Question:
In Label Studio Community Edition, is there any way to keep user A from altering the task annotations made by user B, for instance, to prevent accidental deletion of another user’s ratings?
Answer:
Unfortunately, the Label Studio Community Edition does not come with a built-in functionality to directly prevent one user from editing another’s annotations or to display such a warning. Nevertheless, you can adopt several practices to mitigate the risk of users overwriting each other’s annotations:
- Provide Clear Instructions: Clearly communicate with your annotators about the workflow and stress the importance of not altering others’ annotations.
- Task Assignment: Assign specific tasks to individual annotators manually, using the Data Manager to help filter and allocate the tasks in order to minimize overlapping work.
- Utilize Comments: Encourage your annotators to make use of the comments feature for communication around particular tasks. This provides a space to leave status notes or other important information for one another.
- Version Control: Implement a system for regular exportation and versioning of your annotations. Doing so facilitates restoration to older versions if any accidental modifications or deletions occur.
- Review Process: Set up a review process, possibly involving a third party, to verify completed tasks and check for unintentional overwriting of annotations.
- Custom Development: If you have access to development resources, consider customizing your Label Studio installation to introduce a warning system. This would require altering backend code to flag existing annotations and initiate alerts.
For those in need of more sophisticated control over user permissions and task assignments, upgrading to the Label Studio Enterprise Edition is an option. It offers enhanced features like role-based access control and task review workflows, helping to prevent such conflicts.