Portal Structure Model (under construction)

This page presents the model structure of a WikiDeal market portal, element by element. It is under construction: every part below has been started, and none of it is definitive. Open points are marked as such.

A market portal gathers everything a community would need around one type of deal (babysitting, pet sitting, cooperative housing, and so on). Each portal is intended to follow one shared structure, so that visitors always find the same kinds of content in the same places, and so that a new portal can be opened by copying this model as it stands.

For the lifecycle of an individual contract (states, transitions, negotiation, execution, resolution), see Contract Structures: that page and this one are complementary and do not overlap. Contract Structures describes how one contract moves through time; this page describes how a portal's documentation is organised.

How this model is meant to be copied

Every market portal displays the structure table through the shared template Template:MarketPortal, used as {{MarketPortal|PortalName}}.
Subpages follow the URL nomenclature Markets/<lang>/Portal:<Name>/<ContentType>:<Name>, for example Markets/en/Portal:Babysitting/Contract-Base:Babysitting.
Eleven portals currently include the table (Babysitting, Coop Housing, Eco Village, Leisure, Microcredit, Pet Sitting, Professional, Real Estate, Separation, Street Fundraising, Taxi Coop). Most of their subpages do not exist yet: the structure is listed so that it is available and ready to fill.
Opening a new portal is intended to require only two steps: create the portal Main page with the template, then fill the subpages progressively, starting with the base contract.

1. Rules of the game

The portal Main page states the rules of the game: the governing conventions of the portal. It says what the portal covers, who it serves, and which conventions apply to its contracts and its community. Portal conventions are intended to refer to the general WikiDeal governance conventions (in the Gov space) rather than duplicating them.

2. Base contract

The base contract is the foundation of the portal. It is intended to contain:

the preamble: why this contract exists and in which spirit it is meant to be used;
the clauses: the numbered commitments of the parties;
the culture that goes with the clauses: the shared understanding and practices that give each clause its meaning in real situations. A clause without its culture is easily misread; the base contract is meant to carry both;
the reference documents: the texts the contract relies on or points to;
the annexes: a base contract often has annexes (schedules, inventories, technical descriptions, price lists).

3. Models

Contract models are concrete, ready-to-use contracts built from the base: each model takes the base contract and adapts it to a typical situation of the portal. A babysitting portal, for example, could offer distinct models for mutual shared babysitting, semi-voluntary babysitting or fully paid babysitting, all derived from the same base.

4. Amendments and addenda

An amendment replaces parts of an existing contract; an addendum (in French: avenant) complements it, for example with a deadline extension. Both are intended to stay very brief and to contain exclusively the formulations that link the document to the base contract, in an "intro-extro" structure:

a preamble stating that the document is linked to contract X, signed on a given date;
in the body, linking formulations only, such as "this replaces clause [number]" or "this complements clause [number]", without restating the substance of the contract;
a closing mention stating that all the other clauses remain unmodified.

Standard closing phrases:

"Clauses [numbers] are modified as stated above; clauses [numbers] are cancelled; the other clauses remain unmodified." or, in the opposite construction,
"Clauses [numbers] are kept as stated above; the other clauses are cancelled."

The document would therefore carry the list of the numbers of the modified clauses and the list of the numbers of the cancelled clauses.

5. Lawyer validation

Each contract is intended to display how many lawyers have validated it, and to what degree. The validation levels are under construction; the working idea is a gradation, from a first informal reading up to a named endorsement, where identified lawyers take responsibility for the contract and are prepared to defend it (see Peer Endorsement). A contract would never hide its maturity: readers would always see how far the validation has gone.

6. Legal references

Legal references are organised by country and language: the laws, codes and articles relevant to this type of contract in each jurisdiction. A contract that works in one country may need adaptation in another, and this section is where those differences are documented.

7. Compensation

This section gathers the compensation models of the portal: the conditions under which a compensation is due, the pricing and scales that apply, and, where relevant, compensation in Miles Credits.

8. Use cases

Use cases show how a contract is parameterised in real situations: the delays, the sums, the obligations and the other parameters chosen by the parties. A use case is a worked example of configuration, so that new users can start from a realistic setting instead of a blank form.

9. Alerts and prevention

This single section gathers alerts, risks and common errors together: the warning signs to watch for, the known risks of this type of deal, the frequent mistakes and how to avoid them. Alerts, risks and common errors were previously listed as two separate content types; they are now merged into one prevention section, so that everything that protects the parties is read in one place.

10. Statistics

This section is intended to publish two kinds of figures:

usage statistics: how often the contracts of this portal are used, completed or disputed;
statistics of common errors: for example, how many times on average a given form of strong risk occurs.

These would be aggregated, anonymised statistics, part of the data that is published by design (contract states and aggregate usage), never the private variables entered in individual contracts.

11. Signature

This section covers how signatures are managed: who signs, in which order, what proof of signature is kept, and the place of electronic signature. An open question is whether WikiDeal would offer an online signature tool of its own or rely on existing tools, and which signature levels would apply. This question is intended to be handled through a dedicated open call: see Open call: contract signature.

12. Tutorials, FAQ and debates

Tutorials teach step by step how to use the portal's contracts.
The FAQ answers the recurring questions of users.
Debates take place on the portal's Talk page: this is where disagreements about the portal's contents are discussed.

Status

This model is under construction: it has been started and is being refined, and it is not definitive. Remarks and proposals are welcome on the Talk page of this page, or through Get started: how to contribute.

Markets/en/Portal:All Portals/Portal-Structure-Model