Integrate Civic Tech Field Guide taxonomy

[tdooner]

Pinging @mstem who's been working on the Civic Tech Field Guide for a few years now: https://civictech.guide

This page has some categories that we could consider integrating. We would then be able to contribute our projects back to the civic tech field guide, which would be sweeeeeeeeeet.

This might be a bit challenging:

• The categories are hierarchical -- do we want to incorporate hierarchy? (My vote: No)
• Do we need a new top-level concept than "topics" to represent these categories? These groupings in the CTFG feel a bit different than the focus area of the product. But I could see keeping everything as denormalized tags as being beneficial.

Thoughts?

[mstem]

Thanks for looping us in, Tom! I should note that our categories and the names for them aren't set in stone. We'd rather use the phrases that people in the field truly use, wherever possible. So, for example, we switched to "Crowdlaw" instead of "legislation engagement" and "Justice tech" more often than "Legal tech". We'd be happy to do more of that if it's helpful to map a shared terminology for the field. If it's of interest, we also had a few Code for All friends help out with translating some of the categories here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FzmvVAKOOFdixCs7oz88cz9g1fFPHDlg0AHgHCwhf4A/edit#gid=134664200 We also started using tags for verticals (housing, environment, etc.) and categories for technical function (SMS, blockchain, maps, etc.). I'd be happy to keep this conversation going, even if it's a few steps at a time.

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On Tue, Jun 4, 2019 at 1:15 AM Tom Dooner ***@***.***> wrote: Pinging @mstem <https://github.com/mstem> who's been working on the Civic Tech Field Guide for a few years now: https://civictech.guide This page has some categories that we could consider integrating. We would then be able to contribute our projects back to the civic tech field guide, which would be sweeeeeeeeeet. This might be a bit challenging: - The categories are hierarchical -- do we want to incorporate hierarchy? (My vote: No) - Do we need a new top-level concept than "topics" to represent these categories? These groupings in the CTFG feel a bit different than the focus area of the product. But I could see keeping everything as denormalized tags as being beneficial. Thoughts? — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#8?email_source=notifications&email_token=AAEVYOFBKLKMB2XWVRPUBPLPYWQ2RA5CNFSM4HSVEE2KYY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFUVEXG43VMWVGG33NNVSW45C7NFSM4GXM23OA>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAEVYOA3YXVRAHFMIKMPTXDPYWQ2RANCNFSM4HSVEE2A> .

[themightychris]

When I originally set off on this project I was determined to avoid hierarchy in categories, but as I reviewed and had discussions with all the existing indexing/categorization efforts I could find it became more and more evident that hierarchy seems to inevitably become necessary to accurately model the messy real world where projects attack problems at different breadths of scope.

The civic tech field guide does appear to have the most mature, ground-hardened categories set I've seen yet. The strategy of splitting out verticals as a separate dimensions of tags alongside the type of tool is something I hadn't seen before that makes a ton of sense. It seems to keep the categories list a lot sharper. Having tech as a separate tagging dimension seems to be common already to nearly all efforts I've reviewed.

[themightychris]

The listing-category taxonomy can be enumerated via JSON here: https://civictech.guide/wp-json/wp/v2/listing-category

[giosce]

Just to verify our vs civic tech field taxonomy.

[mstem]

Just a heads up to this team that we're evolving our taxonomy in our Airtable database (http://bit.ly/ctfgdata), which also appears on this new alpha version of our site: https://directory.civictech.guide/.

Please get in touch if you'd like to talk taxonomies, I'd love to combine efforts.

[themightychris]

@mstem could we organize a call to get together and see where we can align?

[giosce]

@mstem, I'll review the civic-tech taxonomy, in preparation eventually of a call, you can check ours at https://codeforamerica.github.io/civic-tech-taxonomy/editor-ui/

[mstem]

@themightychris @giosce an alignment call would be great. We should rope in @devinbalkind too. Week of the 13th?

[giosce]

Thanks @mstem, I'll be in Europe from 13th, I can try to join if by 5pm EST. I'll be back in Jan, but feel free to proceed without me.