Gender Equality in management and non management roles+Discussion
Harriet J Law+Discussion
RELX Group PLC- CR Report 2020+Discussion
Dudas y sugerencias sobre el proyecto+Discussion
Deja aquí cualquier comentario general sobre el proyecto que no se ajusta a métricas específicas. El siguiente conjunto de preguntas se puede utilizar como una guía para el tipo de retroalimentación que creemos que necesitamos, pero como participante en este proyecto, tendrás una perspectiva diferente y, en muchos sentidos, sabrás mejor que nosotros dónde están los problemas. y cómo podemos mejorar el proyecto.
1. ¿Hay alguna pregunta métrica que no tenga sentido? Si es así, especifica qué preguntas métricas y por qué.
2. ¿Hay descripciones que no tengan sentido? En caso afirmativo, especifica qué descripciones y por qué.
3. ¿Hay algún vocabulario con el que no estés familiarizado y necesitas definiciones? Si es así, especifica cual.
4. ¿Hay algún cruce? ¿Hay partes de las declaraciones que se pueden incluir en más de una métrica? En caso afirmativo, especifique qué métricas y / o qué partes de las declaraciones.
5. Cualquier comentario o sugerencia adicional con respecto a las métricas, la metodología de investigación y de evaluación serán bienvenidas.
Note 2 Homepage and Historic Record - "Year" clarification+Discussion
For most answers, the year of the researched answer corresponds to the year a statement covers. For instance, if the statement relates to activities and actions undertaken in the period January - October 2016, on should choose 2016 as the answer's year.
Since Companies may report in fiscal years (FY) that include months from two different calendar years, please use the latest calendar year cited.
For instance, a report for FY 2016/17 should be used for adding data for the year 2017.
The MSA STATEMENT HOMEPAGE LINK metric year has to be different than the others since it does not relate to any specific MSA statement, it is merely checking if there is a link to a modern slavery statement on their homepage (or in a drop-down menu on the homepage).
For this metric, and since we can only check the homepage in the current year, you need to choose 2020 as the answer's year.
If you detect that you or another user made a mistake adding the year of the document you are researching, you can easily correct that!
To do this, first, click on the Edit icon (pen) next to the Year value (upper left side of the page). Then manually write the correct year and hit Submit.
It is done!
Here a short screen recording on how to do that: https://vimeo.com/316096075.
Thank you for your contribution.
Homepage "Year" clarification+Discussion
For most answers, the year of the researched answer corresponds to the year a statement covers. For instance, if the statement relates to activities and actions undertaken in the period January - October 2016, on should choose 2016 as the answer's year.
Since Companies may report in fiscal years (FY) that include months from two different calendar years, please use the latest calendar year cited.
For instance, a report for FY 2016/17 should be used for adding data for the year 2017.
The MSA STATEMENT HOMEPAGE LINK metric year has to be different than the others since it does not relate to any specific MSA statement, it is merely checking if there is a link to a modern slavery statement on their homepage (or in a drop-down menu on the homepage).
For this metric, and since we can only check the homepage in the current year, you need to choose 2020 as the answer's year.
If you detect that you or another user made a mistake adding the year of the document you are researching, you can easily correct that!
To do this, first, click on the Edit icon (pen) next to the Year value (upper left side of the page). Then manually write the correct year and hit Submit.
It is done!
Here a short screen recording on how to do that: https://vimeo.com/316096075.
Thank you for your contribution.
Note1 - Uknown Answer Option+Discussion
The UNKNOWN answer option is available on the platform for every question (hard-coded), so that researchers can signal that they looked for the answer, but could not find it in the sources they assessed (which would be the sources they cite).
HOWEVER, in those cases, the company may have disclosed the answer in another source.
Because the metric questions for this particular project only apply to a company's MODERN SLAVERY STATEMENT, "Unknown" is NOT an option. The company either provides the answer to the question in this statement, or it does not.
