[Go-essp-tech] A CMIP5 FAQ Application

Fri Aug 5 04:26:17 MDT 2011

Hi Karl,

I agree that for 1) some simple additional guidance text in the UI itself could prevent users running into problems with registration for access.

Cheers,
Phil

From: Karl Taylor <taylor13 at llnl.gov<mailto:taylor13 at llnl.gov>>
Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2011 09:11:15 -0700
To: "stephen.pascoe at stfc.ac.uk<mailto:stephen.pascoe at stfc.ac.uk>" <stephen.pascoe at stfc.ac.uk<mailto:stephen.pascoe at stfc.ac.uk>>
Cc: "go-essp-tech at ucar.edu<mailto:go-essp-tech at ucar.edu>" <go-essp-tech at ucar.edu<mailto:go-essp-tech at ucar.edu>>, "esg-gateway-dev at earthsystemgrid.org<mailto:esg-gateway-dev at earthsystemgrid.org>" <esg-gateway-dev at earthsystemgrid.org<mailto:esg-gateway-dev at earthsystemgrid.org>>, "esg-node-dev at lists.llnl.gov<mailto:esg-node-dev at lists.llnl.gov>" <esg-node-dev at lists.llnl.gov<mailto:esg-node-dev at lists.llnl.gov>>
Subject: Re: [Go-essp-tech] A CMIP5 FAQ Application

Hi all,

I agree with Stephen that our ability to quickly respond to the increasing number of requests seems likely to become overwhelmed.  My cursory impression is, however, that the most common problems reported will be difficult for the user community to respond to; they seem to be associated with flaws in ESG and/or gateway hardware.  Am I correct that most frequent queries to the help desk are related to:

1.  getting error messages, no response, or incorrect notice that a user doesn't have the proper permission to successfully download data

2. having problems finding data using the search capability (because sometimes this fails to return all datasets that it should).

I think NCAR is making progress on the search problems (2 above), but I'm not sure anyone understands whether there are bugs or just confusion that's causing all the problems listed in 1 above.  Perhaps along with thinking about alternatives to the current help desk, immediate attention needs to be paid to reducing the real problems encountered by the user by modifying the ESG software, possibly modifying the ESG user interface, so users won't be so easily confused.

The first step might be to try to confirm that 1 above is causing most of the problems and to pin down exactly why the problems are being encountered.  I think someone with a bit more complete technical understanding of ESG should be able to find the common issues that are being raised and suggest ways they might be addressed.

Best regards,
Karl

On 8/4/11 7:55 AM, stephen.pascoe at stfc.ac.uk<mailto:stephen.pascoe at stfc.ac.uk> wrote:
Hi everyone,

I am increasingly convinced that the CMIP5 HelpDesk isn't scaling to the number of queries we are getting and definitely won't scale as CMIP5 gets more use.  This is partly our fault at BADC for not managing to open up the HelpDesk sufficiently to make it easy for ESGF developers to contribute.  This will improve in the near future (honest!) but I still think we need a more agile way to communicate with CMIP5 users.

Therefore I want to float an alternative solution.  A community-driven, interactive FAQ in the style of stackoverflow.com.  The idea is that users, administrators and developers can collaborate on asking and answering questions in an open forum.  There is a reputation system and a mechanism for voting for answers/questions which enables common questions and good answers to be highlighted.  There is also a tagging system for classification.

I have created a prototype service with a few questions in it at http://esg-dev1.badc.rl.ac.uk/.  Please take a look and give me some feedback.  Even better create an account and start asking and answering questions.  I have deliberately answered only some of the questions to encourage people to get involved.  If you don't like my answer add another one or comment on mine.

If this appears to work for us the site can be moved to a production server easily without losing the questions.  We could then link to it from the "Contact Us" page in the gateways and ask people to email cmip5-helpdesk only for questions they don't want to share with the community.  I would like to discuss this at the ESGF telco on Tuesday.

One note.  You can use ESGF OpenIDs to create an account but CEDA OpenIDs don't work right now.  I need to get Phil to fix that.

Cheers,
Stephen.

---
Stephen Pascoe  +44 (0)1235 445980
Centre of Environmental Data Archival
STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Harwell Oxford, Didcot OX11 0QX, UK

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