One page per transaction

[evanwolf]

What

• Give every contribution, expenditure, refund (etc.) its own canonical url
• On that page:
  • what we know about that transaction:
    • which election/ballotmeasure this was in
    • parties involved (and links to their pages)
    • amounts
    • dates/times
    • locations/zip (if available)
    • other transaction metadata
    • the data's provenance (which filing system we got the data from and when)
    • list of other transaction known to be related (e.g. a refund)
  • an OD-canonical hashtag for this transaction, the better to track/share.
    • e.g. #odoakmayor2014c1234 or some similar scheme
  • actions users can take on this transaction:
    • share (email, twitter, save pdf to disk, etc.)
    • search for similar transactions
      • between the same parties;
      • having the same dollar amounts;
      • made the same week;
      • a similar name (e.g. "consultant", "consulting", "consulted")
        • bonus points for showing these results without a search

Why

• To enable linking to a specific transaction
• To enable sharing a specific transaction
• To provide a more complete context for a specific transaction
• To make it easier to follow and understand money trails
• To make it easier to discover bad behavior

[tbarreca]

Wow, this seems like a lot of effort to me, and I'd be curious to hear from
others whether or not they think it's worth it. And why it is.

On Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 4:07 PM, Phil Wolff notifications@github.com
wrote:

What

• Give every contribution, expenditure, refund its own canonical url
• On that page:
  • what we know about that transaction:
    • which election/ballotmeasure this was in
    • parties involved (and links to their pages)
    • amounts
    • dates/times
    • locations/zip (if available)
    • other transaction metadata
    • the data's provenance (which filing system we got the data
      from and when)
      • actions to take on this transaction:
    • share (email, twitter, save pdf to disk, etc.)
    • search for similar transactions
      • between the same parties;
      • having the same dollar amounts;
      • made the same week;
      • a similar name (e.g. "consultant", "consulting",
        "consulted")
        • bonus points for showing these results without a search

Why

• To enable linking to a specific transaction
• To enable sharing a specific transaction
• To provide a more complete context for a specific transaction
• To make it easier to follow and understand money trails

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#370.

Tony Barreca
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/tonybarreca
Skype: tonybarreca
Twitter: tbarreca
Mobile: (510) 710-5864

[tdooner]

@evanwolf Do you think that people will really be able to find anything interesting in viewing a single transaction? Enough to share with their friends? If so, can you point to a couple on OpenDisclosure currently (or in the original data) that are worthy of being shared, or help follow a money trail?

I guess I just find the aggregate data more interesting, and especially role-playing a random internet passerby, I'm not going to have a lot of attention span to dig into such granular data.

[evanwolf]

For me, this is about showing the atomic elements, the sources from which we build our sums, counts, and trends. It is the least abstract thing in our universe. It is specific, with dates, times, and people exchanging money for something. Someone asked someone else for this specific donation or paid for this specific billboard. This five-foot view makes the 500 and 5000 foot views more trustworthy.

Introspection. Seeing your own contribution as a public record is novel. Seeing it in context with similar contributions adds perspectives you may not have considered.

Discovery. With individual transactions, we can let Google and the Internet Archive crawl us and inventory all the transactions in a way that makes it easier for people and their search engines to find details.

Citeability. We may be the only home this transaction has on the whole Internet. A unique url can be cited by Wikipedia, BuzzFeed, the New York Times, or congressional testimony.

Focus. Today we can only point to one of the parties, and this transaction may be one among thousands.

Discussability. Whether we host public conversations or they happen elsewhere, people will want to talk about specific transactions.

• We had news stories about three Kaplan refunds in 2014, for example. They should have been able to link readers to the individual contributions and the individual refunds.
• Karamooz's big loans and repayment.
• The first contribution at the maximum allowed
• The final transaction that put a candidate over $400K
• The first field office spending/in-kind-contribution,
• The IEC transactions that had unclear descriptions warranting investigation.
• The consultants that Libby Schaaf spent so much money on

We should be making it as easy to dig into the details as to gloss the trends.