Lunar Boom Town/Creating data

Finding Data

Online data - Licensing consideration must be considered! Links to any data published online are acceptable but any files copied or uploaded to Wikiversity must meet legal licensing constraints.

Online free data is very useful at this time as it can be linked to, used, and even modified for republishing locally and elsewhere.

Sources of data should be documented. People like credit for their work! Often it is also a legal or academic standard. We wish to be creditable to established professional specialists and academics! Introduction to Wikiversity scholarship

Self Generated Data

There are many ways to create data. The following list is by no means all inclusive. Please use whatever methods you find effective.

Wiki input editing form ... key in your data directly to a wiki editing/submittal screen in internet web browser.

Editor or Word processor ... cut and paste into Wiki editing form.

Electronic image ... upload to Wikiversity or Commons ... both Wikimedia Foundation operated wiki space with copyleft data for public viewing, use and reuse. Specific formats are supported.

Image creation ... Electronic camera or device, Scanner, file output of some data storage device, Rendered image from graphics creation or CGI (computer generated imagery) package. Prefereable if open source packages are used (so others may duplicate or modify) and if components (such as 3D models or background/foreground components or textures) are available under copyleft licenses.

Video - Links can be provided after data is uploaded to youtube.com; work is possibly in progress to be able to host data locally. Likewise sourceforge may be a hosting resource. Must comply with hosting requirements or data will mostly likely be deleted and thus become unavailable. Needless hassle for everyone.

Paper sketching or paper mache. Photograph and/or scan image for data publishing.

Clay, lego, tootpick, toy or other modeling - model can be photographed or video'ed and posted along with some explanation of creation methods and appropriate scaling or measured results from model.

Timing studies, operational scenarios, other engineering simulations. All particpants must agree to copyleft results and then some method selected to publish data.

IRC logs. Operational scenarios or checklists can be created by distributed teams at freenode IRC (inquire at #wikiversity-en) if need assistance with setup but remember all particpants must concur with copyleft publishing requirements. Usually a dedicated channel is created for such as task and everyone issues agreed upon statement at start of project session. Someone posts the entire raw data log and editing cleanup proceeds collaboratively. See Space Traffic Control (need better direct link here to the actual existing script, see the starting point accessible from history log of cut and pasted IRC session) for sample script created this way.

Referencing External Data

Standard academic methods of citing data should be used where possible. It is preferable that the raw data be available to others online but not always feasible. Much data is only summarized in published forms. Often these results published in specialized journals and many journals are too expensive for many to access either directly or via online or library resources. It is important to know that physical facts may not be copyrighted. For example: If a physical data constant is needed from a CRC handbook or steam tables to check a calculation it may be provided. One would not copy an entire copyrighted page of data and publish it to Wikiversity, this would be a copyright violation unless fair use could be substantiated in detail. A harrowing experience better avoided.