Re: Request for help with database of Kenyan election violence

On Feb 2, 2008 4:51 PM, Karl O. Pinc <kop(at)meme(dot)com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> The Kenya National Commission for Human Rights is investigating
> the violence in Kenya. This has led to an urgent request on Groklaw
> http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080202013451629
> for assistance in setting up a database.
>
> I have suggested that a suite of PostgreSQL based tools might
> be appropriate.
> http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=20080202013451629&title=Postgresql%20and%20phpPgAdmin&type=article&order=&hideanonymous=0&pid=0#c669544
>
> If you have any comment on my suggestions, suggestions for
> additional or better suited tools, or otherwise
> wish to help with such a project please chime in on
> groklaw.
>
> I have not used Postgres Forms and so am not 100% confident
> in my proposal.
>
> Thank you.

I hope that discussions are raging *MORE* about what the kinds of
functionality actually needed are, notably with respect to
- what specific sorts of data needs to be collected
- what known correlations there are (which would tend to imply the
shape of the DB
schema)

as THAT sort of detail is what will allow technical choices to become
defensible.

As it stands, I have no idea whether the tools you suggest are
suitable for the requirements, because I really don't know what the
requirements are.

One thing that I *do* see in browsing the Groklaw discussion is that
there seems to be some risk of inconvenient things disappearing, so
that it seems likely that part of the design needs to include a
regular "escrow" process whereby data is transmitted to a remote (and
preferably outside-Kenya) location. That's a requirement - not a
technology choice.

The longer you can keep attention focused on what is needed, in
technology-agnostic terms, the better.

--
http://linuxfinances.info/info/linuxdistributions.html
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and
expecting different results." -- assortedly attributed to Albert
Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Rita Mae Brown, and Rudyard Kipling