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Should it be expected that all data objects have all their metadata explicitly and thoroughly stated? Or even recommended? I found myself asking these questions reading through “The FAIR Data Principles,” which outlines an ideal of data availability.

I agree with much of the idea of the article. It seems like generally a good idea to ensure that information published on the internet could be used by others. The ideas for making the information accessible all seem sound. The one thing that I think could have used some more discussion was the idea of metadata subjectivity. For things that are objective such as author and character count, other metadata could be less objective. For instance, an automatic image tagger based on image processing (such as on Facebook: e.g. “happy people, dog running”) could vary based on how they are interpreted.

It seems the advantages of making data more apparent is the ease of use. However, the caveat is that metadata that is presented as a buffer to actually accessing the data could present problems if used haphazardly. As interpretations of data can differ, should we not seek to evaluate the primary source. Again, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t make data easily accessible, as RF stated, accessible data leads to fewer people being “left out of the data creation process thus creating implicit bias within our data,” which is a positive. However we should be careful about the metadata that is presented as objective.