Semantics of change
Change
While we have talked about change in general, in practice, CommonOutcomes allows co-modellers to model units of change that are separate—albeit related. Hence when we talk of changes, we refer to discrete units of change, representing a differential state of the world.
Note that although changes concern the real world—whether physical or digital—, they do not suppose a priori anything about their actual state or possibility of realisation, nor about who might be advocating for them. In that sense, changes are conceived as hypothetical and non-partisan by default.
Typology
In practice, it can be useful to distinguish between different types of changes. We propose and define three broad types: actions, outcomes and externalities. From now on, we will use change when we want to refer to an unspecified unit of change, which could be either of these three types.
An action refers to a potential change that a given community is capable of implementing, outlining the input required from it. Actions define clearly the change operated by the community, but does not specify in themselves their possible dependencies (e.g. to other actions), or desired outcomes—these will be considered separate entities.
An outcome refers to the consequence of one or several changes that does not require any community input in itself. As such, it supposes the existence of causes, and a consequential logic to derive it. Currently we let outcomes range from immediate consequences to long term goals.1
Both actions and outcomes suppose some form of agency, whether direct or indirect, exerted by the concerned community. In that sense they adhere to the definition of active change given in the introduction. In contrast, externalities refer to changes that the community has no agency over.2
Properties
We mentioned the need to tie change to a specific community or context in the wiki's introductory reflections. CommonOutcomes reflects this by requiring a scope to be associated to each change. In practice, we use scope to refer to the wider community, area or jurisdiction concerned with a change.
We also associate a status to each change, indicating its level of progress or degree of advancement. This property is detailed in the entry dedicated to evolving change.