ask.sagemath.org issues - do we need it?

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Matthias Koeppe

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Dec 10, 2021, 2:20:32 PM12/10/21
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I have received a report that ask.sagemath.org account management is broken:
> das "recover account" jedoch funktioniert jedoch nicht.
> wenn man auf den button klickt passiert lange nichts, und irgendwann "504 Gateway Time-out".

I don't normally use ask.sagemath.org myself, but to reproduce the reported error, I've tried logging in using Google and also eventually got a 504.

Overall, I am not sure why the project is running this server. I think we are spreading ourselves pretty thin here. There is also:

Is any of the information at https://wiki.sagemath.org/Infrastructure#ask.sagemath.org still current?






Samuel Lelievre

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Dec 10, 2021, 4:11:03 PM12/10/21
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2021-12-10, Matthias Koeppe:
Yes, it is current. One can also email

  sage-askbot-admin AT googlegroups.com

to report problems.

kcrisman

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Dec 11, 2021, 10:00:54 AM12/11/21
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Some hopefully-useful comments:

Overall, I am not sure why the project is running this server. I think we are spreading ourselves pretty thin here. There is also:
50 questions in last 6 months - thankfully, not as many about the Sage ERP software as in the past - so nowhere near the volume of ask.sagemath?  But see below.
negligible
 
Also https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/sagemath - 50 questions in the past 18 months. 

Though I haven't had time to contribute to any of these regularly since somewhat before the pandemic, my observations are twofold on this:
1) The same people were helping on both the SE sites and ask.sagemath
2) The response time and quality (and number of answers) were all better on ask.sagemath
It's possible this has changed recently, but more likely it is just that some of the networking issues have made it less reliable, but haven't improved service on the other sites. Contributors to answers have liked ask.sagemath.

I do notice that ask.sagemath has for some time only reported "0 years ago" for recent questions - I don't think the askbot developer (https://askbot.com) has been super productive lately and of course we don't have the ability to support that software as well as Sage itself.  That seems to be more of a sticking point, though I think Thierry and Samuel will have some relevant comments on that.
 
As for sage-support, it's always surprising to me how many "customers" simply disappear as soon as you mention asking a question there - somehow they either want a Q&A site, or to ask on Facebook, or whatever.  I don't really know why this happens, but clearly the Q&A sites (in toto) are necessary.

Finally, to anticipate a question that has come up in the past on this issue, I had previously inquired with a SE employee about transferring data, and it seems it's not really a viable option.  (As a very tangential note, one could make a similar observation about Trac versus GH/GL - could one take all those very useful discussions and import them?)

Matthias Koeppe

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Dec 11, 2021, 12:52:34 PM12/11/21
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On Saturday, December 11, 2021 at 7:00:54 AM UTC-8 kcrisman wrote:
 As for sage-support, it's always surprising to me how many "customers" simply disappear as soon as you mention asking a question there - somehow they either want a Q&A site, or to ask on Facebook, or whatever.  I don't really know why this happens, but clearly the Q&A sites (in toto) are necessary.


Another option may be to move to Discourse. Many projects use it, including https://discuss.python.org/ and https://discourse.julialang.org/


 

Emmanuel Charpentier

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Dec 11, 2021, 12:58:35 PM12/11/21
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Discourse is somewhat nosy : I have to use it for questions related to Stan...

Dima Pasechnik

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Dec 11, 2021, 4:39:04 PM12/11/21
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On Sat, 11 Dec 2021, 17:58 Emmanuel Charpentier, <emanuel.c...@gmail.com> wrote:
Discourse is somewhat nosy : I have to use it for questions related to Stan...

Nosy? Discourse can be self-hosted.

While askbot promises a new version in February, it's obviously a small platform.

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jplab

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Dec 14, 2021, 4:52:42 PM12/14/21
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Hello,

I think it is a fair question to consider whether we need AskSage. This discussion reminded me of a previous thread in the group which I think is still worth reading today:

While the discussion certainly dates from a different era of Sage, I think that certain arguments didn't change, in particular that "a fully free QA site was more consistent with the values of the Sage community" rather than a StackExchange hosting [Niles Johnson, from the above discussion].

