theodi / collaborative-data-patterns-catalogue

Website for the catalogue of service design patterns for collaboratively maintained data projects
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[PATTERN] Assisted Editing #10

Open ldodds opened 4 years ago

ldodds commented 4 years ago

Name

Assisted Editing

Problem

Some forms of contribution may be partially or completely automated, but the potential for errors mean the community is unhappy to allow machine editing of changes

Context

The risk of high-volume machine editing means that bug or errors can pile up very quickly, leaving human contributors with the issue of reviewing or removing large numbers of errors. However routine maintenance tasks can be laborious to complete, and more complex tasks can mean that human contributors may also make errors.

Solution

Create an assisted editing interface which allows an algorithm to propose changes that can be accepted or tweaked by a human before they are submitted.

Discussion

Machine-learning and other tools can help to automated data creation and maintenance. But communities used to maintaining data themselves may be wary about allowing unfettered automated updates to data. There are risks of large volumes of incorrect data being added, communities feeling that their contributions are marginalised, or that they are competing with algorithms to maintain data.

An assisted editing interface allows an algorithm or tool to suggest a change to a human editor. This trades off volume and speed of edits for accuracy and review. Reducing the need for Retrospective Review of bot edits and the need to Revert Changes.

Related Patterns

Examples