Decide before you collect

Most harm to community data happens quietly, at the moment of collection. Once a recording, a photo or a story sits in someone else's database, the agreements that should have governed it are very hard to add. Tang's advice is to reverse the order. Do not "scrape first and ask questions later." Agree on the boundaries first.

At Parque das Tribos in Manaus we ran this as an open conversation, with no slides about policy. We asked one question: what do you want the world to see, and what do you want to keep with your community? It became one of the best hours of the week.

People wanted their biodiversity observations to be public. They wanted local plant names, medicinal uses and food traditions shared, so that their own children and people far away could learn from them. Then the boundaries came. Rare species should stay private, because a visible location can bring poachers and collectors. Species with spiritual or historical meaning should not be exposed to outsiders. And some people did not want to deal with certain species at all, because a snake had bitten them or a plant had poisoned them. That boundary had nothing to do with who could see the data.

Later that week, at Arte & Escola na Floresta, a community space thirty minutes by 4x4 from the nearest paved road outside Manaus, another group drew its own lines. Public: observations, traditional recipes, medicinal plant knowledge, seasonal and environmental notes. Private: health data, children's data, the exact locations of important sites, plant knowledge used in rituals, and the chat logs themselves.

Three things stand out from both conversations. The lines were not where an outside team would have guessed. They were agreements between people, made together, and only later turned into software settings. And they needed three categories, while most apps only offer two.

Once a group has sorted its knowledge, the decisions have to be written down in a form that outsiders and engineers can act on. Tang lists five things a boundary should cover. We use them as the fields of a worksheet:

1. 1.What may be used, and by whom.
2. 2.For what purpose. Anything not listed is excluded.
3. 3.Under whose review. Name a person and a backup.
4. 4.With what benefit for the community.
5. 5.With what right to revise, reject or withdraw, and how that is done in practice.

The fifth field is where most agreements fail. "You can withdraw at any time" means nothing if nobody knows which files to delete, on which computer, and who will do it. Write the steps down while everyone is still in the room.