[developers] DELPH-IN Discourse (Q&A)

[Stephan Oepen]

thanks for the reminder, francis.

i believe someone voiced the impression at the summit already that the
DELPH-IN wiki is not indexed by search engines.  i admit i never looked
into interactions with search engines specifically, but i would be very
surprised if there were any settings on the oslo DELPH-IN servers that
would scare off search engines.

why do you believe we are not indexed?  i just did a quick test, which
seems to give the result one would expect (see below).

all best, oe




On Sat, 18 Nov 2017 at 10:08 Francis Bond <bond at ieee.org> wrote:

> Thank you for taking the initiative Olga!   I hope that this make
> information flow even better.
>
> I think one of the problems with the wiki is that it does not seem to
> be indexed by, e.g. google.   Stephan: is there a setting you can
> change to get it indexed?   I think this would make the information
> there a lot more discoverable, ...
>
> On Sat, Nov 18, 2017 at 7:02 AM, Olga Zamaraeva <olzama at uw.edu> wrote:
> > Dear developers,
> >
> > In the last summit in Oslo, we discussed a possibility of having a Q&A
> forum
> > in stackexchange style.
> >
> > Many people were enthusiastic, and, thanks to University of Washington
> > staff, we were able to set up a forum powered by Discourse:
> >
> > https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/
> >
> > I would like to invite each of you to create an account and try it out!
> >
> > The forum was created very recently, but at this point, there should not
> be
> > too many hiccups. We need to decide a few things soon (see below), so, we
> > want to involve the entire community at this point, even if we are still
> > testing the forum.
> >
> > A few notes, for those inclined to read them :).
> >
> > 1) The primary purpose of this forum is to accumulate concrete solutions
> to
> > technical problems and make them easily discoverable. So the primary
> > scenario is for one to encounter an error message, and, instead of
> trying to
> > locate the answer somewhere on the wiki or in the email archives and
> ending
> > up emailing the list for the 100th time anyway, one would query the forum
> > (using e.g. the text of the error message). If their question was already
> > answered, the assumption is they will be able to immediately find out
> what
> > the working solution is. This is, in my opinion, the most important
> feature
> > of stackexchange Q&A style, and one that other types of support lack.**
> > Moreover, the forum is also a fine platform for open-ended discussions,
> with
> > a nice addition of the upvote button which makes better, clearer posts
> more
> > salient in the thread.
> >
> > **(Some people oppose this style since, in their opinion, finding the
> right
> > solution "too easily" leads to lack of understanding of why the right
> answer
> > is the right answer. I agree  that there may be some truth to that but I
> > also think that this ultimately depends on the user and how much and in
> what
> > style they are willing to learn; there is also a question of priorities:
> > sometimes what is needed the most is to fix the problem asap.)
> >
> > 2) I will be the admin of the forum for now. This means I am the person
> to
> > whom you can complain about things if something is not working for you.
> It
> > also means I can do various things for you, such as create/merge
> categories
> > and so forth. If you would like to also be an admin or a moderator, let
> me
> > know. It will probably help to have more admins, especially in other time
> > zones.
> >
> > 3) You do not need to monitor the forum or anything like that, unless you
> > would like to. Instead, you can subscribe to categories or tags, and the
> > forum will email you when a new post is created in the category or with
> that
> > tag. You can choose whether you will be notified about the first post
> only
> > or each reply.
> >
> > 4) Some developers expressed concern that we are thus fragmenting our
> > support platforms. I understand this concern and would like to address
> it by
> > both making an effort to import the email archives into the new forum
> > (unless it proves too messy) and by pointing out that the email+wiki do
> not
> > and cannot really serve the purpose that I think this forum will serve.
> It
> > seems that the wiki, the email list, and the forum can very happily
> coexist,
> > just like python documentation and python-related sections of
> stackoverflow
> > (and presumably some people exchange emails about python when they want
> to
> > discuss something in a manner they don't think the general public will
> > necessarily benefit from). Obviously, the wiki should be linked to from
> the
> > forum (and vice versa) and instructions on the wiki can be updated
> whenever
> > it makes sense to do so.***
> >
> > ***(Note however that it can be rather impractical to try and incorporate
> > every single detail into the wiki, especially if the detail only makes
> sense
> > in the context of a concrete question. In fact, every time one adds
> > something to the wiki, one in a way is adding a new dimension to the
> space
> > in which people will be searching for solutions... without adding a
> starting
> > point for the search, necessarily.)
> >
> > 5) The forum is hosted by the University of Washington, so, there is no
> > danger of some external host interfering in our affairs. Discourse is
> > open-source software. It is also a very flexible system already, with
> > various plugins etc. We can customize it as we like.
> >
> > If you would like to discuss any of this, we can do it here over email
> or on
> > the forum; there is already a topic there regarding the email archives:
> > https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/importing-email-archives/28/5 In
> > particular, that topic invites you to participate in a poll.
> >
> > Thank you for considering,
> >
> > Olga
> >
> > P.S.: You will see that there are already some users and topics; I hadn't
> > advertised the forum here earlier because it was not yet working in a
> stable
> > fashion, but it should be now :). Note also that for now, this is all in
> the
> > testing stage. For example, if we do decide to import the mailing list
> > archives, we may need to purge the existing content.
>
>
>
> --
> Francis Bond <http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/home/fcbond/>
> Division of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies
> Nanyang Technological University
>
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