Edit Trail

How can people be encouraged to improve or fix up open data?

Context

Community maintained or managed information sources often underpin a particular set of data. However by publishing the data in a machine-readable form the data may become dissociated from the community tools or forum that is used to create and maintain the data. Without a clear association from the data to the tools, users may be discouraged from using due to a perception of poor quality, when it is often within their means to fix up or improve the data.

Solution

Use the ex:editform property to associate a resource with a form, or other entry point into an application that can be used to correct the raw data.

Example(s)

Associating a dbpedia resource page with the wikipedia page from which its data is derived.

Discussion

The "Edit This Page" concept is well embedded into a number of community maintained websites, and particularly those based on a wiki platform. A convention has grown up on those sites that involves providing a machine-readable link in the HTML page that allows a user agent to provide the user with a way to auto-discover links to the associated editing form.

The ex:editform property applies this concept to Linked Data resources. In this case the association is from the resource to editing form, allowing a more direct link from to be made from an information resource to a data management tool that can be used to edit its properties.

By associating the property directly with the resource, as opposed to the related page of which it is a primary topic, we aim to ensure that even the link remains even if only a fragment of the dataset is re-published.