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Launch HN: OurWorldInData (YC W19 Nonprofit) – Data on World’s Largest Problems

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Re: Launch HN: OurWorldInData (YC W19 Nonprofit) – Data on World’s Largest Problems

#41

Post by nettamar »

kauffj wrote: post #6

One possible improvement is to provide a way for the community at large to discuss/criticize possible problems with the data as well as for Our World in Data to respond to criticisms from the public. Recently, Bill Gates issued a Tweet demonstrating excitement for progress in diminishing global poverty, citing Our World in Data: https://twitter.com/BillGates/status/1086662632587907072 This received substantial push b…

The Guardian article by Hickel is misinforming readers.

Hickel just wants attention for himself. Nothing else.

He does not care about the steps the world's poorest have made. Yes, small steps, but it's important and it's awful to spread misinformation like he does.

(Also, for The Guardian he chose the headline 'Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong' and elsewhere Hickel is acknowledging that this is not true and is contradicting himself: https://www.cgdev.org/blog/12-things-we-can-agree-about-glob...)

Re: Launch HN: OurWorldInData (YC W19 Nonprofit) – Data on World’s Largest Problems

#42

Post by ourworldindata »

Khanhanhan wrote: post #14

I stumbled upon your website a couple of days ago and found its content extremely useful. The language is precise, opinions balanced and use of data is sensible. It feels like you have no agenda other than bringing some objectivity to the discussions. I hope your journey into the startup world won't change it. Good luck!

Our main goal is what you say. I am happy to hear that. Thank you! It is exactly what we try to do.

Re: Launch HN: OurWorldInData (YC W19 Nonprofit) – Data on World’s Largest Problems

#43

Post by ourworldindata »

tschellenbach wrote: post #35

this is great, bookmarked it. a news feed of research about the topics i care about it would be awesome. so nice to see progress instead of depressing news articles.

We were thinking of building "a news feed of research about the topics [you] care about".

What do you have in mind? Do you have an example?

We'd be curious what it is that you would expect there. Thanks!

Re: Launch HN: OurWorldInData (YC W19 Nonprofit) – Data on World’s Largest Problems

#44

Post by Hannah_OWID »

nettamar wrote: post #21
vharuck wrote: post #19

This is great! Nice job balancing data with explanations. Health data is often oversimplified or not understandable by lay people. For the cancer section, I'm pretty sure you're showing net survival rates. You should mention this to avoid people from thinking they're actual survival rates. In the last two charts on the cancer page, what does the circle size show? Total GDP? Patient count?

It shows the population of the country. I agree it should be labelled.

Thank you both for flagging this. I agree it's not clear at the moment. We are doing some tweaks on the interactive charts and will make sure to include this labelling.

Re: Launch HN: OurWorldInData (YC W19 Nonprofit) – Data on World’s Largest Problems

#45

Post by Hannah_OWID »

mushufasa wrote: post #15
Hannah_OWID wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any really honest feedback on the usability of our website would be the best thing for us. We have lots of content - spanning everything from population growth to plastic pollution, income inequality to cancer rates. This is of course a key part of our work. But this could make it difficult for people to find what they're looking for. Do you manage to find it easy to navigate? Is there anything you would recommend we…

I think the navigation bar is very busy. It shows up over multiple lines, with different sized and shaded buttons. On mobile/tablet, it takes multiple screen lengths. It seems overwhelming and unfocused. Perhaps because the navigation is overwhelming, you decided to duplicate your dropdown menu for most of the landing page. I'm not sure why there is such an emphasis on your media coverage and authors at the top of th…

Thanks so much for this detailed feedback on the website and our design flow. It's really valuable to get an honest critique of how people find using the site.

These questions/issues of navigation, landing page, structure are all things we're grappling with at the moment and have been making small tweaks then reviewing what difference this makes to how visitors explore.

The rationale for highlighting media coverage and academic citations of our work near the top of the landing was to highlight that we're a trusted source for many publications (and actually from media on both the right and left). Credibility and trust are of course important to our work. But it's interesting to hear it wasn't an important factor for you as a visitor.

Thanks again for your thoughts. We're working on all of this at the moment, and will incorporate all of these suggestions into our discussions of how to do this best.

Re: Launch HN: OurWorldInData (YC W19 Nonprofit) – Data on World’s Largest Problems

#46

Post by slumos »

Hannah_OWID wrote: post #3
toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

> We would really appreciate any feedback you have on what we can do better. Thank you! What can we do to help you?

Any really honest feedback on the usability of our website would be the best thing for us. We have lots of content - spanning everything from population growth to plastic pollution, income inequality to cancer rates. This is of course a key part of our work. But this could make it difficult for people to find what they're looking for. Do you manage to find it easy to navigate? Is there anything you would recommend we…

Tufte gives his class in SF once a year I think. I cannot recommend it enough.

Re: Launch HN: OurWorldInData (YC W19 Nonprofit) – Data on World’s Largest Problems

#47

Post by Hannah_OWID »

jpvelez wrote: post #30

I think the work you do is vastly important, and it is especially heartening that it originated in academia. In the age of choose-your-own-facts, academics of all stripes have a moral duty to engage the public on what is - and, crucially, what isn’t - known about nature and society. And they’re largely asleep at the switch. So this is major progress. A couple of long-term ideas: - breadth of topic: global development…

Yes, you're absolutely right! And actually, much more recently we have been been trying to steer our work towards addressing point (2) you raise above.

It became apparent to us, as you say, that most people will find this stuff simply by asking google specific questions e.g. "how many people are there in the world?". And a lot of our existing content will not appear in Google or Siri as the answer, despite us having it in longer articles on the site.

So we've been very recently trying to answer much more explicit questions that people would ask (although we should have been doing this much earlier), and are thinking of reformatting a lot of our existing content in this way too.

Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts - it's really helpful perspective for us.

Re: Launch HN: OurWorldInData (YC W19 Nonprofit) – Data on World’s Largest Problems

#48

Post by justaguyhere »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

> We would really appreciate any feedback you have on what we can do better. Thank you! What can we do to help you?

This is probably a wacky idea, but...

What if there is a quiz before the start of every article (optional, of course) that the reader can take? Lets say I am interested in child mortality rates, but I don't have any knowledge about it. I probably have wrong ideas too, about the topic. I take a 60 second quiz, then read the article - this will show how misinformed (probably) I am, and then inform me of the topic.

Re: Launch HN: OurWorldInData (YC W19 Nonprofit) – Data on World’s Largest Problems

#50

Post by shishy »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #49

Best of luck. We need it! That said, I'd like to suggest a book. "The Influential Mind." Long to short, there's more to influence than objective facts. https://www.amazon.com/Influential-Mind-Reveals-Change-Other...

She gave a talk at Google, for anyone interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyME0Idsq9w
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