Commonworld
Method, coverage and privacy
Effective language: English
What Commonworld shows
Commonworld publishes curated Commons through one shared discovery surface. The current initial catalog contains 100 Commons with digital and/or publicly mappable presence. It is a limited editorial selection, not a complete global statistic.
Data and sources
Each entry has a stable CommonProject.id, an immutable date of first catalogue admission, sources, retrieval dates, activity information and curation information. The JSON files are the same data truth used by the globe and text view. Missing catalog entries do not mean that no Commons exist in a region.
What counts as a Common
Commonworld understands a Common as an identifiable resource, infrastructure, practice or body of knowledge that multiple people use, maintain or develop together. Admission requires primary-near evidence for a shared resource, community, commoning practice, rules and responsibility, and common benefit. Open source, free access, nonprofit status, decentralization or many users are not sufficient on their own. Forms remain open; justification is binding and machine-readable in the Commons definition contract.
Suggestions and editorial review
Public candidates can be prepared through Suggest a Commons. Commonworld does not store the form. The preferred intake path is a public GitHub issue; alternatively, a local JSON file is produced. Suggestions are never published automatically. Editorial review checks identity, primary-near sources, Commons characteristics, ways to engage, privacy, location precision, duplicates and freshness under the editorial review contract and documents admission in a Commons basis record. Since 31 July 2026, new or materially re-reviewed entries require this record; older entries are reviewed retroactively no later than their existing review date. Legacy entries already due receive a one-time grace period until 31 August 2026.
Locations and privacy
Digital Commons are not assigned invented map coordinates. Geographic information may be exact, approximate or hidden. Hidden locations have no geometry and are not reconstructed from other information.
Technical operation
The site runs statically on GitHub Pages. MapLibre is served locally. The basemap comes from the public OpenFreeMap instance as a non-critical best-effort dependency with no claimed SLA. If the map fails, the catalog and text view remain available.
Privacy
Commonworld has no accounts, first-party telemetry, cookies or write API. Map requests go directly to OpenFreeMap; the IP address may technically be processed there and temporarily logged for security.
Accessibility
A text view, keyboard path, reduced-motion handling and a no-JavaScript catalog are available. Full screen-reader product suitability or WCAG conformance is not yet claimed.
Licenses and machine-readable boundaries
© 2026 Commonworld contributors. The Commonworld source code is provided without warranty under AGPL-3.0-only; the full license text is public. Catalog data created by Commonworld is released under CC0-1.0. Third-party trademarks, map data and source data retain their own rights. The current operational state, catalog manifest and data schema are publicly readable.