[okfn-discuss] Post on the unitedstates project and open collaboration

[Eric Mill]

Oh, wow - I'm sorry I missed Rufus' post back in July, because it describes
my life these days. :)

The point about using line-oriented data is also a good one. The main
downside of CSV is that it doesn't nest, and tabular data isn't always the
best fit for data, even small data.

We've been using YAML in a
couple<https://github.com/unitedstates/congress-legislators>of
projects <https://github.com/unitedstates/contact-congress> to get the same
effect with nested data, YAML is a *lot* like JSON, but with cleaner syntax
and syntactically significant whitespace. There are downsides to it too,
like larger file size, slower and less advanced parsers, less community
awareness of the format, etc. But it melds well with version control for
all the same line-by-line reasons CSV does.

-- Eric


On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 10:47 AM, Neal Bastek <neal.bastek at okfn.org> wrote:

> Looks like an interesting project Eric.
>
> Rufus Pollock, our director/founder, recently put together a piece on
> using GitHub for open data that seems relevant here:
>
> http://blog.okfn.org/2013/07/02/git-and-github-for-data/
>
> Cheers,
> Neal
>
>
> Neal Bastek
> Community Manager | skype: nealbastek | @nbastek<https://twitter.com/nbastek>
> The Open Knowledge Foundation  <http://okfn.org>
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> Message: 2
>> Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 15:34:54 -0400
>> From: Eric Mill <eric at sunlightfoundation.com>
>> Subject: [okfn-discuss] Post on the unitedstates project and open
>>         collaboration
>> To: Open Knowledge Foundation discussion list
>>         <okfn-discuss at lists.okfn.org>
>> Message-ID:
>>         <
>> CAO1GrFsoaAN3ZzEKTEadasb_-q8gLw0Lhi4VfeitcESTDr22yw at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>>
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I wrote a brief piece on Sunlight's blog about the work that's happening
>> over at github.com/unitedstates -- a project that Josh Tauberer, Derek
>> Willis, and I started last year -- and why I think it's a useful model.
>>
>>
>> http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/08/20/a-modern-approach-to-open-data/
>>
>> I'd love any feedback or thoughts, and to know of any other collaborations
>> around the world that are using a similar model (Github or not).
>>
>> For example, one other I know of is the
>> openlawdc<https://github.com/openlawdc> project,
>>
>> which was the hub for people working on the DC
>> Code<http://dccode.org/browser/> (some
>> background <http://macwright.org/2013/04/04/the-open-code.html> on how
>> that
>>
>> came about).
>>
>> -- Eric
>>
>> --
>> Developer | sunlightfoundation.com
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-- 
Developer | sunlightfoundation.com
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