The reason we are so strict about this, is that the statements are legal documents (hence the need for a signature), and so whatever companies report about their anti-modern slavery activities in other documents falls outside the realm of legal influence.
This means your "UNKNOWN"s should turn in to "NO"s, and you can then clarify in the comments that the topics are touched upon in the statement but that they do not provide enough details to warrant one of the other answer options.
UNKNOWN Answer option in MSA Research Project+Discussion
The UNKNOWN answer option is available on the platform for every question (hard-coded), so that researchers can signal that they looked for the answer, but could not find it in the sources they assessed (which would be the sources they cite).
HOWEVER, in those cases, the company may have disclosed the answer in another source.
Because the metric questions for this particular project only apply to a company's MODERN SLAVERY STATEMENT, "Unknown" is NOT an option. The company either provides the answer to the question in this statement, or it does not.
The reason we are so strict about this, is that the statements are legal documents (hence the need for a signature), and so whatever companies report about their anti-modern slavery activities in other documents falls outside the realm of legal influence.
This means your "UNKNOWN"s should turn in to "NO"s, and you can then clarify in the comments that the topics are touched upon in the statement but that they do not provide enough details to warrant one of the other answer options.
Note 1 Unknown answer option+Discussion
The UNKNOWN answer option is available on the platform for every question (hard-coded), so that researchers can signal that they looked for the answer, but could not find it in the sources they assessed (which would be the sources they cite).
HOWEVER, in those cases, the company may have disclosed the answer in another source.
Because the metric questions for this particular project only apply to a company's MODERN SLAVERY STATEMENT, "Unknown" is NOT an option. The company either provides the answer to the question in this statement, or it does not.
The reason we are so strict about this, is that the statements are legal documents (hence the need for a signature), and so whatever companies report about their anti-modern slavery activities in other documents falls outside the realm of legal influence.
This means your "UNKNOWN"s should turn in to "NO"s, and you can then clarify in the comments that the topics are touched upon in the statement but that they do not provide enough details to warrant one of the other answer options.
The UNKNOWN answer option is available on the platform for every question (hard-coded), so that researchers can signal that they looked for the answer, but could not find it in the sources they assessed (which would be the sources they cite).
HOWEVER, in those cases, the company may have disclosed the answer in another source.
Because the metric questions for this particular project only apply to a company's MODERN SLAVERY STATEMENT, "Unknown" is NOT an option. The company either provides the answer to the question in this statement, or it does not.
The reason we are so strict about this, is that the statements are legal documents (hence the need for a signature), and so whatever companies report about their anti-modern slavery activities in other documents falls outside the realm of legal influence.
This means your "UNKNOWN"s should turn in to "NO"s, and you can then clarify in the comments that the topics are touched upon in the statement but that they do not provide enough details to warrant one of the other answer options.
Note on the Uknown Answer Option+Discussion
The UNKNOWN answer option is available on the platform for every question (hard-coded), so that researchers can signal that they looked for the answer, but could not find it in the sources they assessed (which would be the sources they cite).
HOWEVER, in those cases, the company may have disclosed the answer in another source.
Because the metric questions for this particular project only apply to a company's MODERN SLAVERY STATEMENT, "Unknown" is NOT an option. The company either provides the answer to the question in this statement, or it does not.
The reason we are so strict about this, is that the statements are legal documents (hence the need for a signature), and so whatever companies report about their anti-modern slavery activities in other documents falls outside the realm of legal influence.
This means your "UNKNOWN"s should turn in to "NO"s, and you can then clarify in the comments that the topics are touched upon in the statement but that they do not provide enough details to warrant one of the other answer options.
Miguel Tirado A+Discussion
"Unknown" as an answer option+Discussion
The UNKNOWN answer option is available on the platform for every question (hard-coded), so that researchers can signal that they looked for the answer, but could not find it in the sources they assessed (which would be the sources they cite).
HOWEVER, in those cases, the company may have disclosed the answer in another source.
Because the metric questions for this particular project only apply to a company's MODERN SLAVERY STATEMENT, "Unknown" is NOT an option. The company either provides the answer to the question in this statement, or it does not.
