Comments and data requests
Last updated: 30/03/2022
Contents
Introduction
Users of the Queensland Government Open Data Portal can post comments on a dataset or request data that is currently unavailable.
This functionality enables users to engage directly with data publishers or the teams responsible for the data in a publicly visible format providing benefits to other users who might have similar comments, questions or data needs.
Registering an account
To post a comment or request data you need to register an account on data.qld.gov.au.
- Click Register near the top right corner of the page or go to https://www.data.qld.gov.au/user/register.
- Complete the Register for an Account form as per below.
Field | Description |
---|---|
Username | Choose a username to log into the portal with. This should contain letters, numbers, "-" and "_" only. |
Displayed name | Choose a displayed name that will be displayed publicly on the portal when making comments or data requests. This can contain letters, numbers, spaces or other characters. |
Enter your email address for notifications and password resetting. | |
Password | Choose a password for your account. This must contain a minimum of 10 characters with at least one number, one lowercase letter, one uppercase letter and one symbol. |
Confirm | Enter the same password as above to confirm you have the correct password. |
Subscribe to notification emails | Choose whether you want to receive email notifications for dataset or group updates, comment replies, data request replies or other items you've chosen to follow. |
- Click the Create Account button.
- You can update your details, with the exception of your Username by navigating to the following page after logging in: https://www.data.qld.gov.au/user/edit
- You can also get to this page by clicking your user profile from the menu in the top right, then clicking the "Manage" button.
Dataset comments
If you have a question about a dataset or would like to give the publishers feedback, you can make a public comment on each dataset on the Queensland Open Data Portal. When you save a comment, a notification is sent directly to the data publisher, for a response. Follow the below steps to make a comment:
- Navigate to the relevant dataset and click on Comments tab at the right end of the tab options. NOTE: You will need to be logged into your account to add a comment. You can follow the steps here to create an account.
- If you want, you can add a Subject for the comment. This is not a mandatory field though.
- Enter your comment in the Comment box. Try and be as descriptive as possible to assist the data publisher providing a response.
- Click the Save button to post the comment to the dataset or click Clear to clear any text entered.
- Your comment will now be saved against the dataset for a data publisher to assess and respond.
- You can add additional comments or respond to a comment by the data publisher by clicking the Reply button and entering additional comments.
- When you make a comment you will automatically be following the comment and will receive notifications for updates to this comment. You can click the Mute thread button to mute notifications for a comment.
- If you believe the comment is inappropriate you can also click the Report button for an administrator to review the comments content.
Data requests
If you can't find a dataset on data.qld.gov.au that you think the Queensland Government has, you can request it using the request data function. Like the Comments, these requests are publicly visible which means other users can see which data has previously been requested. Follow the below steps to make request data.
- Navigate to the Request data page either by the following link https://www.data.qld.gov.au/datarequest or by clicking the Request data link near the top right corner of the page.
- Use the search box or scroll and filter to see if the data you are requesting has previously been requested. A response to your data request may already be available.
- If you cant find any similar requests you can create your own by clicking the + Add data request button. NOTE: You will need to be logged into your account to request data. You can follow the steps here to create an account.
- Enter a Subject for the data request.
- Enter a Description of the data you are requesting. Try and be as descriptive as possible to assist data custodians providing a response.
- Click Create data request to post your request to the Queensland Open Data Portal.
- After submitting your data request an Open Data Portal administrator will assess your request and assign it to the most relevant organisation for a response.
- An organisation representative will respond to your request in the Comments tab of the data request. This will trigger a notification email sent to users and followers email addresses.
- You can Reply, Mute thread or Report comments in the same way as Dataset Comments.