@srfirehorseart A big part of open data is precisely that it doesn't need to be built for any one specific usecase - the data is provided in a generic, unopinionated format and then it's up to people what to do with it. Including in ways you might not have foreseen.

For OpenStreetMap, common usage includes (of course) mapping/navigation applications (there's a good chance you've used something that uses OSM data!), but also directories of opening times, disability aids (where is the nearest bench, wheelchair access), and so on.

For OpenFoodFacts, the data is often used to quickly look up the nutritional values of products (beyond what is already on the packaging), to compare nutrition levels in different options, as an extra safeguard against allergens, and so on.

But undoubtedly there are many usecases I'm unaware of for both of them - that's the nice thing about open datasets :)

@joepie91

Maps: That makes sense for the application of map data. Location data usually takes years to change.

Food: Maybe I missed it but, at first glance, all I saw was a list of mainly French products.

Food products puzzle me, as I didn't see an obvious filter by location, etc. As a UK user, I'd want to see produce available in the UK.

With all kinds of data, I'd want to see some careful data management, otherwise it risks losing relevance over time.

@srfirehorseart @joepie91 A few years ago I dabbled with the database export but realised it was too large:

https://world.openfoodfacts.org/data

Even the CSV export can take considerable amount of time to download.

But they have almost 3 million entries if I recall correctly.

@RyunoKi @joepie91

Yes, it makes sense that those many records would take a long time to download, unless you have a lot of computing power.

Also, I noticed a warning that you'd need a complete dataset to exclude out of date information.

"Please note that due to the nature of mongoexport, the delta files cannot tell you about deleted products. To remove deleted products from your database, you will need to import the full MongoDB dump."

@srfirehorseart @joepie91 Personally I don't like MongoDB very much.
I'd much rather a relational database, since most of the headers overlap anyway.

Given the site, analysis of the whole database could happen in Google BigQuery (yikes! Google) or a Jupyter notebook.

I'm not aware of anyone having tried that.

@srfirehorseart @RyunoKi (Note that there is also an RDF export, and a couple other files)

@srfirehorseart They definitely track where the food is available, and you can filter by this - but the UI is certainly something that needs to be improved. I think the expectation for casual users is to mainly use it by scanning individual products (and in the Netherlands, I'd say I've had about a 70% success rate with that, despite it being a very obscure site here).

Ultimately it *is* going to be primarily crowdsourced, and that means there's a certain amount of fuzziness to the data that's unavoidable. But within that, they track revisions, ask people to make pictures of the packaging as a data source, they extract expiry dates to associate data with production dates, and so on.

@srfirehorseart @joepie91 Back in 2018 I attended

https://archive.fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/open_food_facts/

One of the findings I learned there was that they were able to track down Fanta (as an example) having different ingredients and „nutritions“ in different European countries.

Something a layperson wouldn't notice.

@RyunoKi @srfirehorseart @joepie91 Might this be because there are different regulations on what needs to be on the ingredients list or do they really change the recipe per country (that would be wild)?

@jfml @srfirehorseart @joepie91 I can't remember whether this question was covered.

But it's one of these you would expect a NGO or journalist to ask next, right?

@RyunoKi @jfml @joepie91

Local variations may be an accepted feature in the food & drink industry, as that kind of information is already public. Or was that the outcome of your 2018 event?

Wikipedia says: "There are more than 200 flavors worldwide; the recipes can differ per country. The Orange flavor recipe outside the US contains orange juice and the American version has none."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanta

@srfirehorseart @jfml @joepie91 It's been five years. I don't remember, sorry.

I started contributing here and there as a result of the talk.