Call for ideas and proposals for the future of COPTR & COW

[anjackson]

The Community Owned digital Preservation Tool Registry (COPTR) is not sustainable in it's current form, and we need a plan for the future.

On a technical level, the shift to building on the Semantic MediaWiki stack has proven challenging to manage and maintain. The Open Preservation Foundation have done as much as possible to keep the service running, but the software dependencies and administrative complexity is too high. The system has also started to drown under a influx of spam content, which is difficult to keep out without causing other problems (see #36).

On a service level, it appears the tool list information itself is hard to use and to maintain. Most of the feedback I've had on COPTR has mentioned that the tool lists are often overwhelming. There can be so many options for some actions, and very little guidance on where to start. This is compounded by other issues with the contents, like the fact that it is often outdated or incomplete, in the sense that it does not include many widely-used tools or libraries.

In my opinion, the 'Tool Registry' paradigm itself encourages this, in that it encourages the sporadic accumulation of 'stub' entries that point to potentially interesting tools, but adding or refining these entries is not something that is easy to integrate into the work of digital preservation practitioners. Based on my experiences so far, there seem to be two other, more promising avenues:

• Connecting people with the communities that know about tools:
  • Asking for advice from active practitioners means the information is more up to date.
  • Most people like sharing their knowledge with like-minded peers.
• Sharing knowledge about how tools are used, in context:
  • Compared to flat lists of tools, information about how a tool is being used for real is very valuable.
  • Quite a lot of people already like to spend time publishing their workflows in papers and blogs, and other forums like the DPC Workflow Webinar series.
  • This includes the Community-Owned Workflows (COW), which also need a new home, as they are stored on COPTR.

So, I'm wondering if we can 'flatten' the COPTR tools list down enough that it becomes manageable (perhaps just turning it into an Awesome List for Digital Preservation Tools? Or Google Sheet?), and instead dedicate some effort into encouraging people to share workflows in useful ways? e.g. gather some of the existing Workflows and Guides together, grouped by different actions/goals, a bit like the COPTR Tools Grid does but at the Workflows level? (I'm planning to prototype something like this over the next few weeks!)

[ablwr]

Commenting to stay on this thread of thought :)

[ross-spencer]

This feels like it should be two or more separate conversations.

1. What to do with COPTR? (or COPTR 2.0)
2. Are there other complementary approaches?
3. What's needed by practitioners (or workflow developers) at different stages of their skills development?
4. Miscellaneous, e.g., "connecting people" / “COW” / "webinars," etc.

Regarding 2) COPTR and an awesome list / flattening of COPTR could and should, I believe, remain separate conversations. An awesome list for a community-driven "most used tools" sounds fine and is easily achievable and can be done as a complementary approach while bigger topics are tackled.

Concerning 1) (What to do with it), I don’t think this conversation should be shortcut. COPTR is an important resource and stands as its own registry. There's a lot to unpack; the slippery slope of "widely used tools" or libraries is a concern for anyone looking at the long tail of formats within their own institutional context. Also, as a tool developer, I have few places to represent my work (or novelties I find from others and contribute to COPTR) and am unlikely to make it onto a most-used list; a registry makes a lot of sense, even just as a flag in the ground highlighting the work. The idea of a registry lending itself to stubs does not seem like a bad thing, but it could definitely be enhanced in a COPTR “2.0”. Even if it's not in a Wiki, it could be easier to upvote, star review, or communicate about what's there, e.g., form-based submission for reviews/notes (think BBC Good Food Website for File Formats). The intentions of different tools could be clearer, e.g., nuancing function with regard to PUID.

As a whole, COPTR (1.0) seems to me to be about a discussion concerning marketing, support, identifying ownership and responsibility, opening maintenance, community building, and awareness building. To begin, I didn't really know it was being very actively maintained, and I couldn't point you to an individual to talk to about it until I asked about the spam situation—I thought its relaunch in 2021 might signal a committed phase of maintenance, contribution, and support from the DPC. The spam situation alone doesn't seem to be a dealbreaker; that could be any Wiki on the internet; I feel like that conversation shouldn’t be exhausted.

That being said, it doesn't mean COPTR can’t be re-architected. Even if it's not, the moment feels instructional to the community, especially since the relaunch, as to what worked, what didn't work, what could be better, and so on. I don't know; losing stubs to 600+ tools seems like an unnecessary narrowing of the landscape. Sunsetting or changing the approach might also warrant a conversation about migrating web links (or maintaining redirects for a period) so that individuals who point to COPTR don’t end up with broken links. Maybe it can simply be put into read-only mode? And could exporting to Wikidata/WikiDP be considered?

(It feels like a big subject, and the more I think about it, I wonder if it’s a conversation that should be hosted as an event, e.g., via the OPF? For greater awareness. Also, will you be sharing this discussion via your mailing lists?)

(Additionally, it’s not clear to me how much PAR should be invoked in this conversation, but there might be some synergy.)

On 4) Connecting people / COW and so on, and sharing tools is beyond what I can helpfully discuss; obviously, it shouldn't be restricted to a membership organization. And as a proponent of linked open data, context looks very different when backed up by URLs that can be dereferenced and provide more information, so something COPTR-like is always going to support that, and combining community-described workflows with pointers to tools can become a self-reinforcing approach.

On 3) (practitioner needs at different stages), yes, this just feels like something different from COPTR. A different conversation, probably not for me in any current capacity, and more for your own outreach, members, etc. It's not impossible to reorganize COPTR or create new entry points and pathways into the data. It also feels like it could be a different, make-your-own-adventure-like tool. I can definitely see a low-barrier entry point benefiting a COPTR-like service; but there’s also an advanced view as a workflow builder / architect. where you do want to see the landscape that exists to know what you can and cannot put together or what gaps exist.

[ross-spencer]

@anjackson @carlwilson this is probably the best way I have to ping either of you at the same time right now, but COPTR has been on maintenance mode for over a week now so no new entries can be added. Can it be switched back to normal mode?

NB. I don't think there has been an announcement? but if it's a long-term pause while the technical issues are resolved, and this discussion above is had, then it's probably a good idea to make one. (and of course lmk if there has been something announced somewhere, I just haven't seen anything on different networks)