[Getthedata-discuss] An Introduction

Wed Aug 10 02:35:54 UTC 2011

Thanks for these great comments Tony.

Do you or anyone else have suggestions for gaining that critical mass?
Where could we advocate or promote the service without being being as
abrasive?

On 5 August 2011 01:17, Tony Hirst <a.j.hirst at open.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> An introduction: I'm from New Zealand and am heavily involved with the
> OKFN with its open government data and Open Data Manual projects. I've
> been asked to provide some coordination for the getthedata volunteers.
> I have a few questions:
> -  what issues have you seen so far?
> -  Is there anything that's not clear and you would like more guidance
> about?
> -  what needs to happen for getthedata to be recognised as the first
> port of call for people looking for new data?
> I need to go out right now but will respond more to this later; biggest
> issue at the moment is critical mass, and having enough eyeballs on or
> tracking new questions to the site so that folk who know answers - or can
> easily find answers - can pick up on questions.
> There's also an issue with encouraging folk to post questions to the site
> (seeing fresh questions and recently answered questions by more than one
> name help reinfoce the idea that the site is an active one).
> GEtting links deep in to relevant answers on the site  is an issue that
> would help seo and raise traffic to site. If we can get people who publish
> data to post faq style Q&A around use of their data to getthedata, and then
> link to it from their site/pullt getthedata content into their site, that
> would help grow comunity and maybe encourage a Q&A ecosytem around a data
> set. (Eg we are going to try to do this in UK Discovery context)
> tony
>
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> Tony Hirst
> mailto:a.j.hirst at open.ac.uk
> blog: http://blog.ouseful.info
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> Dept. of Communication & Systems,
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