User assessment of tools and their metadata

[proycon]

At the tech day today @roelandordelman raised the point that the current
metadata descriptions for the tools at https://tools.clariah.nl are still a bit
all over the place and not necessarily informative enough for end-users. (This
is aside from the fact that the current interface can be improved with faceted search
to help reduce the noise, but that is tracked separately in
proycon/codemetapy#23 )

This problem is to be remedied first and foremost in the call to all developers to
check, correct and enrich their software metadata (#143).

But even after that we may feel the need to qualify the metadata more from a
user perspective. We even spoke the option of users offering feedback, like via
a review system, but this would be overkill for the tool discovery registry and
more at place in something like Ineo (but even there I'm doubtful it'd get
really used by users, I don't think it's worth considering until a system gains
a certain traction).

We also need to distinguish two types of feedback:

1. Feedback for the tool developers on the metadata or the tool in general. This
   is best submitted to the tool developers themselves using their software's
   issue tracker (the link to which should be in the metadata). After all, we
   merely harvest metadata and are not a party in doing any redaction on it.
2. Feedback that help other users in their tool discovery process, like an
   assessment of the usefulness of the tool for a specific purpose. These would
   be more like 'reviews'. This does open up a can of worms regarding moderation
   (as @menzowindhouwer rightly pointed out). As said, I think this makes more
   sense at the level of Ineo.

If we can't get good enough quality metadata after our call to developers
(#143), I'd be more in favour of selecting one or two communication people to
look over metadata descriptions and actively poke the respective tool developers to
improve it. They can even do active pull requests to the upstream tool
developers to help them along.

Of course in this entire process we can also identify parts where the harvester
could do a better job and improve it.

[ddeboer]

We also need to distinguish two types of feedback:

Agreed. Perhaps we can call them:

1. report an issue with the tool’s description
2. tool review

[jblom]

Agreeing on all points.

Ideas on finding/electing these communications people? I'd say food for thought for @roelandordelman

[roelandordelman]

Opening the can of worms at the right time is the challenge I think. Firstly I would like to see a first batch of information flowing into INEO from the tools registry. We anticipate already on the need of manual curation but we need some hands-on whats-a-happening before we can decide (and appoint communication people to tasks).

[proycon]

Opening the can of worms at the right time is the challenge I think.

Indeed.. and I don't think the right time is there yet. At this stage, it's already hard enough to get developers themselves to check and amend their metadata at the source (#143). I've started to explicitly poke some people here and there now to see it that helps 😉

Firstly I would like to see a first batch of information flowing into INEO from the tools registry.

I completely agree yes, so-far there is nothing there yet from the Ineo side (#35). Fortunately, work on the flow to the CLARIN VLO is progressing steadily (#37).