[yt-dev] Asking questions on StackOverflow

nick moeckel nickolas1 at gmail.com
Sun Nov 17 06:09:19 PST 2013


Hi everyone,

Speaking as someone who relatively recently started using yt, and uses it
to analyse data from codes with a lot fewer users than enzo+yt (as far as I
can tell anyway), something like SO would be awesome. Searching the mailing
list has very rarely been useful to me. This is almost certainly a result
of my using codes for which support in yt has changed dramatically over the
last year or so; mailing list threads are often out of date to the point of
uselessness. An updatable system would be a lot friendlier.

best,
Nick


On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 3:03 PM, Matthew Turk <matthewturk at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Elizabeth,
>
> On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 6:48 AM, Elizabeth Tasker
> <tasker at astro1.sci.hokudai.ac.jp> wrote:
> > Hi Nathan and Matt,
> >
> > I've never used SO (or indeed heard of it until I saw the twitter thread)
> > and I'm very open to being convinced of its merits.
> >
> > However, I'm also a bit concerned about fragmenting our Q&A.
>
> (Me too!)
>
> > For example, if
> > I have a problem with yt, one of the first things I do is hit the "search
> > the mailing list" box on the doc page.
> >
> > e.g.
> >
> http://www.google.com/cse?cx=010428198273461986377%3Axyfd9ztykqm&ie=UTF-8&q=elizabeth+has+a+problem&sa=Search&siteurl=yt-project.org%2Fdocs%2F2.5%2F&ref=yt-project.org%2Fcommunity.html&ss=5151j1127787j37#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=elizabeth%20has%20a%20problem&gsc.page=1
> >
> > Now that is pretty simple. What is SO offering that beats that?
> >
>
> The answers can be updated over time -- which can't happen with a
> linear system like the mailing list.  So you might turn up an old
> answer on the mailing list, but on SO it would then be updated over
> time to match the current SOP.
>
> -Matt
>
> > Elizabeth
> >
> >
> > On Nov 17, 2013, at 10:40 PM, Matthew Turk <matthewturk at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Nathan,
> >
> > On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 12:01 AM, Nathan Goldbaum <nathan12343 at gmail.com
> >
> > wrote:
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I recently subscribed to the [yt] tag on StackExchange.  Now, whenever a
> > question is asked using this tag on any StackExchange site, I will get an
> > e-mail about it, just like if a question is asked on the users or dev
> list.
> > Currently (as far as I can tell) zero questions have been asked using
> this
> > tag...
> >
> > If there are a few others who are interested in subscribing to the tag, I
> > think it might be worthwhile to add StackOverflow to the website and docs
> > where we describe how to get help and also announce on the user’s list
> that
> > StackOverflow is an alternate place to ask questions.
> >
> > While this might split the community somewhat - not everyone will be
> > subscribed to StackOverflow and thus might miss useful info - I think
> moving
> > some helpful suggestions to StackOverflow will massively improve
> > googleability of common yt issues, allowing us to avoid answering the
> same
> > questions over and over again.
> >
> > It might also be worthwhile to ask and answer some common yt questions.
>  Off
> > the top of my head, I think we could at least answer how to load various
> > types of datasets into yt.
> >
> >
> > In principle, I'm okay with this.  But I have a few concerns --
> >
> > 1) I don't think the tag "yt" can be created unless someone with high
> > reputation does so.  (
> > http://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/create-tags )
> > 2) We have well-defined usage metrics that we can quantify based on
> > mailing list activity, so this may fragment that.
> > 3) Many of the existing contributors and users don't want another inbox.
> >
> > *However*.  SO is really quite good for evolving questions and for an
> > updateable reference.  I do really like that aspect.  But I think we
> > may find ourselves getting a bit fragmented -- in fact, what I see as
> > being a possible outcome is that if yt does end up growing into an
> > interdisciplinary space, we'd see people from non-Astro disciplines
> > using it, but retaining our original core audience here.  All your
> > points really are good ones.
> >
> > I don't know.  Could be awesome.  And, I'd like to see us embrace more
> > modern and useful methods of communication and outreach.  So ... I
> > guess the experiment could be a good one!
> >
> > -Matt
> >
> >
> > -Nathan
> >
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> >
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> >
> >
> >
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