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by gwern
5471 days ago
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> People outside the World Bank are eager for its information. Its newly released data — from economic stats to numbers on landmines — has attracted more than 4.5 million unique views. Indeed, more people come to its Web site looking for data than anything else. > “I’m astonished by the number of people apparently just waiting for our data to become free,” says Shaida Badiee, director of the bank’s economic development data group. “I had no idea how big a deal this was going to be.” Free is different. Personally, I'm always surprised when some person or group radically lowers barriers to participation and then express shock when they get run over by a herd of contributors. And this from economists, too! You would think they would be especially sensitive to transaction costs and dead-weight loss! (Even tech types like Eliezer Yudkowsky make this mistake.) |
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