5 ms·

Data Portability and Lies, Damned Lies

5 points by rizzn 17y ago

rizzn 17y ago
I've been around since the whole Data Portability thing was conceptualized. Everyone nodded and stroked their beards pensively, but it's been what? Two years? Three years? Data is still effectively locked up under the guise of portability.
- wmf 17y ago
  Maybe what people really want is not portability but something else. Data ownership perhaps.
  - yellowbkpk 17y ago
    Google already says you "own" your data. But you don't really own it if you can't take it with you to other places.
    - wglb 17y ago
      They now have a data liberation front: http://www.dataliberation.org/ http://www.dataliberation.org/
tjpick 17y ago
> Contrary to what Sachin claims, there is no export function, and the read API has a limitation of 50 bah, that's based on the 'num_posts' param. But there is also an optional 'page' param right underneath the bit he is complaining about. You just have to make multiple calls to get them all out. Not such a big deal if you're used to using search based API's. Doesn't look like author read the doc very closely.
- rizzn 17y ago
  That's not the point. Not the point at all. Sachin defends his service Posterous because non-geeks can do everything with it without knowing how to walk and chew bubblegum. I can't name five members of my immediate or extended family that has a lot of experience using a search based API. Hell, I'm a coder, and I don't have that much experience using a search based API. I code when I hafta, and I don't want to write a whole set of libraries just to export my data. Creating artificial barriers to the exit door is the exact opposite of the spirit of Data Portability. Edit: Incidentally, it isn't that I didn't read the API that thoroughly, it's that the API isn't that well documented. Pretty much what is screenshotted is what exists. It's not very well explained.
  - a4agarwal 17y ago
    tjpick thanks for pointing out how you can get more than 50 posts out by using the page parameter. Yes, the documentation is not very clear at all and we need to fix that. rizzn, it's true that most of our users wouldn't be able to use the export API since they are not programmers. But we're relying on programmers to write the shims needed to go from Posterous to Wordpress, Posterous to Tumblr, Posterous to Blogger. We simply don't have the resources to do this, so we wrote export to be as generic as possible. Other sites do export by letting you pull down an XML file with all posts. We could do this, but then what about the media? Where should we put that? The point is, we always want to let you get your info out. We have assured our users (including Scoble and Rubel personally) that they will always be able to get their data out, including the original files they have sent us, if they ever need to.

5 points by rizzn 17y ago

rizzn 17y ago

I've been around since the whole Data Portability thing was conceptualized. Everyone nodded and stroked their beards pensively, but it's been what? Two years? Three years? Data is still effectively locked up under the guise of portability.

wmf 17y ago
Maybe what people really want is not portability but something else. Data ownership perhaps.
- yellowbkpk 17y ago
  Google already says you "own" your data. But you don't really own it if you can't take it with you to other places.
  - wglb 17y ago
    They now have a data liberation front: http://www.dataliberation.org/ http://www.dataliberation.org/

tjpick 17y ago

> Contrary to what Sachin claims, there is no export function, and the read API has a limitation of 50 bah, that's based on the 'num_posts' param. But there is also an optional 'page' param right underneath the bit he is complaining about. You just have to make multiple calls to get them all out. Not such a big deal if you're used to using search based API's. Doesn't look like author read the doc very closely.

rizzn 17y ago
That's not the point. Not the point at all. Sachin defends his service Posterous because non-geeks can do everything with it without knowing how to walk and chew bubblegum. I can't name five members of my immediate or extended family that has a lot of experience using a search based API. Hell, I'm a coder, and I don't have that much experience using a search based API. I code when I hafta, and I don't want to write a whole set of libraries just to export my data. Creating artificial barriers to the exit door is the exact opposite of the spirit of Data Portability. Edit: Incidentally, it isn't that I didn't read the API that thoroughly, it's that the API isn't that well documented. Pretty much what is screenshotted is what exists. It's not very well explained.
- a4agarwal 17y ago
  tjpick thanks for pointing out how you can get more than 50 posts out by using the page parameter. Yes, the documentation is not very clear at all and we need to fix that. rizzn, it's true that most of our users wouldn't be able to use the export API since they are not programmers. But we're relying on programmers to write the shims needed to go from Posterous to Wordpress, Posterous to Tumblr, Posterous to Blogger. We simply don't have the resources to do this, so we wrote export to be as generic as possible. Other sites do export by letting you pull down an XML file with all posts. We could do this, but then what about the media? Where should we put that? The point is, we always want to let you get your info out. We have assured our users (including Scoble and Rubel personally) that they will always be able to get their data out, including the original files they have sent us, if they ever need to.