Screening dependencies: personal and collective decisions¶
Later discussion: the review-step prototype handoff records Chris's subsequent same-stage choice of personal Include with collective-Exclude veto and optional collective satisfaction for unvoted reviewers. The alternatives below remain comparison material, not equally unresolved defaults.
Purpose and status¶
This comparison separates options discussed with Chris. It is a review aid, not an approved policy or implemented behaviour. No runtime change, migration or feature-flag change is made. Supporting research: screening investigation.
Correction to the verbal explanation: “personal Include with a collective-Exclude veto” is not personal-only. Also, an unconditional collective-Exclude veto cannot coexist with a genuinely personal-only option. Whether to permit personal-only dependencies is still a design decision; this document does not silently approve that exception.
Common example¶
A stage has two separate steps:
- Submit a screening decision against profile P.
- Complete an extraction question set.
The tables answer one question: does this screening dependency allow this reviewer to start new extraction work? Permissions, allocation and unmet extraction demand must also permit the assignment. These tables do not determine editing rights for saved work.
“Personal” means this reviewer's effective submitted decision for the study and profile, including a decision made in another stage. “Collective” means the profile's derived outcome under its configured agreement rules. Pending and Conflict are not resolved Excluded. No personal decision includes an unsubmitted draft; drafts cast no vote.
Four distinct rules¶
| Mode | Rule for opening extraction | Example and consequence |
|---|---|---|
| A. Personal only | Personal Include | Alice can extract after her Include, even if the group has resolved Excluded. Useful only if independent personal routes are intentionally allowed. |
| B. Collective only | Collective Included | Bob can extract despite his personal Exclude, or without a personal vote. His disagreement is preserved. |
| C. Both Includes | Personal Include AND collective Included | Alice must wait for collective Included. Bob's personal Exclude blocks him even if the group Includes. |
| D. Personal Include with collective-Exclude veto | Personal Include AND collective outcome is not resolved Excluded | Alice can proceed while agreement is pending or conflicting, but cannot start once the group resolves Excluded. |
Mode D was initially misleadingly called “personal” in conversation. It is deliberately listed separately from A and C. Mode C waits for positive group agreement; D does not.
Complete combination table¶
Allow means this dependency passes. Block means it does not pass at present; it is not a new Exclude vote. Pending and Conflict are grouped because all four rules treat them alike, although storage and reporting must keep them distinct.
| Personal decision | Collective outcome | A: Personal only | B: Collective only | C: Both Includes | D: Personal + veto |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Include | Included | Allow | Allow | Allow | Allow |
| Include | Excluded | Allow | Block | Block | Block |
| Include | Pending / Conflict | Allow | Block | Block | Allow |
| Exclude | Included | Block | Allow | Block | Block |
| Exclude | Excluded | Block | Block | Block | Block |
| Exclude | Pending / Conflict | Block | Block | Block | Block |
| No submitted decision | Included | Block | Allow | Block | Block |
| No submitted decision | Excluded | Block | Block | Block | Block |
| No submitted decision | Pending / Conflict | Block | Block | Block | Block |
An independent annotation activity has no screening dependency at all. Its availability does not depend on either decision. This is separate from modes A–D. No additional “either person or group Includes” mode is recommended here; that would be another explicit policy.
Walk through one mode at a time¶
A. Personal only¶
You Include: extraction opens regardless of the group's outcome. You Exclude: it does not. This would permit extraction of a collectively Excluded study. It is incompatible with a universal group-exclusion veto, so that consequence needs explicit approval before adoption.
Review question: should projects be allowed to configure this option?
B. Collective only¶
The group resolves Included: eligible assigned reviewers can extract, including someone who voted Exclude and someone who never screened. Pending, Conflict or Excluded does not open extraction. Extracting does not change or invent that reviewer's screening vote.
Review question: is extraction after personal disagreement acceptable for this activity?
C. Both Includes¶
You Include and the group Includes: extraction opens. If either required Include is absent, it does not. A personal Include while the group is pending is insufficient.
Review question: how should a new, unvoted extractor become eligible after screening closes?
D. Personal Include with group-Exclude veto¶
You Include while the group is pending: extraction opens. If the group later resolves Excluded, no new extraction starts under this rule. Work already saved remains preserved; whether an in-progress reviewer can continue is a separate unresolved policy.
Review question: should extraction start before collective agreement is established?
Dependencies, terminal steps and sessions¶
- A dependency that fails blocks its dependent route, not automatically every independent activity in a stage. “Terminate the whole stage” needs explicit scope.
- Personal termination applies to that reviewer. A collective gate can block all reviewers. Merely saying “terminal on Exclude” is incomplete without naming the decision source.
- In a linear route, resolved exclusion under an applicable gate can leave no further work to assign. Downstream work is skipped because of that gate, not marked completed or given fabricated Exclude decisions. Pending gates mean waiting, not permanent skipping.
- Existing decisions carry across stages sharing a profile: never ask for a duplicate vote. An authorised correction creates history rather than a second vote.
- A reviewer's assignment can finish after screening while extraction remains for another reviewer. A stage may instead require a same-reviewer bundle. Do not manufacture an incomplete annotation session merely because extraction remains outstanding.
- Already-saved answers survive gate changes. Historical submissions are not rewritten.
Separate from combined screening and extraction¶
These examples use two separate steps. In a combined activity, completing extraction can submit Include, and explicit Exclude can bypass remaining extraction. Draft save casts no vote. Requiring that same personal Include before opening the combined form would create a circular dependency; combined-activity entry and completion must be specified separately.
If the shared profile is already sufficiently screened, outstanding stage extraction does not itself authorise duplicate or additional votes. Whether the combined activity permits a new vote, reuses an existing vote, or routes a concern for reconsideration remains explicit.
Unresolved questions retained for review¶
- Which modes should be supported? Is a collective-Exclude veto universal, thereby ruling out A, or configurable? The conversational alternatives are not final approval.
- For C, and other modes requiring personal Include, what happens when collective screening is closed but an unvoted reviewer is assigned extraction? Permit an explicit additional assessment, or allocate only to existing Include voters? Do not invent an Include.
- If additional votes are permitted, when do they reopen or change the collective outcome?
- What happens to work already open when a gate changes? Preserve saved work in every case; separately decide whether continuation/completion is permitted or requires reconsideration.
- Does exclusion terminate only dependent steps or the entire stage? Which activities must remain with one reviewer, and where can another reviewer take over?
Review checks¶
The matrix has been checked against these proposed predicates:
- A: personal decision equals Include.
- B: collective outcome equals Included.
- C: A and B.
- D: A and collective outcome does not equal Excluded.
Pending and Conflict are not interchangeable domain states, but neither is Excluded for D. No rule converts a missing vote into Include. No row implies a completed extraction review. These are design consistency checks, not tests of implemented SyRF behaviour.