4 ms·

If you do this, then every single change in a word or a phrase will have some article about it. Some people will compulsively track every small change - and wha

If you do this, then every single change in a word or a phrase will have some article about it. Some people will compulsively track every small change - and what this means is that the government will have to be extra careful before changing even a word. This will lead to bureaucracy, and even more secrecy, because working documents would never get published, only final documents. Putting change.gov under source control is not a good idea. You want Obama personally having to field questions all the time, because some secretary chose a particular order of words?

yummyfajitas 18y ago
Some of the changes are extremely important. For instance, Obama originally had this to say about forced labor: Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year. Now all he says is this: They'll [Obama and Biden] set a goal that all middle school and high school students engage in 50 hours of community service a year, and develop a plan for all college students who engage in 100 hours of community service to receive a fully-refundable tax credit of $4,000 for their education. (Both from http://change.gov/americaserves http://change.gov/americaserves) There are major, substantial changes being made here. There is also obfuscation going on, as you see above. Knowledge of what he previously wrote clarifies what "set a goal" means. I think it's important for the American people to see this.
- mechanical_fish 18y ago
  As the parent comment illustrates, change.gov is already under version control. It's just being maintained by an army of semi-independent volunteers using ad hoc tools. If you build a website with a substantial audience, every change of every word is being tracked, by Google and the Wayback Machine if nothing else. That's just the facts of life in the 21st century.
  - yummyfajitas 18y ago
    So far, the wayback machine has nothing on change.gov. My ad-hoc mechanism of tracking changes was the following: I remembered a conversation on the internet, during which the website was modified (1). I then managed to google this conversation, and find quotes on the original language. I managed to track precisely one change, but I'm reasonably web savvy (read: I've written webapps, probably putting me in the top 1% of web users). Do you think the average citizen could manage to do even that? (1) In fact, after it was modified, several Obamatons accused the conservative posters of lying about the contents of the website. This is another hazard of unmarked modifications.
    - mechanical_fish 18y ago
      Oh, I understand and agree. I'm not trying to say that the current system of ad hoc "version control" is very good, let alone good enough. I'm just pushing back against this the argument that using a real version control system will create a P.R. problem. If the P.R. problem is going to happen, it's going to happen. The changes are public. People like you are reading them, copying and pasting them, emailing them to each other. I wouldn't be at all surprised if various political professionals are taking snapshots of the site on a weekly basis. There isn't even a security-through-obscurity argument to be made here, because the edits aren't all that obscure!
- GHFigs 18y ago
  I would think the _latter_ serves more to clarify the former than the other way around. Generally that's the way it works. Surely, in a lifetime of communication you have at one point or another misspoken or been misunderstood and had to clarify your meaning. Would it be fair for listeners to disregard your later statements entirely simply because they came later? Your casting a volunteer program as "forced labor" strongly indicates that you have a political opinion on what the interpretation _ought_ to be. It would be _convenient_ for you if that interpretation would be correct, but it would not be _accurate_. Not only is the latter in line with the plan (to require service in exchange for the tax credit) outlined well before the election, but it also has the advantage of actually making sense in context. Why would a page describing expansion of established volunteer services suddenly shift to mean mandatory service? And for students only? And then go right back to talking about voluntary services? It would make little sense to have the meaning of an entire page hinge on a single word in a middle paragraph, and even if it were an accurate representation of intent, the sentence itself is utterly bungled. Calling it obfuscation is senseless, too, given how freely the site expresses other plans that many find disagreeable. You want people to believe that the President-Elect is only willing to express major, substantial changes in policy via one word on one page of one site at one time, now past? Please.
  - yummyfajitas 18y ago
    The latter version only tells you the goal. The former version told you the mechanism by which Obama will achieve this goal, namely force. That's information which has been removed. The new information in the latter version is that college students will be paid for their work. We will find out soon enough whether Obama really does support forced labor. I don't think it's an outlandish idea, however. Forced labor has quite a few supporters on the left (Rangel, Clark and McDermott, for instance http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:H.R.393 http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:H.R.393:). Anyway, this isn't really the place to discuss the merits of Obama's possible policy proposals. My point is this: at one time, change.gov advocated forced labor. The American people deserve to be able to easily look this up for themselves, and see what other changes were made.
    - 18y ago

