Any news and updates of general interest to CTWG members

• Nicky Hickman shared that the HXWG TF on Human Harms has published a draft paper called Overcoming Human Harms in SSI Ecosystems for Community Review in preparation for public review starting on Nov 15th at IIW. See the first agenda item below.

• Nicky Hickman shared some of the vocabulary and "emerging mental model' in the HXWG  Overcoming Human Harms in SSI Ecosystems paper.
  
  • The paper includes a mental model around harms that it is very interested in feedback on. It uses some of the eSSIF-Lab mental models.
  • Part of what CTWG could offer is a "surgery hour" when different groups who are working on terminology can get feedback.
• Rieks Joosten agreed that this is setting up a mental model for this whole space.
• Nicky explained how critical the terms and descriptions of these harms are because this is the essence of how we will be able to keep socio-technical systems from actually compounding harms vs. preventing them.
• Neil Thomson asked about "what terms are needed for audiences to really get it?"
  • There is a spectrum from government regulations to policymakers to developers to implementers and operators. And vocabulary needs to traverse the whole spectrum.
  • The mental model for each group needs to be expressed in their vocabulary.
  • He also talked about "as is" and "will be" diagrams, i.e., what is the current model model of what harms look like today, and what will it look like when they are being addressed?
• Nicky related the experience at the Sovrin Foundation exploring the area of digital guardianship.
  • It was very educational and constructive, but the main learning was putting a stake in the ground was good, but that it needs to be taken much further.
  • The next stages were an Implementation Guide and Technical Requirements Specification.
  • The biggest takeaway was the latter two were required to fully involve the voices needed to really understand and solve the problem.
• Neil felt that clear mental models about "harms before SSI" and "harms after SSI" would be very helpful.
• Nicky said that's exactly why we have Community Review. Drummond agreed, and said to consider this session the start of that review.

Neil has put his writeup of this topic in this Google doc. 

ACTION: Drummond Reed to read Neil's document and summarize his thoughts and next steps in GitHub issue #10.

• Drummond noted that this is potentially the grounds for another mental model.
• Rieks agreed that documents that start out explaining the terms they need to use to explain an area are the most effective. He felt it can often be more useful to start with terms and try to define their meanings and how they relate to each other.
• Nicky said "what I found with Yoma and harms is that you can't really define the terms until you have the mental model"
• Niel said: "In many cases we need to "resolve" differences between ToIP terms as well as between ToIP and terms from other contexts". Also: "Chicken <-> Egg Terms, Vocabulary<-> Mental Model Need to iterate both at the same time....?"

Rieks Joosten Drummond Reed 

See Rieks' proposed charter for the Mental Model Task Force.

• First, see the discussion in the agenda item above.
• Henk van Cann asked, "Is there a sort cook book for a Mental Model available?"
• Rieks does not know of such a cookbook, but is hoping that TNO will have an internal project that will:
  1. Inventory the experience of what "mental model authors" (like Nicky, Henk, Rieks, Manu, Drummond, etc.) are having.
  2. How to help them sort out the best practices.
• Rieks said that could in fact produce such a "cookbook". 
  • These patterns and best practices for creating mental models will be a focus of this work at TNO. This is new, but there is real interest in making this process much better.
  • Sitting back from the immediate work and looking at the general process, which takes a bit of time (and puts pressure on those working on deliverables).