[Advocacy Advisors] clarifying things for other advocacy groups

[James Salsman]

Would quantitative measures of how various proposed actions counter
threats to building and sharing free knowledge help?

For example, if someone makes a case that acting successfully on some
issue is likely to cause X additional hours of productive editor
contribution time than failing to act on it, and nobody disagrees with
the analysis, or, if the analysis is supported by reliable sources,
nobody is able to counter those sources or show that they aren't
applicable, then the Foundation could be obligated to at least open a
formal RFC on the topic, and at larger thresholds of X, for example,
point people to it with CentralNotice or watchlist notices etc.

A good specific example is the Comcast-Time Warner Cable issue. I
think we should act to avoid monopoly consolidation of internet
resources, and there are sources which measure the extent to which
monopolies result in additional rent-seeking which would tend to
exclude editors. But I'm not particularly motivated to ask for action
on it without some expectation of whether it is even worth it to try
to persuade people.