General Guestbook Question

[Sherry Lake]

I haven't used Guestbook. In my opinion, if a user has to fill out a form to download a file, they won't bother to do it and thus not get the file.

One of my researchers asked about a Guestbook for his dataset.

Looking at the documentation, a guestbook is set up at the dataverse level and turned "on" at the dataset level.

In my repository, only admin creates dataverses (authenticated users can only create datasets). So if admin sets up a guestbook in a dataverse, and the researcher selects the guestbook for their dataset, the guestbook pop up works on download.

BUT since the researcher does not have access to the guestbook (permissions to view it is at the dataverse permission-level), he has no idea who is downloading his datasets. I, as admin have to give them that info?

If there is no guestbook setup on a dataverse, then a researcher cannot set up a guestbook on their own - for their own dataset?

If this is how things work, does anyone else think setting up a guestbook should be at the "dataset level"? 

Is there any other way for an authenticated user to get download stats on their own datasets (whether from the dataverse's guestbook OR another way -am I being too CRAZY?

Thanks for listening.

Sherry

[Sonia Barbosa]

Hi Sherry,

Danny pinged me on your thread.

I will say that we have don't have many  users refusing to fill out the guestbook (and letting us know--because how else would we know if they hate the guestbook)---if they really wanted data. The guestbook options are not long and cumbersome, as a feature.

Plus, researchers are more apt to want to share data when they can set that bit of control. That is one of the reasons it is a feature.

Yes, you are right---created at the "dataverse" level. For Harvard Dataverse we give everyone the option to have a "dataverse" so they are able to utilize their guestbook and access their summary replies.

If you create a dataset in  ROOT, you don't have the option to change root metadata or facets, or create templates, but I believe we can create defaults guestbooks at the root Dataverse level that users can then attach to their own datasets ( I will need to test this since we don't create defaults on Harvard ROOT ) and in this case if someone utilizes a default guestbook for their own dataset (because they can modify terms), they should be able to download their own guestbook stats.

Happy to test this out for you.

What we don't want is authors contacting us to provide the stats every single time so let's make sure this is working as I described above in my second paragraph. If you are depositing for your own authors and they have no admin or curator access to their own datasets, they will never see the guestbook summary. That's how it should work.

Cheers

[Sherry Lake]

Hi Sonia,

I did lots of testing with Guestbooks today and found out that if admin enables a guestbook at root dataverse and a user turns on that guestbook for their dataset, the user has no way of getting the guestbook stats. One can only download guestbook stats if they have access to the dataverse (at the dataverse level).

Our users have full access to their own datasets, so can turn on guestbooks (if guestbooks are enabled at the dataverse level), but they have no access to any dataverse creation and thus no access to the dataverse guestbook download.

I also found inconsistencies in downloading (using the download buttons - various ones on the dataset page) files (and wrong files) when a guestbook was turned on. I'll create a ticket tomorrow on what I found with downloads and guestbooks.

--

Sherry

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[Barbosa, Sonia]

Please do.

Our users are curators of their own datasets--that's the role they have. Is that the user role you tested?

ᐧ

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Sonia Barbosa
Manager of Data Curation, The Dataverse Project
Manager of the Murray Research Archive, IQSS
Data Science
Harvard University

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[Sherry Lake]

Yes, our users are Curators of their own datasets.

[meghan.good...@gmail.com]

I just found this older exchange and I wanted to see if there has been any discussion in the meantime about improving this workflow?

We've had a lot of feedback from our community recently about the confusion around guestbooks.

1. Along with our community, we're surprised to find that the "Download All Reponses" actually tracks all dataset downloads across the entire collection, whether or not a specific dataset guestbook is enabled. The term "Guestbook" seems to be a misnomer in this case as it's more like a download tracker. Are there any plans to document this in the guides? It's not outlined there: https://guides.dataverse.org/en/latest/user/dataverse-management.html#dataset-guestbooks

2. The guestbook set-up seems to be designed with a model in mind where researchers manage their own collection and therefore have control over the design and implementation of their guestbooks. Most institutions at Borealis have an institutional collection model, so institutional admins have the administrative overhead of setting up guestbooks on behalf of researchers. Many researchers simply enable a default guestbook at the dataset level and then the collection administrator needs to filter out the appropriate responses for their dataset. Has there been any discussion about improvements for these workflows? 

Has anyone else run into these issues? Are there any plans to improve this workflow?

Thanks for your assistance.

Best,

Meghan

Borealis

[Julian Gautier]

Hi Meghan,

The only more recent public discussion I've seen is in the GitHub issue at https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/issues/3582, which to me seems related to your first point.

And as far as I know there are no plans yet to improve the feature.

[meghan.good...@gmail.com]

Hi Julian,

I found this issue as well: https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/issues/6069

Thanks,

Meghan

[Philip Durbin]

Hi Meghan,

To circle back to your first point about the guestbook feeling like a download tracker, no there is no documentation on this behavior but it absolutely should be documented. If you're willing to create an issue about this at https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/issues I'd appreciate it!

Historically, in the code* it's been called a "silent guestbook."

Thanks,

Phil

* https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/blob/v4.5.1/src/main/java/edu/harvard/iq/dataverse/DatasetPage.java#L2983-L2998

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Philip Durbin
Software Developer for http://dataverse.org
http://www.iq.harvard.edu/people/philip-durbin