[okfn-labs] The future of Nomenklatura

Mon Dec 9 09:09:03 UTC 2013

Hey Rufus,

you're right, I haven't written the "Getting started" thing yet, the
tickets you created on GitHub are still open. As for how to write them, I
don't believe that forcing users to group by "audience" will go very far
(am I a data wrangler or a developer? It's like Dell's website, where you
keep having to call yourself a "Medium-sized business" just to be shown
their pro laptops). I much prefer your earlier approach: show one
walk-through with a CSV and Refine, and one using the API client. Speaking
of which: the Python lib won't work at the moment, either :)

Cheers,

- Friedrich

On Sun, Dec 8, 2013 at 2:17 PM, Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org>wrote:

> This is very exciting Friedrich!
>
> One quick question: at the moment if I click "Learn More" on front page
> then go beyond "Introduction" to "Getting Started" its blank. Is this
> intentional (i.e. docs still to be written) or a bug? Either way this would
> be the first place I'd go.
>
> I also think a small screencast or a slightly longer description of what
> this does on the front page would be useful e.g.:
>
> For Journalists
>
> Imagine you've got a spreadsheet of government contracts and you'd like to
> know who got the most money. You'll usually find the same company spelt ten
> different ways thwarting your attempts to get a nice number (Acme Widgets,
> Acme Wid. Acme Widgets Inc etc). This is where nomenklatura comes in: it
> will help you clean up that dirty data fast ..."
>
> [This is a bit long but you get the idea ...]
>
> For Data Wranglers
>
> ...
>
> For Developers
>
> ...
>
> Rufus
>
> On 6 December 2013 13:04, Friedrich Lindenberg <friedrich at pudo.org> wrote:
>
>> Hey all,
>>
>> thanks again for the many points of feedback on this. I eventually ended
>> up merging the changes from the initial fork (ODIS) back into nomenklatura.
>> There is now an alpha version of the new release at:
>>
>> http://nk-dev.pudo.org/
>>
>> The major changes include:
>>
>> * Merging "entity" and "alias" domain object, there's now just "entity"
>> with a property to say if its an alias.
>> * Fully JS-driven frontend
>> * String matching now happens inside the database (Postgres)
>> * More intro text (still needs a "Getting started" guide)
>>
>> This introduces some major breaks in the API and I haven't yet updated
>> the client library to go with it, but I'm keen to hear what people thing
>> about this prototype release.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> - Friedrich
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 10:11 PM, Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org>wrote:
>>
>>> On 13 November 2013 11:07, Friedrich Lindenberg <friedrich at pudo.org>wrote:
>>>
>>>> Thanks for the feedback, Rufus - comments inline.
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 9:23 AM, Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org>wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> At the same time, nomenklatura's notion of datasets prevents the
>>>>>> service from helping users to discover links across datasets - e.g. a list
>>>>>> of all EU lobbyists might overlap with those companies competing for EU
>>>>>> tenders.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> My sense is that the link problem may be something different (though
>>>>> important) - and being another big chunk might want to be kept separate to
>>>>> start with.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> This, to be honest, is the problem I have right now - so I want to
>>>> solve it. I can live happily ever after without having journalists use
>>>> nomenklatura, but if it a) stays a pain to actually clean up the data that
>>>> has been submitted and b) I can't do cross-dataset matches then I'm stuck
>>>> on the TED data and similar places.
>>>>
>>>
>>> That's perfect: you're also the "user" and have a use-case right now :-)
>>>
>>>
>>>>  This also makes me wonder: do you have a list of your key user
>>>>> stories - that might help clarify what things going into the minimal viable
>>>>> enhancement and which don't.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hm, let me have a go. I'm going to assume just one user group, which is
>>>> advanced data users - other groups like journalists seem less interested in
>>>> this problem still, and also its fun to do something for experts once in a
>>>> while :) Doesn't preclude us from unlocking new user groups later...
>>>>
>>>
>>> Sounds good and these are excellent. Could we put these in a pad<http://pad.okfn.org> or
>>> gdoc so they were editable / commentable and we could add values.
>>>
>>>
>>>> * As a data expert, I want to submit my data to the service, either
>>>> through an API, in bulk (CSV) or, in extreme cases, manually through a UI
>>>> so that I can represent my data.
>>>>
>>>> * As a data expert, I want to submit data through the Refine API, so
>>>> that I have a local UI from which I can upload data as well.
>>>>
>>>
>>> [...]
>>>
>>> Rufus
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
> --
>
>
> * Rufus Pollock Founder and Executive Director | skype: rufuspollock |
> @rufuspollock <https://twitter.com/rufuspollock> The Open Knowledge
> Foundation <http://okfn.org/> Empowering through Open Knowledge
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