That tool helps with the parent's particular complaint, but I think the broader point is accurate. It is definitely too hard to find useful raw data, and it is

That tool helps with the parent's particular complaint, but I think the broader point is accurate. It is definitely too hard to find useful raw data, and it is even harder to find raw data that is already is a useful format. Specifically talking about the census data, their format is custom and complex [1]. They do have an API [2] which makes it easier, but I still have to write code to download a version of the census data that is in a useful format. Why can't I just have a download link to a SQL script, JSON file, or a tarball with a bunch of CSV files? I have the same question for the United States project. Why YAML for congress-legislators? It is certainly better than creating their own custom format, but I still have to do work if I want to import the data into a database or Excel. 1. http://www2.census.gov/census_2000/datasets/ http://www2.census.gov/census_2000/datasets/ 2. http://www.census.gov/data/developers/data-sets/decennial-census-data.html http://www.census.gov/data/developers/data-sets/decennial-ce...