or are often poorly implemented.

Most of the anti-patterns need to be cleaned up. This whole repo started off as a google doc where a few fellows and myself dumped our common observations and frustrations. That's why they can be somewhat opaque/glib/crass.

In regards to the Civic CMS, I think it should be focused (or split) on these issues:

  1. Trying to get people to redirect their existing online interactions into a new silo
  2. Trying to abstract an offline interaction into an uncompelling CRUD (create, read, update, delete) model
  3. Not devoting enough time to content creation and outreach

These are all probably contained in other anti-patterns (build it and they will come, SQL Everything, it's for the little people) but I think it was important to call out explicitly because I think there is a certain ego to people wanting to host the cool party/CMS without realizing that party planning is a lot of effort and maybe there are other parties elsewhere where people already are having a good time.

bensheldon commented 11 years ago

Also, looking through the links, their low-design makes me suspect that these sites are built by "community organizers using technology" not "technologists doing community stuff". This is a potentially contentious distinction---and I'm definitely not denying there are people who strongly overlap both identities---but these patterns are written more for the latter group than the former, e.g. Hackathon or app contest participants, CfA fellows, civic startups, etc. ...which is something to be added to #5