waldoj
commented
9 years ago Given that this is about data, and not about information, seems to me that the grade should be based on providing data. Is the data free, is the data machine-readable (which might be a tautology)?
By this standard, we'd say that it is available in bulk, that it is machine-readable, but that it's not free. But also by this standard, if there was no bulk option, we'd say that it's not available in bulk, that it's not machine-readable, but that it is free—because you can read it on-screen. Is this fair?
Some types of data are available in bulk, as machine-readable data, but they charge for it...while providing non-machine-readable data (HTML) for free. So do we give them points for providing data in bulk? Do we give them points for providing machine-readable data? Do we give them points for providing the data for free, given that they also sell it?
For example, consider the corporate registers for Arizona and Virginia. You can browse them online, but if you want bulk, machine-readable data, you have to pay. For any one of these questions, we could either score them high or low. I'm not sure what the right approach is.