+1 for a fully free QA page that lets people easily ask questions from a broad range of subscriptions platforms (google, facebook, name-it,... somehow I also do believe that average users like this better than a minimal forum).

Best,
J-P

Thierry

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Dec 14, 2021, 5:31:08 PM12/14/21
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Hi,
The information there is up-to-date. The issue about account recovery is
due to the fact that the current server is not configured to send
emails. However, sending an email to sage-ask...@googlegroups.com
should lead to some admin changing the user's password (we did that in
the past).

Ciao,
Thierry




>
>
>
>
>
>
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Dima Pasechnik

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Dec 14, 2021, 5:37:20 PM12/14/21
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On Tue, Dec 14, 2021 at 10:31 PM Thierry
<sage-goo...@lma.metelu.net> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> On Fri, Dec 10, 2021 at 11:20:31AM -0800, Matthias Koeppe wrote:
> > I have received a report that ask.sagemath.org account management is broken:
> > > das "recover account" jedoch funktioniert jedoch nicht.
> > > wenn man auf den button klickt passiert lange nichts, und irgendwann "504
> > Gateway Time-out".
> >
> > I don't normally use ask.sagemath.org myself, but to reproduce the reported
> > error, I've tried logging in using Google and also eventually got a 504.
> > https://ask.sagemath.org/account/signin/complete-oauth2/?state=....&scope=email+profile+https%3A%2F%2Fwww.googleapis.com%2Fauth%2Fuserinfo.profile+https%3A%2F%2Fwww.googleapis.com%2Fauth%2Fuserinfo.email+openid&authuser=0&prompt=consent#
> >
> > Overall, I am not sure why the project is running this server. I think we
> > are spreading ourselves pretty thin here. There is also:
> > - https://groups.google.com/g/sage-support
> > - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/sage
> > - https://stackexchange.com/search?q=sage
> > - https://mathoverflow.net/search?q=sage
> >
> > Is any of the information at
> > https://wiki.sagemath.org/Infrastructure#ask.sagemath.org still current?
>
> The information there is up-to-date. The issue about account recovery is
> due to the fact that the current server is not configured to send
> emails.

We can fix a smtp server (a smarthost) for askbot, just like we do for
trac - trac cannot send emails itself,
due to GCE restrictions, but it certainly can use a smarthost to send emails.

Dima


> However, sending an email to sage-ask...@googlegroups.com
> should lead to some admin changing the user's password (we did that in
> the past).
>
> Ciao,
> Thierry
>
>
>
>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group.
> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+...@googlegroups.com.
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>
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Thierry

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Dec 14, 2021, 6:16:32 PM12/14/21
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This should be doable, it seems to only need the host name, the user
name on the smarthost and its password.

Ciao,
Thierry



> Dima
>
>
> > However, sending an email to sage-ask...@googlegroups.com
> > should lead to some admin changing the user's password (we did that in
> > the past).
> >
> > Ciao,
> > Thierry
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group.
> > > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+...@googlegroups.com.
> > > To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sage-devel/da62341d-d157-405c-9ea1-ea5f316d54c7n%40googlegroups.com.
> >
> > --
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>
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Thierry

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Dec 14, 2021, 6:43:43 PM12/14/21
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On Sat, Dec 11, 2021 at 07:00:54AM -0800, kcrisman wrote:
> Some hopefully-useful comments:
>
> Overall, I am not sure why the project is running this server. I think we
> > are spreading ourselves pretty thin here. There is also:
> > - https://groups.google.com/g/sage-support
> > - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/sage
> >
> 50 questions in last 6 months - thankfully, not as many about the Sage ERP
> software as in the past - so nowhere near the volume of ask.sagemath? But
> see below.
>
> > - https://stackexchange.com/search?q=sage
> > - https://mathoverflow.net/search?q=sage
> >
> negligible
>
> Also https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/sagemath - 50
> questions in the past 18 months.
>
> Though I haven't had time to contribute to any of these regularly since
> somewhat before the pandemic, my observations are twofold on this:
> 1) The same people were helping on both the SE sites and ask.sagemath
> 2) The response time and quality (and number of answers) were all better on
> ask.sagemath
> It's possible this has changed recently, but more likely it is just that
> some of the networking issues have made it less reliable, but haven't
> improved service on the other sites. Contributors to answers have liked
> ask.sagemath.

