Should we move all transient conversations/random requests for help off slack onto the forum?

Technical
1

This is a test of forum posts for random things that aren’t working/I’m being stupid (which would normally go on the slack cosima channel).

Anyone getting a hang on their module load conda/analysis3 command this morning? I have it in my .bashrc so when I login my session sits there hanging.

[rmh561@gadi-login-01 ~]$ module load conda/analysis3
...
...
...
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I think perhaps the login nodes are just very overloaded at the moment? If I wait 10 minutes it seems to work…

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There were a lot of issues with gadi yesterday, may I suggest next time you post this on slack, in case there was actually an issue with the environments we (CMS) might miss it here.

4

I’m confused! I thought we were trying to switch to posting all issues here instead, so ACCESS-NRI folks can also help and that we have a history of all help requests and solutions. Any thoughts @Aidan ?

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5

+1 to what Adele said. The reason I posted this here was mostly to test this exact thing - whether this kind of post would work on the forum rather than slack, like we’ve been encouraged to do.

Might I suggest we start a single topic with title of something like “support” (or even “cosima”), whoose role is to replicate (i.e. replace) the corresponding slack channels, without needing a new topic for every issue?

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@rmholmes The “technical” category is supposed to fill this role. So still a new topic per issue but all in one category instead of appearing all over the place? Would that work for you? Because I would argue this current topic has nothing to do in the COSIMA category…

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I guess my concern is using the forum for transient issues like this. I don’t think it helps anyone in the long term to know that Gadi was a bit unstable on the 28th of March 2023. I worry that it makes it more difficult to find actual issues. This post now shows up when searching for ‘conda’, which is likely to be a fairly common thing to need help with around here.

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@clairecarouge agreed that it should be in the technical channel. For now I’ve changed the topic title to be more representative of the actual subject of conversation.

I’m not sure I agree that this stuff should stay off the forum though. We need a place to discuss these transient issues. If this is still slack, then we’re being encouraged to engage with even more communication channels (I’m already on teams, slack, the forum, github, email…this is getting a bit much).

Furthmore, often these issues do end up turning into things that you want a record of. If the conversation is started on slack, it’s difficult to then move it over. In the COSIMA community we have been strongly encouraged, principly by @Aidan, to move everything off slack to the forum for this, amongst other, reasons.

Is there anything in principle wrong with having a single topic with a title such as “transient support” etc., which basically act as replacements for the corresponding slack channel? This wouldn’t pollute the forum with new topics but still keeps a permanent record of everything?

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9

I agree, it is asking a lot for everyone to monitor a number of different channels and to know which are the appropriate ones to use for different types of issues.

It’s true. For anyone else following along the reasons I encourage the community to use the forum are:

  1. “free” slack is time limited: older questions (and answers!) are lost
  2. slack is not discoverable. If you’re not on the slack instance you can’t search it. If you don’t know the channel exists you can’t find it with a general search (google/bing/duckduckgo)
  3. slack is not a great platform for in-depth discussions compared to a forum like this which has better support for embedded code and graphics, groups, and features like de-facto mailing lists

All of the reasons above mean the forum is a better place, in general, for discussing ACCESS related stuff, capturing it for anyone who might benefit from existing discussions in the future, and making that all open and discoverable, so that those who aren’t already part of the community can find it and join in.

There is a cost to the community being hidden. There is a cost to knowledge being lost. There is a cost to the community being balkanised in many different slack instances and/or email groups.

I think that is an excellent idea. Feel free to do so. A clear explanation of the intended scope of the topic would help a great deal, e.g. it is principally NCI only? It would mean those who wish to respond could watch the topic, and anyone who wants to hear about transient issues could also watch to get a heads up when things go pear-shaped.

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