Hi all, I often hear people say that mySociety can be difficult for a coder to volunteer for because you have to learn so much about our systems before you can contribute much.
We're now in a rare situation where there's a major volunteer task, the building of a really useful, standalone website which will hugely help mySociety to tackle the next election in a better way than has ever been done online before. Here's a spec that comes from conversations I've had over the last week, including with Julian Todd and Richard Pope. It isn't set in stone, but it's a bit more than a straw man. ------------------ Short Summary ConstituencyVolunteersNetwork.org - A constituency based volunteering system that people can sign up to in order to help mySociety and TheStraightChoice.org in the run up to the next election. Fuller explanation At the next election both mySociety and TheStraightChoice.org are going to need a variety of tasks doing that are best done as widely distributed volunteering tasks. These include: 1. Getting people to scan and upload election leaflets 2. Gathering candidate details in order to be able to email or post them the questions required for an election quiz (and yes, we know that Seb Bacon and Paul Youlten are working on parts of this, so we are hoping they'll leap on board this project with especial vigour). 3. Publicising things like vote analyses in local papers around the country. 4. Other stuff we haven't even thought of yet. We therefore need a system that will let people say 'I'll become a volunteer in my constituency', email them assigned tasks, record the outputs of their tasks into a database, and make that data accessible for end-user sites like the election quiz. Functional Spec Phase I. Homepage should show map of the UK with constituencies filled in different colours depending on whether anyone (or several anyones) has volunteered in a particular constituency yet. Homepage includes signup form for name, email and postcode (just like HearFromYourMP.com really) , plus an explanation of what we're asking people to sign up to. Signup should ask volunteers to consent to having their email address CCed to other people who sign up in their constituency, for low barrier connection between volunteers. Signup involves email verification, but once done offers the chance to volunteer for tasks in up to two other constituencies, as many people have connections with more than one place. In the first instance, this is all that needs to be done - the site can start gathering volunteers before anything has been built beyond this. It will be advertised prominently on TheyWorkForYou to get traffic. Phase II. Build system that allows admin to mail all volunteers to ask them to gather MP candidates details. Emails should contain a unique link to a page for their constituency(s) with a simple, usable form for adding Name, Party, email, postal address, perhaps even photo. Each field should be referenceable to an external website, or have an annotation field where the user can explain where they got the info. The database would then store any info they added, along with time and user details. Volunteers would be able to login whenever they liked, using the link in their email, to update and improve the data present. This database could be pre-populated with Julian Todd's scraper code for Wikipedia, which has already been able to get several hundred current MP candidate names into structured data. Phase III Add feature so that admins can send arbitrary tasks out via email, and have volunteers click links to indicate whether or not they did them, for example uploading a leaflet to the StraightChoice, or asking people to find local campaign groups that would contribute questions to the election quiz (when that gets built). Add feature so that if more than one person is signed up in a constituency, they can communicate and work together easily. Phase IV Have huge election night party for 600+ volunteers :) ------------ I might be wrong, but I feel there are quite a lot of people who'd like to be a volunteer in a mySociety national network, doing rewarding but non-coding tasks, and who would like to be part of something larger that could lead to them meeting other interested, motivated people. This site could hardly be built too soon (remember, when it is done we still have to research and build the whole election quiz too). Is there anyone out there, or anyones plural who'd like to give this some love? If not, the core team will ultimately be given the job, but they're so busy that this wouldn't be seeing the light of day for a little while, at least. all the best, Tom _______________________________________________ Mailing list [email protected] Archive, settings, or unsubscribe: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public
