Last week, no new features on MuckRock were released, but we did give ONA attendees a first sneak peak at the new DocumentCloud.
For previous site improvements, check out all of MuckRock’s release notes, and if you’d like to get a list of site improvements every Tuesday - along with ways to help contribute to the site’s development yourself - subscribe to our developer newsletter here.
Site Updates
A first look at the new DocumentCloud
Part of the reason MuckRock features have been a little slower coming out is that we have been hard at work revamping DocumentCloud, which we merged with a little over a year ago.
Well, this past week was DocumentCloud’s 10th birthday and to celebrate we held a party …
Celebrating 10th birthday of Knight News Challenge winner @documentcloud at #ONA19 @pilhofer @kleinmatic @jczamora @garykebbel pic.twitter.com/g6ydaHxhGM
— JenniferPreston (@JenniferPreston) September 13, 2019
Ten years ago, the @knightfdn funded these knuckleheads to build @documentcloud.https://t.co/13pUpFSeNJ
— Aron Pilhofer (@pilhofer) September 12, 2019
By hiring really smart people, they pulled it off.
If you’re in NOLA, do join us at 4:30 on Friday to celebrate DocumentCloud's next 10 years.https://t.co/s6YpQeRosx
and also showed off the very first early preview of the revamped DocumentCloud.
It’s just a first tiny peak at what’s to come, and doesn’t do justice to all the improvements under the hood, but we wanted to share it with those who couldn’t make it to New Orleans:
Thank you to all of DocumentCloud’s users, supporters, and fans, and we’re looking forward to more exciting updates on progress in Release Notes soon.
Come hack transparency with us
Every Tuesday night, we gather in Cambridge with a group of coders, designers, and others who want to see more open government. The past few months, we’ve been mixing MuckRock’s agency database with a set of scanners and scrapers to help gauge the accessibility, mobile-friendliness, and security of America’s digital infrastructure.
You can find out more and join us by checking out Code for Boston’s website.
Reporting bugs and submitting fixes
There are a number of other ways to help us continue to improve the core MuckRock site experience. We have a project and a weekly newsletter, “Release Notes,” that highlights everything we’re working on. Register to get a summary of site updates each week and details on open issues that need your help.
Check out some of our issues labeled “help wanted” for ideas on good places to start or just pop into our Slack’s #Developers channel.
Subscribers to the weekly newsletter get exclusive data sets, FOIA-related scripts, and other transparency hacker tidbits only available for subscribers. You can subscribe to the newsletter at the top or bottom of this page.
If you spot a bug or have a feature request, you can also help by opening an issue on GitHub.
If you do, please search open issues first to make sure it hasn’t already been reported. If it has been reported previously, please leave an additional comment letting us know it’s an issue for you, particularly if you can provide more details about when it crops up or what you think is causing the problem.
In addition to the new newsletter, we have a developer channel on the MuckRock Slack.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
