[ckan-discuss] Fwd: Some Feedback on CKAN

Thu May 19 10:08:48 BST 2011

That's a really useful suggestion.  I'll make sure it doesn't get lost
when the time comes for improving our home page!

Seb

On 19 May 2011 01:59, Tim McNamara <paperless at timmcnamara.co.nz> wrote:
> Thanks for your input Mark, I think this is very useful. Your impressions
> concur with my initial ones.
> One of the difficulties with CKAN.net is that it doesn't have a defined
> target market. It's necessarily general in which data are included. I
> wonder, however if we could do something similar to what you're suggesting
> for our landing page.
> Please excuse the ASCII wireframe:
> ==================
> CKAN: the data hub
> ==================
>
>     ADD DATA         [http://                            ] [submit]
>
> WHO IS THIS FOR?      LATEST DATA                WHY OPEN DATA?
> [For scientists]      *dataset 1*                 -  .......  ...
> [For librarians]       .....   ...  .........        ..   .....
> [For analysts  ]                                  -  ....   ....
> [For officials ]      *dataset 2*                 -  ..   .......
> [For designers ]       ....  ......   .......
>                        ..........  ..   .....
>
>
> On 2 March 2011 01:58, Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org> wrote:
>>
>> Some really useful feedback from Mark Hahnel of Science 3.0 / FigShare
>> with whom I had a very good chat last week. (Mark tried sending direct
>> but the email kept disappearing -- if anyone else encounters this
>> please let me know).
>>
>> One of the key things I got from chatting with Mark was the importance
>> of providing ultra-simple mini-gateways into a CKAN instance oriented
>> to a specific community.
>>
>> I'm wondering if we can work on groups to deliver this sort of feature
>> -- groups already provide a way for a given group / community of
>> people to have a bespoke web page and list of datasets but we could
>> add to this, for example by providing a default search box that just
>> searches a groups datasets.
>>
>> Rufus
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Hahnel, Mark
>> Sent: 28 February 2011 18:55
>> To: ckan-discuss at lists.okfn.org
>> Subject: Feedback
>>
>> Dear CKAN team,
>>
>> I am writing to offer some feedback with regards to how I view
>> http://ckan.net/ -This is a follow up to a conversation I had with
>> Rufus and he suggested I should pass these opinions on to the whole
>> group.
>>
>> As a practising scientist, the front end of the site does not make
>> uploading data easy for me. In that, I’m a little confused as to who
>> the site is for, can I use it? Ie. There is no mention of what types
>> of data are being uploaded and whether scientific data is suitable. I
>> only find science related stuff if I search ‘science’, so maybe
>> something along the lines of, “What subject are you looking for data
>> on?” is needed.
>>
>> We spoke with reference to http://FigShare.com which is offering a
>> service with a lot of overlap, it’s still being developed as a micro
>> publishing platform for scientists to share all of their data,
>> including the rarely published/still important negative data. So the
>> target audience here is your average researcher. Hopefully we’ll
>> generate a good dataset which can go into CKAN.
>>
>> But my point here is the average researcher, the people from my field
>> with the data needs to be spoon fed into uploading data. They’d need
>> to see something saying ‘scientists click here’...now what...’upload
>> your data or search the available data’. And then when they do want to
>> upload they/we again need it simple. Is all the meta data necessary,
>> could that not be optional following a simple ‘addition of a dataset’?
>> I suppose it depends what the overall goal is. If you want linked data
>> in a standardised form, then I understand. But personally I feel
>> acquisition of data in any form should be the priority. The power of
>> the platform lies in the API, and the subsequent analysis of the data.
>>
>> When it comes to data uploading, the average researcher would not know
>> which license to put their data under and they do not have the time to
>> research which one it should be. Especially not all 75 that you have
>> an option of on the CKAN data upload form. Due to the legal
>> connotations of a ‘license’ I think this question might be enough to
>> put a lot of my colleagues off and this could be the point that their
>> data upload ends. I don’t even know what the ‘extras’ are for and I
>> like to think that I’m quite well versed in this kind of thing.
>>
>> My second point is incentives. I know about the benefits of open
>> access etc but a lot of people do not, again it needs to be spoon fed,
>> “WHY should I do this” – Maybe even have a tab saying this. All we get
>> is “CKAN makes it easy to find, share and reuse open content and data,
>> especially in ways that are machine automatable.” – Is this a good
>> thing? How can I personally benefit from spending 5 minutes of my
>> precious time doing this?
>>
>> I should note that Rufus has since made a few changes which may have
>> corrected some of the things I’m referring to. I should also note that
>> I am aware that this is just the viewpoint from one angle and that the
>> site is for many types of data, each of which will have different
>> specs. These are not complaints, I love what OKFN and CKAN are doing,
>> I’m just trying to help.
>>
>> Thanks for your time,
>>
>> Mark Hahnel.
>>
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