[Go-essp-tech] [esg-gateway-dev] A CMIP5 FAQ Application

Fri Aug 5 04:36:44 MDT 2011

Karl et al.

I think there has been a relatively diverse set of questions forwarded to the helpdesk so far.  For instance we were asked how to convert height levels to pressure levels the other day.  We are asked about the meaning of the ensemble attribute, why particular data has been updated or disappeared, when CMIP3 will be available alongside CMIP5, etc.

There are a few technical questions that come up regularly.  The most frequent is trying to use multiple OpenIDs.  My hope is that CMIP5- Help will allow scientific and technical questions to be answered in the same system.

Anyway, I think August is a good time to experiment.  Once everyone is back we can review all the lines of communication and query management and focus on what's working.

Cheers,
Stephen.

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

From: esg-gateway-dev-bounces at mailman.earthsystemgrid.org [mailto:esg-gateway-dev-bounces at mailman.earthsystemgrid.org] On Behalf Of Estanislao Gonzalez
Sent: 05 August 2011 11:20
To: Karl Taylor
Cc: Pascoe, Stephen (STFC,RAL,RALSP); go-essp-tech at ucar.edu; esg-gateway-dev at earthsystemgrid.org; esg-node-dev at lists.llnl.gov
Subject: Re: [esg-gateway-dev] [Go-essp-tech] A CMIP5 FAQ Application

Hi Karl,

maybe that's true, although I don't concur, I might be seen the questions I can't answer to be more "present" thatn the others. Those questions are related to what experiments mean, and how data is supposed to be used. The community has no access to the support mailing list so "somebody" (and here's the problem) must send it to the proper people. Following what is sent where is really hard...

IMHO I think you've missed the point of having this FAQ. The idea is directed more at creating a knowledge base than allowing the user community to respond and participate (which is still great). Precisely the problems you've mentioned are far more easy to answer in this FAQs once (and improving the answers from time to time) that sending the same mail all over again and risking sending bad info (especially if something change in the process) and loosing the contact with the user posting the request (which in the FAQs case remain stored along with the question). I've already counted 450 different Threads (the ones moved to footprint are count twice, but every thread has at least 2 Mails, so we have well over 500 mails already there). Searching for something is quite difficult, and the users just don't have that possibility.

I think we should use ASAP this FAQ system, but maintain the mailing list as well. IMO It is now obvious that it won't be scaling much longer... and we should expect it to grow at least ten times when it gets more massively used. We just don't have the time nor resources to be derived to this task, and yet this is one of the most important task there are. As dumb as it may sound, the archive won't be used, if users don't know how to use it, and that's a fact.

I even think we should post important (or recurring) questions to this FAQ and derive people asking them to those directly from the mailing list.

By the way Stephen, the OpenId doesn't work for us either. If using the 1.2 Gateway, the gateway itself says there's an error. If using the 1.3.1 The FAQ system complains.

Thanks,
Estani

Am 04.08.2011 18:11, schrieb Karl Taylor:
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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Estanislao Gonzalez

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