[ckan-discuss] A few quick thoughts on data catalogue usability

[Richard Cyganiak]

On 21 Sep 2010, at 10:46, David Read wrote:
> If people are worried by where/how to insert their new
> data into the structure then maybe we should provide more help text,
> or perhaps they should simply leave it in an unstructured comment?

+1 to this. It's world-editable anyways, so if someone just provides  
rough unstructured info, then others can and will jump in to massage  
the information into the right fields.

The lesson for CKAN might be to make the Notes box a lot bigger, and  
maybe add a bit of text encouraging the entry of any helpful  
information that may or may not fit into the other fields.

Best,
Richard




>
> Relationships - we're working on exactly this! Watch this space.
>
> David
>
> On 5 September 2010 11:17, Tim Davies <tim at practicalparticipation.co.uk 
> > wrote:
>> Hello all
>>
>> In the course of writing my dissertation about data.gov.uk  
>> (recently put an
>> open copy up online here: http://bit.ly/bLgUFz) I had a few  
>> reflections
>> about open data catalogues – jotted down below in case of use for  
>> CKAN.
>>
>>
>>
>> 1) Allowing some form of ‘track back’ against datasets
>> When a non-technical user comes to look at a dataset it would be  
>> really
>> useful for them to be able to see if anyone has created an  
>> interface /
>> interpretation of it already.
>>
>>
>>
>> I found quite a few cases in research of end-users struggling to  
>> make sense
>> of a dataset when good interfaces to that data had already been  
>> built and
>> blogged about, but without there being any link from the dataset  
>> listing to
>> those data uses.
>>
>>
>>
>> Accepting track backs could also make it easier for technical users  
>> to find
>> blog posts / shared code etc. relating to a given dataset.
>>
>>
>>
>> 2) Make it easy to submit new meta-data from the front-end
>>
>> Going into the wiki-editing back-end of CKAN can be a bit daunting  
>> if you
>> just have one extra bit of meta-data or info to add.
>>
>>
>>
>> What about having some sort of ‘Submit extra info’ box when viewing  
>> the
>> dataset, with a drop-down of field-names, and a single field to  
>> give a
>> value.
>>
>>
>>
>> I suspect that would make me more likely to submit extra info such  
>> as when I
>> know a new version of a dataset is available but not in the CKAN  
>> listing.
>>
>>
>>
>> 3) Package relationships
>>
>> Many packages in a repository like data.gov.uk are in fact  
>> derivatives of
>> other packages, or of not-yet-open datasets (e.g. lots of the  
>> school stats
>> are extracts from a central database). Some way of indicating (and  
>> seeing)
>> the relationship between packages would be useful.
>>
>>
>>
>> Hope these quick notes are useful in some way.
>>
>>
>>
>> All best wishes
>>
>>
>>
>> Tim
>>
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>>
>>
>
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