Digital Litter Picking

In an ideal world, people wouldn't drop litter. There would be plentiful bins and people would be responsible with their rubbish. In a slightly less ideal world, the local council would have enough money to clean up the mess left by people.

But we don't live in an ideal world. People are ignorant and selfish. Councils are cash-strapped. So, once in a while, I'll go litter picking. I strap on a high-vis jacket, take a grabber, gloves, and refuse sack. Then I get to work. It feels like the least I can do. I want to live in a pleasant environment and spending a few hours in the muck is a small effort which gives meaningful change.

That's also how I feel about most online activity I do.

I recently took part in Democracy Club's General Election Data Gathering exercise. A bunch of us went through all the election documents published showing who was standing. We (semi) manually transcribed documents, checked they were accurate, added details about candidates, and generally gave the data a good scrubbing.

I made over 200 contributions⁰.

In an ideal world, the local authorities would publish all these data in a standardised format, with appropriate metadata, and digitally authenticate the documents. But councils are cash-strapped and many of the people involved come from a paper-based world with little thought for digital technologies. Despite repeated efforts¹, local authorities seem reluctant to engage in the data-driven world.

I want to live in a world where every voter can quickly and easily find out who they can vote for - and where they can vote². So I engage in digital litter picking.

It isn't glamorous or sophisticated work. It doesn't require much training, or a huge time commitment. But it's the sort of thing that I think can make a real difference to the civic environment.

If you've ever corrected a typo in an Open Source readme, or added alt-text to an image, or tidied up some broken references in Wikipedia - you're doing Digital Litter Picking. You're cleaning up after others. And I think that's a marvellous way to spend a little time.