The reason we are so strict about this, is that the statements are legal documents (hence the need for a signature), and so whatever companies report about their anti-modern slavery activities in other documents falls outside the realm of legal influence.
This means your "UNKNOWN"s should turn in to "NO"s, and you can then clarify in the comments that the topics are touched upon in the statement but that they do not provide enough details to warrant one of the other answer options.
Questions about the project+Discussion
Reflections on the project from Columbia University students 2018+Discussion
General Discussion for the data sprint+Discussion
How can we better track and measure companies' progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals?+Discussion
With the sustainable development goals recently unveiled it's clear that companies have a significant role to play in enforcing and helping global progress towards achieving many of the articulated goals. Whilst SDG compass (http://sdgcompass.org/business-indicators/) has started to look at indicators, this information needs to be made transparent, and companies need to be made accountable to their progress towards goals.
Let's start a new topic on WikiRate and collect the metrics which correspond to the goals? What do you think?
I understand that GRI has contributed to the SDG, so it should be possible to map the GRI to SDG ? Anyone done this before ?
Thinking about it : the 17 goals themselves are pretty much close to what we call "topics" on WikiRate. Shouldn't we have the SDG's as topics ?
Creating a topic for each goal makes sense to me. Anyone else want to weigh in before we move forward with that approach?
User Interface Issues+Discussion
Hi. I'm holding a Master's degree in computer science, but after 15 minutes I still haven't figured out how to add a metric to a company. Please help. Also, the GUI is very slow and unresponsive. Why are there numerical IDs coded into the URLs? Basically I would sugguest to always display and "Add Item"-Button right next to the information type displayed, so that users can input the information type once they see that its possible to manage something like metrics.
I don't fully understand the concept of a "claim" yet. How about tooltip texts complaining the essentials?
Sorry for complaining about the UI. Thank you for this site.Its an awesome project anyways.
Very kind regards,
Michael
Hi Michael,
Thanks for taking the time to let us know what you're running into. We've just deployed a lot of new code, and the new interface has some kinks to iron out.
One of the big changes was that "Claims" were renamed to "Notes", but we have yet caught every old reference to Claims. Notes are explained in a few places; does that address that need?
When you say "unresponsive", you mostly mean that things are slow, correct? Performance optimization is a big focus now; I hope we'll have things moving more quickly quite soon. (I agree, that's annoying).
As for the numerical IDs, that depends on which URLS you mean. The Sources have numbers in there canonical names, because it's possible for many sources to have duplicate names (and we don't have a clear naming pattern to prevent sources from overlapping with notes).
You might also being seeing some URLs with a tilde in them. To explain that, I should mention that WikiRate is built with a tool called Wagn (which itself will soon be renamed to "Decko"), and that, like all Wagn sites, the site uses building blocks called "cards". Each card has a unique name (which can change) and a unique id (which can't). Are the IDs creeping into the interface in a way that's distracting? Where were you running into them?
Finally, the most involved question (and perhaps the most important) is the issue of how to add a metric for a company. Is your question about adding a value for an existing metric or about adding a new metric?
For the case of adding a new metric, it's not really our intention to make it easy to add those from, say, a company page, because a good metric takes a lot of design. Our thought is that if someone just adds a metric casually, it won't be conducive to generating robust, standardized data.
That said, what we DO *want* to serve well but currently serve poorly is adding new values for existing metrics on companies that don't have them. Our notion there is that the list of metrics should be able to serve not only as a list of metrics that the company has values for, but also of metrics that aren't yet measured. So, basically, if you knew of a metric you wanted to provide a value for, you could add it there in place. (There would be a similar pattern of searching for companies on the metrics pages) Maybe we should raise the priority on that one; would that make a difference for you?
Thanks again for the thoughtful feedback. Hope you'll stick around long enough to see things improve!
Out of curiosity, did you have a specific metric in mind? Any chance we can help get it on here?
