Help us maintain the index

Technology continually evolves, and the index is a living document. Do you see gaps in its coverage? Proposing new competencies or benchmarks, updates, or even just changes of wording to the Competency Index Editorial Board is a fully guided process that begins with a single mouse click.

Before making that mouse click, you must be logged into an account on Github, a superbly well-designed platform pioneered by developers of open-source software that increasingly is being used for collaboration on other types of project, such as this competency index. Joining Github is free; you will be in excellent company.

If you log into Github and navigate to the Linked Data Competency Index, you will see, in the upper right, a button labeled Edit on Github. Clicking this will present you with the option to "fork" the LDCI Github repository. A copy of LDCI repository will be placed under your personal Github page and you will be placed directly into an editor where you can make changes to the competency index.

Then type away! Add new competencies or tweak wordings. Don't worry about the format; you are editing your own copy, so nothing will break. When you are satisfied with your changes, give your suggestions a descriptive title, press the button to "commit" your changes.

Then follow the prompts to create a "pull request". This will post your proposal to the LDCI Github repository with a request for consideration by the Competency Index Editorial Board. The page created for your pull request may be used for follow-up questions and discussion. Comments posted there will also be sent to the email address associated with your Github account.

If you merely want to raise issues related to the index, without proposing specific changes, you can do so by visiting the issues page and clicking on New Issue. This is the best way to raise general issues about the index, such as an extension of scope, or to put forward ideas that are not yet fully formed.

Members of the Editorial Board (and others with write access to the LDCI repository) should propose changes by creating a new branch of the repository, editing there, then issuing a pull request from the branch.