Prepping for the 114th

[rshorey]

Wanted to start a conversation about prepping for the 114th congress. I wasn't around for the previous round of crowdsourcing so please feel free to add, but I believe here's what we need to do.

1) Remove members who lost 2) Copy members from the 113th who were reelected including Senators who weren't up into the 114th (being careful about reps who have become senators). Given that people are updating YAML files, this should not happen until the new members are installed. 3) Create stub YAML files for newly elected members once bioguide IDs are available. 4) Create github issues for the new legislators

In addition, legislators.json in https://github.com/EFForg/congress-zip-plus-four will need to be updated - I will start an issue there for that.

The discussion here will probably also be a helpful resource: https://github.com/unitedstates/congress-legislators/issues/223

In some other repos, we've held on to historical data. Anyone think we should do that here?

[j-ro]

I'm wondering about the historical data myself. I would kind of favor either leaving them all in one big folder, even YAMLs we don't use anymore, or removing the ones we don't use anymore. Basically, I'd like not to have many folders in the /members folder, because our apps pull from that data directly.

And, relatedly, I'll be able to help y'all make a ton of yamls when the time comes.

[rshorey]

@j-ro since you seem to be the most prolific user, if you're happy to get rid of historical data than I think that's the best bet. Other data may be a useful historical record, but the format of a retired rep's website seems unnecessary.

I'm going to start a branch for the 114th. We don't have a good sense here of how long it takes the new members' websites to go up, so this might be somewhat drawn out.

[j-ro]

Cool. Could move historical folks to a historical folder/branch I guess, but getting them out of the members section is good.

Re: websites, at least for folks who were elected in specials (and thus were sworn in sometime in November) it took a few weeks, but not too long, for them to get a basic website up.

[rshorey]

I pushed a branch called 114th-congress that contains a script to remove old YAMLs, add new (blank) ones for new members, and generate the needed text for an updated readme. Materials here: https://github.com/unitedstates/contact-congress/tree/114th-congress/support/update-to-114th.

It'll be incomplete until we have bioguide IDs for all of these folks in the source documentation I'm using , but is ready to go when we do.

When we're ready to make the switch, we can make a new branch off master to get an archived snapshot of the 113th if we care.

@j-ro, I found the current sort order in the readme (senators first, then alphabetical by first name) non-intuitive, so I switched it to senators first, alphabetical by last name. If you have a strong preference for another sort order, it's an easy switch so let me know.

We will still have to create github issues for new members by hand.

[j-ro]

no sort order preference from me! I always thought they weren't even really sorted anyway, maybe just alphabetically by bioid. So whatever works for you.

[drinks]

FWIW, @konklone had a script that used the congress-legislators repo to generate github issues the last time around--I'm sure he'd be happy to dig it up again. I'd love to help out when the time comes to update for the 114th so just let me know how I can be useful.

Totally agree w/ removing retired members; no point in maintaining instructions for websites that don't exist anymore, and old yamls will be in git history if someone really needs to get back to them.

[drinks]

In practical terms, said script could be modified to only create issues for current legislators listing a single term, or a single term in the senate in the case of chamber moves, but it's probably wise to do a once-over of everyone since I'd imagine a lot of sites will change for incumbents as well.

[rshorey]

Thanks! I've just written code to create the issues. I'm going to wait to run it until we've got all the new bioguide IDs (which I think we're expecting right after the new year), and I'll give everyone on this list a heads up a day or so in advance in case anyone has e-mail notifications on so they don't get 540ish e-mails about new issues.

I'll make them for both old and new members, but indicate which is which so we can prioritize.

[j-ro]

yes, please do -- my guess is most existing members will not actually have new sites, but I could be wrong!

[rshorey]

OK, I've decided to do issues for only the new members - seems like we're pretty good at finding problems elsewhere, and I agree with @j-ro that the existing ones are reasonably unlikely to change.

Anyone have a sense if it's worth getting the crowdsourcing effort together again to do these, or do we think it isn't worth it given the volume? There's somewhere on the order of 80 new members coming in, and we have no idea how long it'll take them to get their websites up. @angai369 knows more about that from the Sunlight end if we end up going in that direction.

[j-ro]

I'm kind of leaning no for crowdsourcing, but maybe I'm just a masochist. I'd guess 80 yamls might take me a few days if I'm doing it on my own, and it seems like I'll have at least a bit of help...

Edited to add: And websites may not go up all at once, so that spreads out the work.

[konklone]

It'd be tough to crowdsource anyway, with how staggered the updates will be. My suggestion is to have a few people who understand they're basically on call, and who use GitHub's assignment feature to assign themselves tickets when they see one to update. If you see a ticket's already assigned, don't grab it.

[j-ro]

I'll make sure to be better about the tickets for this period for sure. I usually just commit up without worrying about issues, but here coordination will be more important.

[konklone]

Also, I watched @drinks personally do ~95 Senate YAML files himself. While singing and building a gingerbread house for his family. Y'all got this.

[j-ro]

Yeah, they're actually kind of fun!

[angai369]

They were fun except for when we tried to do that one in the training and it totally didn't work. :) but that was before all the kinks were worked out. I also totally think it's doable too

[rshorey]

Update: we've got bioguide ids now, so I'm a few lines of code away from being ready to go. I'm also going to automatically create issues for all new members, so if you're subscribed to this repo and get e-mail notifications, either temporarily unsubscribe or prepare to be spammed with 60ish new issues.

[rshorey]

I've merged in the 114th and created issues for the new members. Now we're waiting on new members to put up their websites.