Eh very sorry for the late response. I did not get emailed... I mean: being on a company page, how do I add a metric value?
Hi Michael, if you click follow on the top right of any card you can start to follow - then you should get notifications about updates.
On a company page it's not easy to add a metric value currently; as metrics are only shown on a company page when there are values available (or else there would be loads of empty metrics all over the site). We could add this to the interface, but I'm not sure if it's a net positive.
If you want to add a value about a company for an existing metric, then the easiest place to do it is from a metric page itself.
Does that sound reasonable? (i'll email you in parallel in case you don't see this)
I encountered the "follow" menu item. When I click it, the screen goes greyish, like the content is meant to be displayed out of focus, as if a modal dialog should be in front, but there is none. I use firefox latest version, official built. Disabled adblock plus and disabled ghostery for your site. Firebug shows no errors. The UI just freezes when I press "follow".
But anyways, when a users starts or participates a discussion, he should be "auto-follow" anyways. I really think thats common and its rather surprising not to be notified automatically.
My idea about the metric was just that I read that this German company HC Starck (similar to Glencore) is reporting according to the Dodd Frank act and member of some initiatives, ITRI Tin Supply Chain Initiative (iTSCi) and more (all written there: https://www.hcstarck.com/en/hc_starck_group/press/press_releases/2015/hc_starcks_tungsten_supply_chain_declared_compliant_with_conflict_free_smelter_program.html).
Now I would like to register the information that the company is members of these groups. I would use a binary metric for this:
metric "is member of ITSCi" - domain value range : 'yes' , 'no'.
Right now I don't know the value of any of these initiatives they are claiming to be a member of. But I just guess thats what would be the value of crowd sourced information gathering: One user add the informationen that the company is a member of whatever alliance, the next user might vote the metric as garbage, because the alliance is a marketing label, representing CSR from the view of a marketing & sales department.
For me as a consumer it would be very important to see that Apple is a member of the Fair Labor Association. And then I would really like to make it visually clear to the reader that the Fair Labor Association does not mean that there is any fair labor, just means they do a CSR report.
Don't be afraid of users adding conflicting or useless metrics... just let the users vote on them. I mean on a broader scope you cannot know what your users want. Some may want to mark certain makeup manufacturers as "vegan" .
At least I feel slightly frustrated by not beeing simply able to add a company as being member of a relevant group in terms of structured information. If I need for an admin to add a metric he might consider useless, and then tell me "For the case of adding a new metric, it's not really our intention to make it easy to add those from, say, a company page, because a good metric takes a lot of design", then this clearly isn't the way of motivating more contributors for your project. I mean on a crowd sourced page, who do you expect to judge about what is good design?
Sorry for the bad vibrations. Please really email me when you answer, bc the 'follow' doesnt work ... michael.leben@lebensland.de
Hey Michael,
You can add a metric quickly here: http://wikirate.org/Metrics by clicking add metric.
We're trying to create the most intuitive interface; but we're open to criticism where required.
I think the comment may have come across wrong from Ethan - we do want people to create their own metrics; they just need to have all fields populated to be valuable - e.g. context (rationale for creation) Methodology (how to populate), range of values and units (what's being measured).
Once you add the metric about a particular initiative, you can start to add whether a company is a member (y/n values) from the metric page.
We are working on the metric and rating interface at the moment. Actually, soon it will be possible to add values for metrics from a company page too.
Maybe have a go and let us know you hit any walls? I'm happy to help wherever possible.
Sorry for your problems with the follow. Will look into the points you raised; or maybe some of the dev team might respond more directly on here. We are trying to strike the balance between not being bombarded with mails and being notified about what's important to you. Understandably you're missing content that you're interested in though. I will email in parallel; but it's good to have the discussion here too for anyone encountering similar problems or questions.
Today I try to add for Company "Vaude" metric "Is a member of FairWear Foundation" = yes.
(I suggest you to have special binary metrics called "tags". Users want to tag things. Why is the user name part of the metric? I don't feel to well with that.)
