Introduction

Greetings everyone! Seeing how a little organization would help streamline the proposal process, I have developed one.

The system created makes use of several wiki templates. This means be careful! Editing a page section changes the template, and not the page content, of a templated page. To edit the page's actual content, you must click the edit tab at the top of the page to edit the page's content. To learn about how to use wiki templates, go here

The System

The proposal and request system currently consists of 6 wiki templates: The Request template is used for creating a request page. It streamlines the formatting and organization. Two templates used in a request template are ProposalList, whic template is used in conjunction with ProposalItem. These templates provide an abstracted way to format lists of proposals inside of a request page.

The Proposal template is used for creating a proposal page. It also streamlines the organization of the page. There are also two templates used for lists of requests: RequestList and RequestItem.

Requests

First we have a request, which is a formally organized foundation for gathering proposals or solutions to an issue or problem.

Definition

 request = { introduction, signatures, criteria, proposals }

• introduction - used to orient the user about what the request being made is, and it's context.
• signatures - a bulleted list of parties who initiated the request.
• criteria - a numbered list of constraints that all proposals must satisfy to pass evaluation.
• proposals - a formatted listing of all proposals for the request. These must be made using the ProposalList and ProposalItem templates.

Example

Look at this example to see how to the Request, ProposalItem, and ProposalList templates are used.

Proposals

A proposal is a foundation for giving a suggestion, idea or solution for some request or problem. Once a proposal is finalized, it cannot be altered. One must create a variation or successor to a proposal and list the new proposal in the variations parameter, or as the successor in the evaluation status, which status will then become "abandoned". This makes the evolution process explicit.

Defintion

 proposal = { signatures, description, status, explanation, indefinitives, variations }

• signatures - a bulleted list of signatures of those who contributed to the proposal
• description - a full description of the proposal, including its implications.
• status - one of the five values: red, orange, yellow, or blue. These correspond to: unevaluated, passed, accepted, rejected.
• explanation - an explanation of the status of the proposal. If the status is "rejected", then this must include the numbers of the points in the criteria (remember they are numbered) that it was incompatable with. e.g. "rejected for: 1, 3, 4". Rejection is only for evaluation, not acceptance. Items can pass the evaluation (passed), but still not be accepted.
• indefinitives - a list of request pages. Indefinitives are gaps in the completeness of the proposal. Examples of indefinitives include:
  • open issues (but not criteria incompatabilities) created by the proposal that haven't been decided upon in the proposal.
  • necessary implementation details or policy that the proposal has not covered.
  • parts of the proposal explicity left open to suggestion (proposals).

Indefinitives must use the RequestList and RequestItem templates to format the list of them in the proposal.

• variations - a list of proposals. Again, these must use the ProposalItem and ProposalList templates for formatting. Variations are basically for people who propose altered versions of the parent proposal, as the proposal to meet the request.

Example

Look at here for an example of a proposal and how to use the respective templates it uses.