An additional benefit from ask.sagemath is that is it well referenced on
search engines, so that answers posted there can be used as a knowledge
database.

> I do notice that ask.sagemath has for some time only reported "0 years
> ago" for recent questions - I don't think the askbot developer
> (https://askbot.com) has been super productive lately and of course we
> don't have the ability to support that software as well as Sage
> itself. That seems to be more of a sticking point, though I think
> Thierry and Samuel will have some relevant comments on that.

This "0 years ago" comes from a change in some javascript where, there
is a jump from hours to years, without knowing about days and months.

Maybe it is fixed on another upstream branch. Note that we are still on
the 0.7.x branch since migrating requires some work. Indeed, when we
upgrade, we need to run some migration scripts that update the database
structure. Unfortunately, our database scheme is not exactly the same as
the official one since in the early years, ask.sagemath was installed by
askbot developper himself, who adapted the db to some needs (perhaps
William can say more about that). We already fixed a lots of such
things, but when i moved ask.sagemath in emergency last year from Ohio
State University to Paris North University, i updated the versions until
i fall on some database migration issue and did not go further. This
might not be that hard to fix, but it is pretty boring (one have to
understand where is the bug, do some sql to adapt our tweaked database
to what it is supposed to be, and try again to see if the migration
script pass).

If someone from the community is willing to give a try, i could set up a
separated container, that is a duplicate of the current production
server and provide an SSH access.

> As for sage-support, it's always surprising to me how many "customers"
> simply disappear as soon as you mention asking a question there -
> somehow they either want a Q&A site, or to ask on Facebook, or
> whatever. I don't really know why this happens, but clearly the Q&A
> sites (in toto) are necessary.

It is a pity that sage-support is not well referenced by search engines
since there are some pretty good answers there. If i understand
correctly, on discourse it is possible to ask and answer questions by
email, so that people that prefer the sage-support way could contribute
as well. However, i think that merging ask.sagemath and sage-support
into some discourse instance and keep all links well redirected will
require quite some work.

Ciao,
Thierry


> Finally, to anticipate a question that has come up in the past on this
> issue, I had previously inquired with a SE employee about transferring
> data, and it seems it's not really a viable option. (As a very tangential
> note, one could make a similar observation about Trac versus GH/GL - could
> one take all those very useful discussions and import them?)
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+...@googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sage-devel/3ab714cf-5987-4a1d-9f99-471e616e83a8n%40googlegroups.com.

William Stein

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Dec 14, 2021, 7:44:43 PM12/14/21
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Here's some very quick thoughts, some on topic and some off:

- The original author of the software that ask.sagemath.org runs did initially do the configuration at some point long ago.  He was starting a business to support instances in exchange for money.  I wonder if that is still around?  If so, maybe we could pay him to update our ask.sagemath.org instance?  In any case, many thanks to Thierry for maintaining ask.sagemath.org all these years!

- The ziglang community has an interesting approach to the community discussion problem, which is just to welcome and try *everything* that somebody will set up, and see what sticks.   They have a list of all the resources that various community members are running here, which is useful for ideas, in case there's interest in expanding what's available for Sage:  https://github.com/ziglang/zig/wiki/Community
My impression with zig is that the two main ways they communicate are (1) github issues, and (2) their Discord chat server, which is *very* active.   Note that Discord has absolutely nothing to do with Discourse, and solves a completely different problem.  We also use Discord for CoCalc, and it has a manageable steady stream of activity (in fact, some discussion there is about Sage).  One aspect of Discord is that answers don't seem to get indexed by Google; it's very different than ask.sagemath.org or Discourse.    I think the Sage community currently has no *active* general realtime community chat, though we used to all use IRC for Sage very heavily a long time ago, and I think Gitter was also popular at one point.  There's the Zulip for Sage here https://www.sagemath.org/help-zulip.html but it's not that active.        A point in favor of Discord is that it is what all the kids are currently using to discuss video games, hence they are likely to already be using it, and get notifications, etc; it's also very functional for free (unlike Slack).

