[okfn-discuss] OKF website, about open knowledge/ open data

Tue Jun 18 11:12:13 UTC 2013

Hi folks

I'm just starting to get into open knowledge and it is a very interesting area. The Open Knowledge Foundation looks like a great place to start learning about it. However, I had some questions about the home page

http://okfn.org/

From the viewpoint of a novice, it seems like a lot of the website seems to be about open -data-.

For example, there is the "learn about openness" box in the center. This goes to a page "What is open data" http://okfn.org/opendata/  which says “Open data is data that can be freely used, reused and redistributed by anyone – subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and sharealike.”

The "about us" drop down header also has a link to the same page, with the label "what is open data" (but no drop downs for what is open knowledge or open research or open not data)

The Projects drop down has "data journalism handbook", "open data commons", "open data handbook"

Down near the bottom, you have 4 image boxes, 2 of which are about data, "school of data" and ckan, the open data platform.

There ARE mentions of other open stuff, for example the "about us" page does say "The Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) is a non-profit organization founded in 2004 and dedicated to promoting open data and open content in all their forms – including government data, publicly funded research and public domain cultural content."

But it seems to me, as a novice to the field, most of the info is about data. Perhaps people who know this area would easily understand the non data aspects, but I'm looking at it as someone who doesn't know much about this open access stuff (yet).

Maybe if you had something like your following about us statement (modified) on the home page, where people first see the OKF without having to click on anything, it would be more evident what open access is all about
"promoting open data and open content in all their forms – including data, research, reports, papers, and cultural content."

I hope that makes sense.

Gene

Gene Shackman, Ph.D.
The Global Social Change Research Project
http://gsociology.icaap.org
Free Resources for Methods in Evaluation and Social Research
http://gsociology.icaap.org/methods
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Applied Sociologist
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