doczaniu

Doczaniu is a term used to describe a collaborative approach to creating and maintaining living documents within a community. It refers to a governance model in which a central artifact—such as a wiki page, specification, or knowledge base— is continually updated through transparent discussion, incremental edits, and explicit justification for changes.

Origin and scope: The term appears in contemporary information science and open-knowledge discussions, especially in Polish-speaking contexts. It is not tied to a single organization and has no universal formal definition, instead representing a family of related practices centered on transparency and collective stewardship.

Process: Core practice involves open proposals for changes, discussion threads, and consensus-driven edits. Changes are versioned and accompanied by rationales, with appropriate notifications to stakeholders. Public edit histories, clear rollback procedures, and governance rules help maintain integrity and accountability.

Variants and tools: Some communities apply strict governance with formal review boards, while others use lightweight, community-run processes. Common tools include wikis, version-control systems, and issue-tracking platforms to track proposals, decisions, and outcomes.

Reception and use: Proponents argue that doczaniu enhances transparency, reproducibility, and long-term preservation of knowledge. Critics warn that it can slow progress or lead to decision fatigue unless governance structures are well designed. In practice, doczaniu is discussed as a best-practice approach within living-document projects.