Explore systems for searching through summaries and responses

[jpmckinney]

Look into:

• [x] DocumentCloud
• [x] Overview

  Overview

• code
• documentation

Questions:

• Will the hosted platform suffice or is redeployment necessary?
  • Can try the hosted platform
• How to link the summary to its files?
  • Repeat the same metadata for each file

• Does the CSV importer support custom metadata?

  yes, Overview reads metadata columns from CSVs. But I'll write more about the topic

• Can the CSV importer preserve folder structure?

  Yes. If you put directory names in your "title" column, separated by slashes, the File Browser plugin will use them.

Notes:

• Supports bulk import
• See ways to upload
• See docs2csv

  DocumentCloud

• code

Questions:

• Can the search interface be made open to the public?
• Can try asking for non-journalistic use, or redeploy code

  Alaveteli

• WhatDoTheyKnow

Users can:

• subscribe to requests matching their filters (via RSS or account)
• filter requests (and their documents) by keywords, date and status
• browse requests
• subscribe to a request
• report a request
• annotate requests
• link to annotations
• view similar requests
• read documents
• download documents
• filter organizations by keywords and category
• view organizations
• subscribe to requests to an organization
• browse (and filter) requests by organization

Summary:

• Written in Ruby
• Actively developed
• Focused on requests, not documents, e.g. can't annotate documents

  Froide

• https://fragdenstaat.de

Users can:

• subscribe to requests matching their filters (feed)
• filter requests by keywords, organization, category, status
• browse requests
• subscribe to a request
• share a request
• comment on requests
• download documents
• filter organizations by keywords
• view organizations
• subscribe to requests to an organization (feed)
• browse (and filter) requests by organization

Summary:

• Written in Python
• Actively developed
• Can deploy to Heroku
• Focused on requests, not documents, e.g. can't annotate documents (but can redact in backend)

  Nulpunt

• video
• code (Go)
• Future Journalism Project
• Manifesta Journal
• Crowdsourcing.org

Users can:

• filter documents by tag
• read documents
• download documents
• bookmark documents
• share documents
• annotate documents
• share annotations
• comment on annotations
• browse recent annotations
• subscribe to topics to receive new documents in their inbox

Summary:

• Written in Go
• No longer developed
• No full-text search