[ckan-discuss] Groups -> themes?

Mon Dec 9 10:41:38 UTC 2013

My idea was simply to rename them, which doesn't address the access question.

I think we should recognise that datahub.io is an outlier in the sense
that it is not like most CKAN installations. Most of these are
governments' or other large organisations' publishing platforms, and
they use the groups feature, if at all, to let people search/browse by
cross-departmental themes like 'environment', 'crime' or whatever.
datahub.io could theme them to be called whatever it likes though I
don't think 'Collections' means much in any case. 'Themes' might still
be OK though you might want something like 'Lists', in that they would
be a bit like people's Amazon lists ('my favourite datasets').

As for the (unrelated) access question for datahub.io, I'd just
suggest an 'approval' system based on userID. When someone signs up
they'd get a message saying 'Thanks for signing up, to do anything on
the datahub please tell us a bit about yourself', this would be stuck
in a list waiting for approval after which they could do whatever they
liked.

Mark

On 09/12/2013, Ross Jones <ross at servercode.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi Mark,
>
> I definitely agree that renaming groups would be a good thing, I’m not
> overly keen on “Themes” as the replacement though. I always think of them as
> Collections but perhaps that’s not clear either.
>
> I’m keen on datahub.io, for instance, re-instating Groups to be used as
> curated lists, but I don’t have a clear idea on how we could implement it
> without suffering from the spam problem again.  My current (vague) thoughts
> are that you can create as many groups as you want as long as you are part
> of an organization. Any ideas on how you might provide access control for
> the renamed Groups?
>
> Ross.
>
>
> On 9 Dec 2013, at 09:50, Mark Wainwright <mark.wainwright at okfn.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Another suggestion from me, to rename 'groups'. I think the meaning of
>> this is completely unclear to most users (including me). The name
>> "Groups" is a hang-over from the days when they basically had to
>> fulfil the function of what are now "Organizations" as well.
>>
>> A number of CKAN sites have written front-ends in which groups are
>> renamed as something more comprehensible, usually "Themes". Is it time
>> for CKAN to bite the bullet and make this the default? I certainly
>> think it would be clearer.
>>
>> More contentiously, what about renaming "Organizations" to
>> "Publishers", as many sites have also done?
>>
>> Mark
>>
>>
>>
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>

-- 
Business development and user engagement manager
The Open Knowledge Foundation
Empowering through Open Knowledge
http://okfn.org/  |  @okfn  |  http://ckan.org  |  @CKANproject