Pubwan

4 May 2006

Welcome to pubwan scratchpad!

pub wan, in the context of this scratchpad, refers to an attempt to implement data mining in the public domain, i.e. with both software and data residing in the public realm.

The reasons for wanting to attempt such a thing are as numerous as potential pubwan participants. So far the following have been expressed:

the elasticities of tradeoffs in the consumer marketplace (see consumer education)
 * the desire to discover

for expressing normative preferences (see norm spec, maxhi schema) and using such expressions as input for decision support software operating on databases in the public domain.
 * the desire to develop a language

mathematical modeling (see swar schema) using data accumulated in the public domain.
 * the desire to do data visualization and

The present scratchpad wiki, herein called henceforth pubwan scratchpad, was placed here for the purpose of providing a public forum for interested persons to propose, describe and refine ideas for implementations and applications.

The initial state of the present pubwan scratchpad is simply a copy of a read only wiki (or write-only wiki, depending on how you look at it) by one lorraine lee (the present author). That is to say, as of this writing, the present wiki is a fork of pubwan. One of the most urgent tasks, of course, will be the editing of content that identifies pubwan wiki as a solo effort, such as first person pronouns, or references to pubwan wiki as read only. More important over the long haul, of course, is making pubwan scratchpad (and it is hoped pubwan itself) a collaborative effort as a matter of fact, which of course requires people to edit this page, and in general to edit this wiki. Finally, and most important, is that the pubwan project itself is primarily a database, not a wiki, so if we are to implement it, we will also have to seek out (ideally noncommercial or minimally commercial) sources for such things as SQL serving, ftp hosting, file sharing, etc. (see server side netizen) Also, volunteers will be needed for data gathering, data entry, database maintenance, software development, etc.

For now, please be prolific in your writings at the present wiki, and if you believe in the cause of transparency, tell your friends!

Thank you!