yummyfajitas 18y ago

Some of the changes are extremely important. For instance, Obama originally had this to say about forced labor: Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year. Now all he says is this: They'll [Obama and Biden] set a goal that all middle school and high school students engage in 50 hours of community service a year, and develop a plan for all college students who engage in 100 hours of community service to receive a fully-refundable tax credit of $4,000 for their education. (Both from http://change.gov/americaserves http://change.gov/americaserves) There are major, substantial changes being made here. There is also obfuscation going on, as you see above. Knowledge of what he previously wrote clarifies what "set a goal" means. I think it's important for the American people to see this.

mechanical_fish 18y ago
As the parent comment illustrates, change.gov is already under version control. It's just being maintained by an army of semi-independent volunteers using ad hoc tools. If you build a website with a substantial audience, every change of every word is being tracked, by Google and the Wayback Machine if nothing else. That's just the facts of life in the 21st century.
- yummyfajitas 18y ago
  So far, the wayback machine has nothing on change.gov. My ad-hoc mechanism of tracking changes was the following: I remembered a conversation on the internet, during which the website was modified (1). I then managed to google this conversation, and find quotes on the original language. I managed to track precisely one change, but I'm reasonably web savvy (read: I've written webapps, probably putting me in the top 1% of web users). Do you think the average citizen could manage to do even that? (1) In fact, after it was modified, several Obamatons accused the conservative posters of lying about the contents of the website. This is another hazard of unmarked modifications.
  - mechanical_fish 18y ago
    Oh, I understand and agree. I'm not trying to say that the current system of ad hoc "version control" is very good, let alone good enough. I'm just pushing back against this the argument that using a real version control system will create a P.R. problem. If the P.R. problem is going to happen, it's going to happen. The changes are public. People like you are reading them, copying and pasting them, emailing them to each other. I wouldn't be at all surprised if various political professionals are taking snapshots of the site on a weekly basis. There isn't even a security-through-obscurity argument to be made here, because the edits aren't all that obscure!
GHFigs 18y ago
I would think the _latter_ serves more to clarify the former than the other way around. Generally that's the way it works. Surely, in a lifetime of communication you have at one point or another misspoken or been misunderstood and had to clarify your meaning. Would it be fair for listeners to disregard your later statements entirely simply because they came later? Your casting a volunteer program as "forced labor" strongly indicates that you have a political opinion on what the interpretation _ought_ to be. It would be _convenient_ for you if that interpretation would be correct, but it would not be _accurate_. Not only is the latter in line with the plan (to require service in exchange for the tax credit) outlined well before the election, but it also has the advantage of actually making sense in context. Why would a page describing expansion of established volunteer services suddenly shift to mean mandatory service? And for students only? And then go right back to talking about voluntary services? It would make little sense to have the meaning of an entire page hinge on a single word in a middle paragraph, and even if it were an accurate representation of intent, the sentence itself is utterly bungled. Calling it obfuscation is senseless, too, given how freely the site expresses other plans that many find disagreeable. You want people to believe that the President-Elect is only willing to express major, substantial changes in policy via one word on one page of one site at one time, now past? Please.
- yummyfajitas 18y ago
  The latter version only tells you the goal. The former version told you the mechanism by which Obama will achieve this goal, namely force. That's information which has been removed. The new information in the latter version is that college students will be paid for their work. We will find out soon enough whether Obama really does support forced labor. I don't think it's an outlandish idea, however. Forced labor has quite a few supporters on the left (Rangel, Clark and McDermott, for instance http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:H.R.393 http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:H.R.393:). Anyway, this isn't really the place to discuss the merits of Obama's possible policy proposals. My point is this: at one time, change.gov advocated forced labor. The American people deserve to be able to easily look this up for themselves, and see what other changes were made.
  - 18y ago