[ckan-dev] Personalization Features of CKAN

Wed Jul 25 17:02:50 UTC 2012

Hi everone,

I work on my master's thesis and Sean and I thought it would be a good  
idea to share my ideas of how to improve personalization functionality on  
CKAN. Thus, I welcome everybody to contribute their thoughts in order to  
deliver a better experience for the users.

------- Forwarded message -------
From: "Sven R. Kunze" <sven.kunze at s2007.tu-chemnitz.de>
To: "Sean Hammond" <sean.hammond at okfn.org>, "Irina Bolychevsky"  
<irina.bolychevsky at okfn.org>
Cc: "Darwin Peltan" <darwin.peltan at okfn.org>
Subject: Re: User profile how to
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2012 13:48:23 +0200

> Great, I think Ira would be interested to hear it as well.

:)

First of all, the core idea is to enable the users as good as possible to
follow their interests on a dataset repository; this is the
personalization part of my thesis.

As far as I can tell those interest could be
regarding datasets
    - discovery of datasets
    - usage of datasets (getting the latest news, including them into their
services etc.)
    - publishing/uploading datasets
    - enhancing datasets
    - pushing the idea of LOD
regarding users
    - presenting themselves (not only important for private persons but also
for enterprises)
    - fulfilling themselves
    - discovering users with the same interests
    - encouraging users to contribute to the platform
regarding security/trust
    - always being in control of their personal data
    - configurability of what is displayed to whom

The first step has been taken by the introduction of personal data, the
following concept and the a unified activity stream. Additionally the most
obvious functions like publishing datasets and their usage is already
matured.

1
Second step could be to embrace not only users and datasets into the
following concept but also groups and tags.

2
A configuration page where the user can specify what (which activity
types, which personal data and yet to come: wishlists, interests etc.) may
be displayed to whom (followers, followees, visitors, logged in etc.)
could be the next step.

3
A dedicated interest page on which the users determines their preferences
regarding what news on CKAN (say, activities) they wish to see in their
dashboard activity stream, too.
For instance, if they are interested in "football" (btw. what a defeat
last night.. -.- ) they could be able to put that word into CKAN, and CKAN
will inform them appropriately when something with datasets or groups
regarding football happens.

4
A more specialized way to determine their interests in form of a SPARQL
query. This would include the usage of LODStats. The idea is to enable the
user not only to put in plain text, such as 'football', but also to let
him state what exact vocabularies a dataset uses; say:
http://example.org/football.

5
A way to integrate (4) and (5) in a way that is convenient for the user.
Dedicated activity streams for each interest description would also be  
possible.

6
Recommendations ("See also") for datasets, users, groups and tags
based of the interests the users have stated in their preference pages.
Recommendations could be displayed in sidebars as the most users already
know from Facebook and other social networks.

7
Wishlists to encourage others to contribute.

8
Managing their followees in an aggregated manner.

9
Email notifications concerning activity streams.

10
Maybe enhancing the user search capabilities in a personalized manner
(taking into account the location of users, interest etc.).

11
Well, I could also imagine a way of rating and bonus system to encourage
users but I am not sure whether this falls into the category of
personalization. It is somehow a way to express themselves among others
through their achievements by badges and the like. But, I don't know.

These are my ideas for the personalization of CKAN. Let me know, what you
think about them. :)