Fan-in fan-out recipe shapes

[bhaugen]

In our NRP software (one of the proofs of concept of ValueFlows) we had two different types of recipes:

• manufacturing recipes, which assembled components into finished products, and
• workflow recipes, which transformed the same resource through a series of stages until it was finished.

Here's a slide deck about recipes in NRP.

Manufacturing recipes tend to be fan-in: where many feeder processes condense into fewer process at each stage, usually culminating in a final assembly process.

Workflow recipes tend to be linear: a chain of processes.

A typical example of a workflow recipe is translation, where some source material goes through stages like translate->edit->format->publish.

However, it is also common for translation processes to go like this: create source material->edit->translate, where the translation fans out into many different languages (English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Greek, Russian, Chinese, Kurdish, etc etc etc.

Our NRP recipes could handle fan-in and linear shapes very well, but did not handle fan-out. We now have some examples of fan-outs for translations, and will fake it in the existing code base for awhile, but would like to figure out in ValueFlows how these should really be handled.

All ideas are welcome.

[gcassel]

I think that effectively handling fan-out recipes may require a consistent recognition of the difference between the processing of physical resources and of information/ media resources. This difference has been indirectly highlighted in VF:

An event can trigger incrementing or decrementing a resource. This is clear in the case of consuming a component or creating a product. Sometimes it does neither, as in the case of citing a document. We consider a citation to be an inflow of a resource, but it does not decrement the resource. In fact, more citations make the resource more valuable. But the cited resource presumably added value to the output of the process (for example, the design of a 3D printed product, without which it cannot be made).

In fan-out processes, an original media resource can become more valuable while serving as an input in the development of many fanning/branching resources.

The fact that the original media resource becomes more valuable by being fanned out (by whoever) doesn't necessarily mean that its creator(s) don't deserve accreditation and potential financial contribution/reward. As a huge fan of open licenses, however, I'll obviously suggest that it's more efficient to make such accreditation and contribution as informal and unofficial as practically possible. Coercive rules are always costly, and they can create intensely debilitating inertia in extremely complex interactions.

[fosterlynn]

A clarification: "fan-out recipes" are more specific than the general network pattern of value flows. So when an original media resource is cited by multiple other processes that make use of all or part of it for their own outputs, that is basically how value flows work. When a recipe has that pattern, a resource goes to different parallel processes within the same work flow, and often then the flow comes back together to one process (although it doesn't have to). But having a recipe implies creating one cohesive plan with a due date, more than having a resource available for anyone to make use of any time in the future.

In either case, the value flows can be tracked, if income is to be distributed or the source be credited.

[gcassel]

I should clarify as well: I didn't mean to suggest that fan-out recipes should be used informally in the cases when communities might choose to document them-- and to account flows-- using a vf model. If people want to track flows then I think that they should track flows. Information is good.

[bhaugen]

As Lynn wrote above, the reason for raising this as an issue is recipes for planning fan-out flows in advance, not just fanning out after the fact.

After something like a digital resource has been planned and created, it can fan out in many different directions in other process flows.

What we don't know exactly how to do yet is plan the fan-out flows in advance, in the same recipe. But that is what we see people wanting to do in FairCoop. Some of the people have participated in the Guerrilla Translators, so they have a lot of experience with that kind of pattern.

[almereyda]

We have moved the ValueFlows organization from GitHub to https://lab.allmende.io/valueflows.

This issue has been closed here, and all further discussion on this issue can be done at

https://lab.allmende.io/valueflows/forum-valueflo-ws/-/issues/104.

If you have not done so, you are very welcome to register at https://lab.allmende.io and join the ValueFlows organization there.