Thread by @feedgruber

Why Graphcommons is a misleading name and why I will not use @graphcommons for publishing #dataviz in my research anymore.

#commons #datavisualisation #graphcommons

1/7

The website was always buggy, I could only import through google-sheets and not directly through CSV, even by using the spreadsheet they provided. Using Graphcommons meant using Google. Which is not what I want to do in research+teaching because of their business model.

2/7

What did "commons" mean for Graphcommons? Mostly you named a node, it would become a shared thing, you could find it in graphs by others. Not through unique identifiers, or any open data standard, but just as a playful thing. Basically useless for computational analysis.

3/7

I liked the styling and grouping of nodes, which helped me to highlight research questions. That is why I have put Graphcommons URLs in my texts. Now they changed their business model and my old links are lost. And now I have to pay for bigger graphs to be still accessible.

4/7

Graphcommons is not commons, it is just another platform with several ties to Google (Googledocs and Google Analytics), not fitting for academic research and teaching. It breaks old URLS and changes its business model, like businesses do.

5/7

I provide my data on the repository of @TUBerlin, I have used Github etc. before for this but will now take better care that it is on a proper repository with a citeable DOI. People can drop this data in their prefered dataviz tool. No citeable interactive dataviz though.

6/7

If you want a free and open host for linked open data, use #Wikidata, which is a real digital #commons platform. And let's hope academic data repositories will have more dataviz functionality in the future. I would like to have DOIs for interactive #dataviz.

7/7