I think one of ToS;DR best main assets is transparency, since all reviewing and changes are public.
And yet, it’s always possible to improve that:
I’ve noticed that when a Topic or a Case is changed, there’s no way to view the previous versions, who did this update, when, or the reason of this change.
Similarly, when a service is updated, it’s hard to keep track of the changes because only the author and the date are displayed.
Thus, I suggest creating a change history for topics, cases and services, with the same amounts of information that the one that already exists for points:
For the Topics and Cases, an additional box could be created inside that history for the curator to explain the reason of the change (and perhaps a link to the forum discussion).
Forgive me if I don’t know what the heck I’m talking about but I think it would be really nice to be able to track the changes of a ToS and have some kind of indicator that displays how it’s score/grade is trending over time. That way users can know if things are getting better, worse, or something in between. I’m assuming this would allow everyone to more easily make better decisions about what services they use.
Hmmm, and it should probably be displayed right next to scores and grades as well. Or at least the grades. It should be clear that it’s a supplement to understanding and not a monolithic metric.
Actually, there’s currently a way to view those changes for service’s grades.
For instance, for WhatsApp:
You can see that its rate changed from C to E (probably due to its latest update which clearly explains the collection and sharing of data with Facebook).
Nonetheless, often grade variations are internal readjustments to the reviewing process (e.g. newly approved points) rather than a consequence of changes of the service’s terms.
Despite that, we could create sort of archives showing the evolution of the grade, even if at the moment this evolution isn’t necessarily related to the Service itself, in the future they may become more accurate and be a useful tool to track ToS changes and understand how the Service seems to evolve regarding User Rights.
