[Bigbang-dev] BigBang Accessibility

[Sebastian Benthall]

Niels,

Exactly, I think our initial approach was: if we use Jupyter notebooks, we
> get people to understand coding/technology/infrastructure while analyzing
> how code/technology/infrastructure is produced. Whereas that was
> beautifully meta, it only worked to a certain extend.


This goes back to how I wrote BigBang initially to study OSS development.
But now it's being used to study standards development.

I wonder if there's some way to surface the standards used in BigBang, and
their origin, to the dashboard users.
With a hosted dashboard, networking and data transfer protocols are much
more relevant.

What if working groups on HTTP and email standards are used as the default
data sets for demos?

Maybe this is perhaps too fanciful, but it is the original spirit of the
project and one of the reasons why it is called BigBang (a singularity).


> We found some great users (Corinne, Riccardo, other projects that now use
> BigBang), but way more people are interested in it that somehow cannot
> BigBang to work, or simply find the time investment to high or too fiddly.
> So to reach the intended researchers, we're now moving a way from Jupyter
> notebooks to a web environment.
>

I think it would be best to identify this class of researchers as a
particular kind of user.
For more technical work like what Priyanka and Effy are interested in, the
dashboard is likely to be secondary.


> Haha yes. I think there is a risk that with the dashboard we don't
> document as clearly and thorougly as we've done with BigBang, but that
> would also hamper its future maintenance and development and general
> sustainability. That is why I think it is very important we also package
> and document the dashboard properly.
>

Some related questions:
 - Does the dashboard live in a repository distinct from BigBang?
 - Does the dashboard have a governance structure distinct from BigBang's?
 - Are the contribution guidelines for the dashboard the same as for
BigBang?

Since the dashboard is more 'user-facing', it is harder to test in an
automated way.
There may be a need for different norms around the dashboard.

Adequate documentation is of course necessary.
But does packaging mean the same thing in the context of a Python library
and a ... whatever the dashboard is?
I defer to Mridul on a lot of this stuff, as he's the master at it.
But maybe he and I should sync up on the requirements for this.

It's actually not unlike some of the tensions in the Econ-ARK project we
also both work on; maybe there's some general standards or principles that
apply.


> Exactly for this reason Juliana is coming to the hackathon - and for this
> I am also planning to talk to the Tools Team and Greg Wood of ISOC who have
> a very good understanding of people who use the IETF website.
>

Got it.
What would you like to name this category of users?
It needs a good name.
I don't think "the intended users" is adequate because of who that excludes.
These distinctions are part of the 'user story' work I think.


> AFAIK users want to understand three things:
>
> 1. Who is involved and how (affiliation, process, contestations,
> nationality)
> 2. What is developed (technology)
> 3. What are trends (combination of one and two)
>

This is a great breakdown.
I think I have a good sense of how (1) is operationalized in BigBang.

I actually don't have a great sense of (2) -- are these the RFC drafts, in
the IETF?
I was actually under the impression that most 'technology development'
happens outside of IETF, and that IETF is primarily about standardization,
which is a kind of explicit norm formation around what certain technical
designs are named, combined with some amount of more-or-less explicit
buy-in to use those standards?

I.e., maybe 'norm formation' is actually what happens at the IETF, as
opposed to 'technology development'.
In which case, all this theoretical discussion about the nature of norms is
actually essential.

But maybe I am late to getting up to speed on this. Are there more
straightforward ways to track what standards are developed in IETF data?
RFCs, ok, anything else?


> These are the people that currently manage the datatracker and produce
> many of the metrics.
>

Are their users the same as the 'intended researcher' category that
includes Juliana, Corinne, and Riccardo?

I got the sense at the AID hackathon that there was another category of
users, which we might call "internet governance users" (or something) who
don't publish papers about SDOs and human rights, but are interested in
data about the IETF etc. for administrative purposes.

It might be good to distinguish between these groups in order to focus
development of the dashboard on the most important group.


> We can discuss this further - I don't think funding depends on that. What
> I am very curious about is how we can entice developers to work on this,
> and ensure this happens in a structured and sustainable manner.
>

Honestly, I think that in this economy, the best way to 'entice developers'
is to pay them.
The second best way is to inspire students or hobbyists to contribute. But
that gets harder and harder the more the 'developer' role is attenuated
from the 'user' role.

- S
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