[ckan-discuss] [ODM] OpenDataRace Philadelphia

Thu Oct 13 12:16:27 BST 2011

On 13 October 2011 10:22, David Read <david.read at okfn.org> wrote:
> On 12 October 2011 19:07, Jonathan Gray <jonathan.gray at okfn.org> wrote:
>> (Cc'ing ckan-discuss list)
>>
>> CKAN team: has there ever been discussion of a plugin or feature to
>> allow users to vote on datasets? If not - is it conceivable that one
>> could develop such a thing using CKAN plugin system?
>
> We've had a 5 star-rating system for datasets previously on ckan, and
> talked about +1 buttons and voting up and down, but no-one has really
> pushed for it. What does it mean that a dataset is 4 stars out of 5?
> The criteria are so wide-open.

I agree there are difficulties in rating systems and they are also
open to abuse (which is why we turned off the pure voting system a
while back). Nevertheless I think there are thinks close to voting
that could be useful e.g. 'watch/follow' function (and a count of
watch/follow), quality assessment info (5 stars of openness or
information about API availability), validation info.

> However a voting contest for datasets to get released does have clear
> criteria. I've not seen any examples of CKAN being used for datasets
> which aren't released (although there are certainly rumblings). I

In fact we have used CKAN quite a bit to reference datasets which
aren't released :-) E.g. when we produced this list of datasets at a
workshop in the UK in November 2008:

<http://thedatahub.org/tag/workshop-20081101>

At the time almost none of those datasets were available now many of
them are -- a testament to the great steps the UK has taken in opening
up data (looking at that list some of those items needing deleting as
duplicates or marking as provided by another dataset e.g. UK
Government Expenditure
<http://thedatahub.org/dataset/uk-government-expenditure> is now
provided by <http://thedatahub.org/dataset/ukgov-25k-spending>)

> envisage the datasets to vote on being separate from a site's main
> list of metadata for released data. Thus the voting system would be
> separate too. In fact, this voting contest would sit happily in a CKAN
> extension to slot into the UI nicely, it would operate pretty
> independently of the rest of CKAN. This would make it relatively
> standard Pylons work.

Reading Jonathan's original email I think there are two components:

a) Request a dataset feature. In many ways this is similar to what
http://isitopendata.org/ does. There has been a suggestion for a while
(advocated by me) that we should merge isitopendata.org into CKAN
rather than keeping it as a separate service

b) Ability to prioritize (or vote on) requests for datasets. As you
say this is relatively simple to implement once we have a).

I also note there is overlap here with the ideas and apps extension
(one could shoehorn requests for datasets in the idea category ...)

Rufus

>> J.
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 6:44 PM, Julian Tait
>> <julian at futureeverything.org> wrote:
>>> Not that I know off. I think being able to request data is really important.
>>> Do you think something similar could be done on Manchester?
>>> Julian
>>>
>>> Typed in transit
>>> On 12 Oct 2011, at 17:36, Steven Flower <stevieflow at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> You may have seen this:
>>> http://www.opendataphilly.org/contest/?sort=vote_count
>>>
>>> "OpenDataRace is a contest to uncover Philadelphia-related data sets that
>>> are not yet available to the public. Non-profit organizations across the
>>> city have nominated data that would help them accomplish their missions and
>>> improve our region."
>>>
>>> Does CKAN have a voting module ?
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>>
>>> Steven
>>>
>>> --
>>> ------------------
>>> Upcoming:
>>>
>>> Open Government Data Camp - 19th-23rd Oct
>>> Manchester Net Tuesday: .coop technology - 25th Oct
>>> Salford Social Media Surgery: 10th Nov / 8th Dec
>>>
>>> ------------------
>>> skype: / twitter: stevieflow
>>> web: stevieflow.net
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Jonathan Gray
>>
>> Community Coordinator
>> The Open Knowledge Foundation
>> http://www.okfn.org
>>
>> http://twitter.com/jwyg
>>
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