- Github has a free thing that is supposed to compete with Discourse, I think, called "Github Discussions".   I tried encouraging people to use Github Discussions for CoCalc (see https://github.com/sagemathinc/cocalc/discussions), e.g., by linking to it in a few places, but it is totally dead.  Nobody uses it.   I'm not sure why.

 -- William

Dima Pasechnik

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Dec 15, 2021, 9:49:08 AM12/15/21
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On Wed, Dec 15, 2021 at 12:44 AM William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Here's some very quick thoughts, some on topic and some off:
>
> - The original author of the software that ask.sagemath.org runs did initially do the configuration at some point long ago. He was starting a business to support instances in exchange for money. I wonder if that is still around?

contact details, etc are here: https://askbot.com/
(their own instance is running version 0.10.3)
> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sage-devel/CACLE5GBNueo5hK04X0s4jcuykF9G3P%2BjG_WdL9Ko0epostaFjg%40mail.gmail.com.

William Stein

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Dec 15, 2021, 10:58:52 AM12/15/21
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On Wed, Dec 15, 2021 at 6:49 AM Dima Pasechnik <dim...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Dec 15, 2021 at 12:44 AM William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Here's some very quick thoughts, some on topic and some off:
> >
> > - The original author of the software that ask.sagemath.org runs did initially do the configuration at some point long ago. He was starting a business to support instances in exchange for money. I wonder if that is still around?
>
> contact details, etc are here: https://askbot.com/
> (their own instance is running version 0.10.3)


Thanks. It looks like the obvious thing we would have to buy would be
his hosting service, which is $45/month and provides this (see below).
It seems like he doesn't offer any sort of "manage your existing site"
service anymore. An obvious question is whether or not he would also
migrate our existing site over to his hosted service. Also, we would
be switching from "trust Thierry for backups, long term existence,
etc." to "trust random guy in Chile who has nothing to do with Sage
and also trust that William can ensure the $45/month gets paid
somehow." So it seems he doesn't really provide the service
(namely -- help us upgrade to the latest version) that he used to
provide, and I can see why (it is probably a pain in the butt to do).

30 day free trial
All standard features
SSL Support
Single Sign On
Up to 750 users
Daily backups
> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sage-devel/CAAWYfq3qUz-eAF1Yg%3DN9NaGsD3VFj4sb6sVp_-PYaCThdtf2Sw%40mail.gmail.com.



--
William (http://wstein.org)

Dima Pasechnik

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Dec 15, 2021, 11:24:35 AM12/15/21
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On Wed, 15 Dec 2021, 15:59 William Stein, <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Dec 15, 2021 at 6:49 AM Dima Pasechnik <dim...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Dec 15, 2021 at 12:44 AM William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Here's some very quick thoughts, some on topic and some off:
> >
> > - The original author of the software that ask.sagemath.org runs did initially do the configuration at some point long ago.  He was starting a business to support instances in exchange for money.  I wonder if that is still around?
>
> contact details, etc are here: https://askbot.com/
> (their own instance is running version 0.10.3)


Thanks.  It looks like the obvious thing we would have to buy would be
his hosting service, which is $45/month and provides this (see below).
It seems like he doesn't offer any sort of "manage your existing site"
service anymore.  An obvious question is whether or not he would also
migrate our existing site over to his hosted service.  Also, we would
be switching from "trust Thierry for backups, long term existence,
etc." to "trust random guy in Chile who has nothing to do with Sage
and also trust that William can ensure the $45/month gets paid
somehow."      So it seems he doesn't really provide the service
(namely -- help us upgrade to the latest version) that he used to
provide, and I can see why (it is probably a pain in the butt to do).

they offer consulting. It won't harm to ask whether they are willing to do an one-off job of upgrading.


William Stein

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Dec 15, 2021, 12:00:33 PM12/15/21
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Good idea -- I'll do that.
> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sage-devel/CAAWYfq3UdJgiSacn-nRjnW_QqPMYKvHOTEu-509gqnobKGwkgw%40mail.gmail.com.



--
William (http://wstein.org)
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