With the help of your last post, I finally succeeded in creating a metric "FairWearMember" (yeah!!) but now I don't find the button of how to add the metric to Vaude (yes), but I read someone has already entered in free text the info...
I try to re-find my own metric with the search function. Not listed, or so (needs to be approved or uprated first?),it finds lots of "FairWear" pages that are empty,probably autocreated when I tagged a source or Note with fairtrade. When I go to my user profile and click on "things I created", It shows me everything anybody created ever.
On the Vaude company page, It says 0 metrics, but there is no " Add metric (value)" button visible. I managed to add a Source, lets me upvote my source , but how do I register the metric value now?
On the metric page, no "add company" button visible neither.
Please help me, again :-)
You can't currently add values for new metrics from the company page; that will be available soon. (Basically, you'll be able to change the filtering to show companies that don't have values yet).
We'll also be improving the search results, but as a workaround you can get there by autocompleting the full metric name ("Michael_Leben+FairWear"). You'd have to autocomplete Michael Leben first then type "+".
On http://wikirate.org/Michael_Leben+FairWear, you can click "add new value" to add a new Company. (We're redesigning that interface as well). You could also import multiple values. I hear that you were looking for "Add new Company" rather than "add new value". The latter is more precise, because you can add a new value even for an existing company that way, but we need to make sure it's findable.
I'm concerned about why your autofollowing is not working; we'll try to get that fixed this week. By default you're supposed to be configured to following everything you've edited, but I can see on your profile page that is not turned on. More on that soon; thanks for persisting even without that.
Re "Don't be afraid of users adding conflicting or useless metrics... just let the users vote on them." That's exactly right. We're not afraid of flawed design per se, and users can add whatever they like. But we do think users will be frustrated if they put a lot of work into designing a metric, only to find later that it was problematic in a way that would get them voted down. The barriers will get lower and lower as we refine our interface, but as we do that we also want to make it easier and easier to make metrics useful from the start.
Re "Why is the user name part of the metric?" - this is because many different designers might want to use given metric title, eg "Climate Change Score". Using the user (or organization) name means there can be multiple metrics with the same title, and it also appeals to the many contributors (especially advocacy groups) who want to promote their work. We have had some discussion of allowing the creation of user groups to use as this name part, precisely because some users might be less comfortable using their name. This is currently considered a lower priority than the other changes mentioned, but if you're saying it could make a difference in your interest in contributing, we would give that a lot of weight.
Hi Michael,
I'm glad to see you digging in. I hope that some or all of the problems you encountered are fixed now. If you go to your profile page: http://wikirate.org/Michael_Leben - you can see everything you created and should also be able to edit your follow setting there too.
Regarding the metric naming format, does Ethan's comment above answer your question or are you still confused as to how it works? Perhaps the confusion is about how to find metrics that you created. I understand why it may be more intuitive to search for the metric name to start with rather than yourname+metricname.
In terms of adding a value it's pretty simple: once you get to the Fairwear metric (http://wikirate.org/Michael_Leben+FairWear) either from your page of what you created/ directly from the metric page, click add value. Sorry you didn't find it the first time, but feedback is always helpful.
Will email in parallel.
Best,
Vishal
We haven't deployed many fixes yet but will soon. If not this week then next.
sort companies by category ("food", "electronics",...)+Discussion
When navigating the wikirate website, trying to find out what wikirate can do for me or what I can do for wikirate, I would have liked to have the possibility to browse the companies not only as an alphabetical list but by business categoy (fashion, electronics, food, cars, cosmetics etc.) to
I'd be keen to put the electronics initiative in place of the little "quiz" box that cycles in place of the video on the homepage.
Re the categories, there's been a lot of talk about how best to handle that – most of it offsite for now, but I'll try to share more thoughts here on Wikirate.org from now on.
