MyTardis strictness

[sgpi...@gmail.com]

Hi!

I just installed MyTardis as per the installation instructions and everything is up and running fine. Now I'm just getting a feel for the interface. The best way I can describe the issues I'm trying to raise is just to recount my experience:

Naturally, first up I create an experiment. MyTardis won't let me create an experiment without an "Author", so I just put some random text in there and it goes through. Next up I add some random data files. This works (sort of, but I'll raise that in a second post). Then, naturally I want to make the experiment public, so I click the "Change Public Access" button. But MyTardis complains that "At least one experiment owner must have a valid first name, last name and email address set." I don't have a user name set because I'm just using the superuser "admin" account for now. To get through this I go to the admin panel and set a name. I click the Change Public Access button again and instead of the error I get a dialog. The dialog shows there are 2 steps to making data public. 1. choosing level of public-ness 2. choosing a license. There are 4 level options:

      No public access (hidden)
      Ready to be released pending embargo expiry.
      Meta data only
      Public

As I change selections the details in the second step change. Initially the level option is set to "Hidden" and the 2nd step show a disabled "Selected" button. The 2nd step indicates I have selected the "Unspecified License" described as "No license is explicitly specified. You implicitly retain all rights under copyright.". If select either of the 2nd, 3rd options the "Selected" button changes to "Use" - MyTardis now wants to me to confirm I'm using the unspecified license. The text of the license is shown as "Lorem ipsum...", and a new "Confirm" button is shown as a third step. I press "Use" and "Confirm", and I can successfully change the public-ness to either the 2nd or 3rd option. But if I select "Public" the second step disappears completely with no explanation. There is no way forward. Actually that is half true. If I click the 2nd or 3rd option, then click "Use" button but not "Confirm" button, then change my choice back to Public, I can then click the "Confirm" button. This seems to succeed, but also shows an error message "Selected license it not suitable for public access level".

So basically, the first issue is this dialog is broken in a number of subtle ways. But beyond that my main queries are:

  1. Why does the experiment need an owner at all? The only relevance it seems to have is the "Administrators" field shown under the experiment description, where the first_name, last_name and email address of the owner is published. If there is no owner, couldn't you just not render that field, or render "No owner listed" or something?
  2. Why does an experiment require an "Author"? It's just arbitrary text anyway. Can't it just be left blank and if so not rendered?
  3. Why is necessary to specify a license? It's not actually clear if MyTardis is trying to say "Yes you need a license to make this public" or ... what, but I don't think it should be necessary at all. The license selection and public/private selection should be orthogonal. It would make that dialog easier to implement, and it's just conceptually simpler. Maybe a warning "You have not selected a license. Are you sure you want to make this data public?" if anything.

Regards,

Sam.