Peter Harkins, at his blog Push CX, suggests “Three rules for data base creation and management“:

1. All Fields Become Optional
   

2. All Relationships Become Many-to-Many
   

3. Chatter Always Expands
   

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Late this afternoon, the 20 participants in Ver 1.0
will be gathering at the Inn of the Governors in Santa Fe, NM for the
first session of the workshop.  The first, set-the-tone speaker is
George Duncan, professor of statistics at Carnegie Mellon University.  George will be speaking on “Statistical
Confidentiality: What Does It Mean for Journalists’ Use of Public Databases?“

We
are very pleased with high-powered thinkers who are in or coming to
Santa Fe to address the major problem of how do we verify the data in
public records databases.  The proceedings of the workshop will,
we hope, be published by the end of the month and also available online.