I think there's a pretty clear plan emerging to have "industry" be a metric (or metrics). So, for example, on "Volkswagen", an Industry metric would have the value of "Automobiles". There are actually lots of standards (national and international) for categorizing industries. If we take this approach, we can use multiple systems and the community can vote for the best ones. It's also cool to use metrics for this, because some companies change industry from year to year, and metrics are already set up to handle that.
So on the company page, the metric would show up in the normal metric list on the right (and possibly in some other sections, like "About"). If you go click to "view metric details", the industry metric would look mostly like a normal metric card, which would have a list of companies on the right ordered by their value (eg "Automobiles"). We'll also want to be able to filter by industry in several other places, like on the Browse Company page. Actually, pretty much anywhere a list of companies appears, we'll want to be able to pick an industry and filter by it.
I don't know if there's a timeline for this (could happen very soon if someone got really passionate about helping us get the data in shape!), but I don't think that's far off.
Why Wikirate and what is a "company"?+Discussion
I recently found this site via a friend. Its well designed, with some data feeds but with little community generated content. I see two challenges for this site and wanted to start a discussion on them...
First, its not clear to me why this site needs to exist at all, given all the other more established places to do the same thing. For example, why does it makes sense to have this site instead of simply adding the content to the already well developed and used site Wikipedia? Why is it better to have a page on Apple here when there is already a (much more complete and up to date) profile of Apple on Wikipedia that includes a section on enviroment and social impacts? It seems like the sponsor grant money might be better served setting up data feeds or generating community activity towards that site. Likewise, for the conversations feature of this site there are much better sites already in place like Quora.
A second issue I have immediately is with the organization around "company"... how is that defined? Once you start having high volumes of overviews created the task of company dissamibguation and maintenance is going to be significant. If you mean "company" as in the financial holding entity, then many of the overviews on this site are going to connect to companies no one ever hears about because in fact their subsidiaries are the actual brand operators. For example, a "company" could be the clothing retailer Zaras. But they are wholly owned by Inditex, so maybe its better to list Inditex as the "company" even though they make no operating decisions at all. But Inditex itself is majority owned by a private holding "company" Gartler. So maybe its better to list Gartler as the "company"on wikirate. Even if you get this right (which would be hard to know how to verify), it changes. Businesses aquire, merge, and divest parts of organizations constantly. Who keeps track of those changes?
...again, a good site design, but I think these two issues are real blockers to it being sustainable and useful.
Hi Jonah,
good questions! Let me try to answer the first one: the goal of Wikirate is more than just aggregating information around companies' actions with respect to sustainability. Unlike Wikipedia, where bits of information can only be combined to an overview entry, the vision of Wikirate is to provide tools that enable users to break down information into elements, which can be recombined into multiple more "dynamic" ways of making sense of data, such as maps, timelines and ratings. Last year, the dev team has been mainly working on the basic (but very important!) functionalities, such as adding online sources, notes and citing notes in overviews; and only this year the focus has been shifted to the more "exciting" features, like ratings. However, it's important to understand that in order to really create full transparency around sustainability issues, context is just as crucial as facts. So on Wikirate, overviews and ratings complement each other.
Hi Jonah,
thank you for your thoughts. So far we built only the "wiki" part, and this year we ll add the "rate" part of it. With that it will become much clearer who we differentiate ourselves from any other site, including wikipedia. Have you read for example http://wikirate.org/Introducing_ratings?
Combining wiki and rate, and making it much easier for anyone to participate via simple note additions (you don't need to consider context to add new information - much easier compared to wikipedia!), will make wikirate very powerful and unique.
I will let Ethan comment on the company definition and mapping :-)
Philipp
Here is a first attempt to answer the "What is a company?" question. (Once we get that to a place we like, we should probably link to it from the Company page.
Jonah,
Nice to see these questions being asked. Why Wikirate? Why isn't Wikipedia enough?
Wikirate is about fulfilling the consumer's desire to know whether or not they should purchase something, and, consequently, shaping a business environment in which companies that impact their communities and the world for the better are more successful than those companies that impact their communities and the world for the worse.
