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Names of bills nowadays have little to do with their content. Maybe we should just get rid of names altogether and refer to them by SHA hashes of their content.

by kijin 12y ago

Names of bills nowadays have little to do with their content. Maybe we should just get rid of names altogether and refer to them by SHA hashes of their content... "Some moron amended bill f7eed03, now it's bill f5ba821. Do you know how much I had to tweak the language in order to generate a hash that looks like 'freedom'?"

gizmo686 12y ago
Why not refer to the bill as H.R.3361. For anyone interested, here is the bill in question: https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/3361 https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/3361
- kijin 12y ago
  Hashes would make it a lot easier to detect sneaky last-minute changes.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    At the same time, though, you lose the thread if you miss any "X is the next version of Y" update. Probably HR-number-hash would be ideal.
    - mgkimsal 12y ago
      or maybe just 'version numbers'. HR3361.4 HR3361.5 HR3361.6 etc Easier for everyone to understand, not just geeks...
      - dllthomas 12y ago
        People get tempted to play shenanigans like reusing numbers.
        mgkimsal 12y ago
        datetime? HR3361.20141106142502 almost as bad as hash, but immediately parseable and understood if a version was before or after something else.
uptown 12y ago
Take a look at what New York City Council Member Ben Kallos is doing. He posts his legislation to GitHub so tracking changes is easy. https://github.com/BenKallos/legislation https://github.com/BenKallos/legislation It's a unique approach to governing that I wish more would follow.