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opencivicdata / docs.opencivicdata.org

Open Civic Data project documentation
https://open-civic-data.readthedocs.io
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Improve naming of Bill#from_organization field #58

Closed patcon closed 7 years ago

patcon commented 8 years ago

(Creating this as a placeholder for revisiting during a major revision.)

Related Slack conversation: https://opencivicdata.slack.com/archives/pupa/p1454452385000025

On my reading, from_organization struck me as the organization (in my case, a committee) from which the Bill originated. The actual intention is that it represents the parent legislature organization. My thought is that this should probably be reflected in a better name, perhaps from_legislature.

cc: @fgregg

jpmckinney commented 7 years ago

In the legislative systems that OpenCivicData originally targeted, from_organization is indeed the organization in which the bill was introduced. In state/provincial/federal legislatures, bills are introduced in lower or upper house, then discussed in committees. The things you're tracking aren't really 'bills', so the model doesn't work perfectly for your use cases and require workarounds.

jpmckinney commented 7 years ago

I don't think the confusion is so severe as to justify breaking backwards-compatibility, but I can re-open if there's disagreement on that.