Wikipedia provides only brief allusions to some such impacts (often buried somewhere in the depths of obscure subtext or discussion threads), such as the environmental impacts associated with the extraction of certain resources in certain regions, perhaps by certain companies.
The consumer has to piece-together from various allusions the probable impacts associated with each of their many daily purchasing decisions. Not only is this infeasible for most people working full-time jobs and with families to care for, but, even if they were to do so, the best they could come up with is a vague impression of what impacts might be associated with a given purchase.
Wikirate, on the other hand, would be designed to empower the busy consumer to base their purchasing decision according to specific impacts associated with the purchass in question, and empower them to do so efficiently, quickly, and, possibly, at the time of making the purchase. This would be feasible by simply looking-up ratings on the product or company in question.
Let's take a particular case in point, a particular piece of jewelry: a luxury watch. Say a busy salary-man might want to buy one for his spouse for their 10th wedding anniversary. Suppose he doesn't have the time to do the research he would like because he thought the upcoming anniversary was going to be their 9th rather than their 10th, and so didn't realized he should get an extra special gift this year instead of the usual flowers and a dinner-out at a somewhat fancy restaurant.
And so, on his only day off before the upcoming anniversary date, he's rushed down to the mall to find a luxury watch to purchase. He doesn't have more than a couple of hours to find the right one. He would like to do as much research as he did for the purchase of the wedding ring he bought 10 years earlier. At that time, he had made sure to buy a ring with registered diamonds, and check the reputability of the registration process. He did so because he knew his wife would look into such issues, and knew that if there was any possibility that the diamonds were conflict diamonds she probably wouldn't wear it.
Likewise, with this purchase of a luxury watch, he knows his wife would never want to wear one associated with any sort of unethical impacts, be they negative environmental or social impacts. He couldn't possibly get a watch with any possibility of the diamonds therein being conflict diamonds or even the precious metals therein having been mined with child or slave labor. Sadly, he simply doesn't have time to do the necessary research. He makes some frantic phone calls to some of his friends to get some advice and learns that he could use something called Wikirate to help him.
He downloads the app and sees that he can compare ratings of impacts associated with the production, distribution, and retail of various types and brands of watches. Not only that, but he sees that the Wikirate community provides details on how the ratings have been determined, with links to the various discussions on the various types and brands of watches, overviews on associated companies involved in the supply chain as well as specific impacts of specific business practices. There are links to other overviews, other discussions, and other ratings on the various companies involved in the supply chain of each luxury watch's materials, all of which were used in constructing the crowdsourced rating. In addition, he can also browse various indicators by which ratings were also in part determined.
For instance, he can list the types of luxury watches according to the number of deaths associated with their production and distribution. One type of one brand of luxury watch has an estimated 0.03 deaths attributable to its production. He unpacks the figure and sees the estimates of number of deaths resulting from global warming attributable to the carbon footprint associated with the watch's production, the estimates of number of deaths resulting from conflicts for precious metals or gems used in the watch's production, the estimates of the number of deaths resulting from the use of slave labor in mining operations for metals used in the watch's construction, the estimates of the number of deaths resulting from disease in communities associated with the pollution of ground water near mining operations for metals used in the watch's production, estimate of number of deaths resulting from poor health or malnutition or poverty of workers, etc.). He browses another type and brand of luxury watch which has only 0.01 deaths attributable to it and unpacks those figures. He browses various types of various brands of luxury watches, and is dismayed to learn that every single type of every brand available has at least some amount of 'associated death' attributable to its production. Then he notices that in spite of all of them having certain number of associated deaths attributed to their production, some nevertheless have an overall positive Wikirate rating.
