[okfn-discuss] Stagnation in community concerns

Thu Feb 5 21:29:45 UTC 2015

So, "See how data can change the world" is still an awful tag-line. It
has absolutely nothing to do with OK projects like the Public Domain
Review. And so on and so on. Also, it was written with a gross lack of
community input. Today, it remains many months later on the homepage
because once you just do something, even poorly and undemocratically, it
is done and becomes the default. The burden is now on others to change it.

Given a dramatic lack of consensus and serious concern about this stuff,
I find it troubling that topic was basically discussed just enough that
it was drawn out and then died down and no action was taken.

It remains the case that anyone who cares about something like the
Public Domain Review would look at okfn.org and probably leave. The
homepage clearly states that okfn.org is just about big data — which
might as well be data relating to tracking everyone's behaviors for all
a first look might interpret (rather than data from science and
government stats).

Yada yada yada. This was all discussed. If we can't get consensus on a
better tag-line, how about NO tagline? Instead have a brief paragraph
describing what the heck OK does actually or who it is? Actually, that
stuff seems present if you just scroll down. So just DELETE that whole
green useless section from the homepage. Oh, but please add something in
the bottom section that covers the sort of cultural stuff that Public
Domain Review does, since that's *still* absent (indicating OK's leaning
toward disregarding those areas, which I hope isn't going to continue).

Respectfully,
Aaron Wolf
Snowdrift.coop