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opencivicdata / pupa

framework for scraping legislative/government data
BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License
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What's the distinction between post and role? #188

Closed fgregg closed 9 years ago

fgregg commented 9 years ago

Right now I'm capturing whether someone is a member, vice-chair, or chair of a committee through the "role" attribute. https://github.com/opencivicdata/scrapers-us-municipal/blob/212634b693dbbd19159a48a88e18b01599732d40/chicago/people.py#L98

This role information shows up on a person's details: http://api.opencivicdata.org/ocd-person/86a175ae-8364-4013-ab97-1c77c54a3bdc/

But not on an org's details, but posts do.

What is the semantic distinction between post and role?

fgregg commented 9 years ago

@jpmckinney I think this a question for you. I read http://www.popoloproject.com/specs/post.html but must admit I don't quite get this distinction.

fgregg commented 9 years ago

Maybe "Chairman" and "Vice Chairman" are posts, since they always exist, but regular members of committees don't have posts since the number of members can vary?

jpmckinney commented 9 years ago

Both Post and Membership have a role property. You'll almost always want to model Memberships. You may not need to model Posts though. If, for example, it's important to know when the Chair is vacant, then you'll want a Post to indicate that. A Post represents the "seat" that exists without anyone occupying it. Does that answer the question(s)?

fgregg commented 9 years ago

Yes. That is helpful. Thanks!