Curious as to how this could be possible, he reads that of all the brands of luxury watches with positive overall crowdsourced ratings, one particular luxury watch brand has been successful in offsetting its historical 'negative impact debt' by paying more in taxes by being based in a nation with a high corporate tax environment rather than in a tax haven, as well as donating more of its profits to certain highly rated charities. As such, the overall ethical impact rating as determined by the Wikirate community for that particular brand of luxury watch is positive rather than negative in spite of is associated deaths indicator. Nevertheless, he is still bothered by the 'associated deaths' indicator of the brand. As such, he decides to list all luxury watches according to their overall impact rating and according to 'associated deaths' indicator so as to find the best ethical option for his purchase. He finds various types of one particular brand with a low 'associated deaths' indicator and a highly positive overall rating. He browses those types, chooses one he thinks his wife will like in terms of aesthetics, and purchases it right then and there through links to the webste of the nearest watch retailer which carries that particular type and brand.
Of course, this level of functionality is a long way off, clearly. Nevertheless, it answers how Wikirate is differentiated from Wikipedia. Insofar as I understand the direction Wikirate is heading, the aim is to provide consumers with as-exact-as-possible estimates on the impacts associated with their purchases, either positive or negative, so as to empower them to quickly and efficiently determine the best ethical option for their purchasing decisions.
I personally think that consumers will be increasingly demanding ethical purchase options, especially as the negative impacts of human activity become more apparent. Even now, consumers are increasingly basing their lifestyle, employment, and purchasing decisions on what they perceive are the impacts associated with such choices. Moreover, they are increasingly demanding that 'companies' (however we define the term) do likewise and conduct themselves more ethically according to what is becoming more widely considered to be socially and environmentally responsible business practices.
At some point, a critical mass of consumer demand for adequately presented information pertaining to the impacts associated with their purchases will result in Wikirate's sudden and exponentially growing importance. Wikipedia's purview is simply not set up to fulfill this impending critical mass of consumer demand for widely available, efficiently accessible, information pertinent to the ethical impacts associated with particular purchasing decisions.
I think a turning point will be reached when 'companies' (retailers specifically) become 'incentivized' to provide consumers with sound and irrefutable facts and analysis that they will start demanding as a part of their purchasing decision-making process. If the retailer in question doesn't have such information available for the consumer, the consumer will shop at a retail store which does provide such information.
At that point, Wikirate could become an invaluable resource to retailers who for the sake of their business's financial best interest will train their sales people to direct customers to consult Wikirate overviews, discussions, and ratings, and even make use of Wikirate overviews, discussions, and ratings themselves in the process of advising their customers in their purchasing decision process.
The big turning point will come when companies themselves offer up their own information on their own supply chains, etc., (to which only they have access) to be publicly audited by the Wikirate community.
At such time, such infromation need only be monitored by the Wikirate community in such a way that ensures the consumer can continue to base their purchasing decisions effectively on sound information, reputable overviews, genuine discussions, and soundly constructed crowdsourced ratings. At that point, if Wikirate becomes widely used by consumers, no longer will companies be financially incentivized to conduct themselves in secrecy and hide their environmentally and socially irresponsible business practices, but, instead, they will be financially incentivized towards conducting themselves with increased transparency and even participating in the construction of Wikirate ratings. And as a consequence of being financially incentivized to conduct themselves transparently by such ratings and consumers use of such ratings upon which to base their purchasing decisions, companies will finally be financially incentivized to conduct their business in an environmentally, socially, and ethically responsible manner.
Not only companies but countries as well?+Discussion
I've been involved with WikiRate back in 2015, and I'm glad to see it alive and kicking!
I have a simple question based on my current project: Did you ever think about handling not only companies but countries (or regions) as well?
They deserve a close look, and quite some metrics come into my mind: amount of child labour, strength of environmental legislation, some transparency indices, etc. For example, non-cooperational, non-governmental actors like artisanal gold miners or coffee farmers play a crucial role within a supply chain. Their working conditions and human rights can be described generally with respect to the region and the sector/industry they work in, or commodity they work for/deliver. For example, it is well known that cobalt mining in the south of D.R.Congo have a high probability of child labour. As another example, electronics manufactoring in China bears mostly by a lack of worker representation and collective bargaining... just to explain my motivation a bit.
Best,
Sebastian