Open Data And Visualization

Two aspects of information - Open Data and Information Visualization have been combined in a recent innovation and invention known as the Federated Wiki

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• Open data is the idea that certain data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control. The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "Open" movements such as open source, open hardware, open content, and open access. The philosophy behind open data has been long established (for example in the Mertonian tradition of science), but the term "open data" itself is recent, gaining popularity with the rise of the Internet and World Wide Web
• Visualization, particularly information visualization is the study of (interactive) visual representations of abstract data to reinforce human cognition. The abstract data include both numerical and non-numerical data, such as text and geographic information.

Both of the aspects mentioned above relate to Ward Cunningham's embarking on another creative Episode in another first: the formation of the SmallestFederatedWiki

Created in a short period of time and evolving to its present form it continues a series of steps:

• Innovation
  • The original wiki was written in a week and cloned within a week after that. The concept was shown to be fruitful while leaving other implementors room to innovate. This project was founded within the community assembled in Portland at the Indie Web Camp:
    • http://IndieWebCamp.com
• Introduction - Oscon2012
  • http://www.oscon.com/oscon2012/public/schedule/detail/23295
  • Created a series of videos
    • http://wardcunningham.github.com/
• Implementations
  • Origin Server set up
    • http://fed.wiki.org
• Integration within other technologies
  • Introduction and demonstration of its application for radio for a gathering Radio Amateurs in March of 2013

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OK, but what does the above have to do with open data or visualisation? These are terms with quite specific meanings, neither of which appear on this page.

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page revised to include definitions and tie ins -- 20130214

Donald, I still have a concern: Ward's SmallestFederatedWiki isn't, by itself, "open data" or visualisation. Ward's video at http://wardcunningham.github.com/ entitled "Our new wiki innovates three ways. It shares through federation, composes by refactoring and wraps data with visualization" clearly indicates that open data and visualisation are not synonymous with Ward's SmallestFederatedWiki; they are supported by Ward's SmallestFederatedWiki. I know this might seem to be a picayune quibble, but as someone who works with open data and visualisation, I think it's very important to distinguish the broad concepts from the specific tools -- of which Ward's SmallestFederatedWiki is but one -- that support them. Thus far, this page doesn't make clear that distinction and appears to conflate open data + visualisation and the SmallestFederatedWiki in a manner that implies the latter is the former, or vice versa. On a page with this title, I would expect Ward's SmallestFederatedWiki to be a link or mentioned in a paragraph, not the essence of the page.