[yt-dev] Asking questions on StackOverflow

Sun Nov 17 06:20:47 PST 2013

On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 7:17 AM, j s oishi <jsoishi at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Honestly, I think the most important thing is: it's a place a LOT of people
> go to look for answers regarding computing questions. Virtually every error
> message I google regarding any aspect of programming (especially matplotlib
> and latex) has an answer on SO. The reason to engage on SO is that that is
> where users might be. We don't get to dictate where people look for help; I
> don't think we should consolidate our answers in one place because it's
> convenient for us.
>
> As far as consolidation,I like to think of it this way: there's nothing
> stopping any person from starting up a "yt tips and tricks" page on their
> own site. I think we'd all be overjoyed if something like that happened.
> This is the same thing. Searching the web is functionally the same as
> searching the mailing list, but much more dynamic (as Nick points out, I
> often find the mailing list utterly useless because yt moves at an extremely
> rapid place) and much wider in scope (as yt gets bigger, we the developers
> will not always have the best answer). As for Matt's concern that the
> mailing list makes quantification easy: I don't think SO will hurt that. I
> just wrote in a grant proposal the number of views the yt workshop videos
> had on youtube. SO also reports basic statistics (241,916 questions tagged
> about c++, it says right now). We are always adding new technologies to the
> support framework for yt; I think this is simply another one.
>
> I agree with Nathan: this is something we should experiment with.

For what it's worth, we may be well-suited to
scicomp.stackexchange.com ; a few of the editors and moderators are
familiar with the project.  My guess is that would also increase yt's
visibility with scientific computing communities.

-Matt

>
> j
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 9:03 AM, 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
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > yt-dev mailing list
>> > yt-dev at lists.spacepope.org
>> > http://lists.spacepope.org/listinfo.cgi/yt-dev-spacepope.org
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > yt-dev mailing list
>> > yt-dev at lists.spacepope.org
>> > http://lists.spacepope.org/listinfo.cgi/yt-dev-spacepope.org
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > yt-dev mailing list
>> > yt-dev at lists.spacepope.org
>> > http://lists.spacepope.org/listinfo.cgi/yt-dev-spacepope.org
>> >
>> _______________________________________________
>> yt-dev mailing list
>> yt-dev at lists.spacepope.org
>> http://lists.spacepope.org/listinfo.cgi/yt-dev-spacepope.org
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> yt-dev mailing list
> yt-dev at lists.spacepope.org
> http://lists.spacepope.org/listinfo.cgi/yt-dev-spacepope.org
>