Not answering is worst than cursing ;D

[Mozhdeh Mohammadpour]

Hi everybody, 

I would like to open a dialogue around the response rate in this community. 

I would like to thank you all, especially developers and experts in this community that reply to the questions. Your help is much appreciated. 

However, I am taking a look at the response rate for the questions, and I can see there are a lot of questions (probably silly questions, I know ;) ), without any answer or comment. 

In my opinion, sometimes even a harsh comment or hint may help people to look around for the answers in other sources or even previous conversions here. But no comment at all is a dead-end, especially for the newbies. 

I would like to hear peoples' opinions on this matter. 

Kindest regards,

Mozhdeh

[Anton Lytvynenko]

Hi Mozhdeh,

12.05.2022 12:47, Mozhdeh Mohammadpour пише:

> But no comment at all is a dead-end, especially for the newbies.

Indeed, it's infamous.

The problem is that everybody tries to answer within her or his
expertise and ability, it is not a paid work (unfortunately). The scope
of CP2K methods and applications is extremely broad, and a single person
could not even try to be an expert in all of them. Answering any
question implies the person(s) in charge, who is obligued to deal with
the questions.

Regarding the newbies questions, I think that solid introductory courses
in at least some aspects of CP2K usage will be more beneficial. Again,
it's a question of time and efforts, and of the broad scope of CP2K.
Let's do more of them?

Yours,

Anton

[Eric Ledieu]

Hello both of you!

As a newbie, I definitely would rather get told off in the general direction of an answer than receive no answer. I think I understand a lot of the how now (as in how to do task X in CP2K by following a tutorial) but the things like why each parameter is selected is a bit trickier. I know these are not trivial topics that can be answered quickly, but when picking up the software as the first person in the lab to do so with limited local resources, alternatives are not plentiful. as it stands, the best option I have found is to look up a random ab initio paper and go to their method section, hoping to see what parameters they used for a few variable and why. While the CP2K community is not responsible for any of this, there has to be a better way.

With best wishes,

-Eric 

[Eric Ledieu]

PS: to be entirely clear, I very much appreciate all the experts of the community doing as much as they do already. I am just struck by how much I do not know and asking one off questions hoping for an answer (especially since the question has likely been asked before) seems like a waste of their time, and a centralized tutorial like the HowTo but for variable selection seems more efficient.

[ma455...@gmail.com]

I think CP2K community is already very active. The developers and some experts tried to help a lot. But CP2K really covers quite a lot of methods. I think there are very little people can provide answers to all kinds of questions, especially some methods that were developed long time ago. Indeed hoping to enhance the tutorials of CP2K a little bit (or developing a latest and user-friendly code that can generate *.inp files for different applications; e.g., GEO_OPT, CELL_OPT, MD, STM, Band structure, DOS, etc...). Maybe something like vaspkit or Multiwfn. Avogadro is so hard to use... 

[Matt Watkins]

Hi everyone, 

couple (ish) of quick comments:

- I know I try and answer questions - but sometimes just too busy with other things (and I only know a few bits and pieces)! 

- I think generally the forum is quite friendly and _if_ there is an easy / quick answer it is generally given quickly - but as suggested often the questions stretch over several issues aren't/  clear-cut and get left hanging...guess we need a clear way of giving some feedback for these cases saying that more specific question needed

- updating and improving the howtos / sticky or pinned posts / FAQs is needed

- we need to work out a way of collecting what most people want most of the time. I'm hoping to do some things in this direction in the near future 

- the more people that help the better it will be - and not just core developers - users often ask the best questions and can give the best answers of indicate where there is a lack of information.

Matt   

 

[Mozhdeh Mohammadpour]

Thank you all very much.

@Matt, I personally sincerely appreciate your and other developers' help and comments. 

Kindest regards,

Mozhdeh

[Victor Volkov]

Dear Mozhdeh

sometimes, it is impossible to answer because

CP2K cannot do everything.

It cannot do quality normal modes (always im. freques regardless how good you optimize).

it cannot do band structure for systems beyond a primitive cell (GAMMA, MacDonald, General, shifts etc are all "the same zip").

however,

nobody and nothing can bit CP2K for the outstanding thermodynamics, dynamics, electronics (sometimes)

and the terrific aspiration!

There is a great archive of examples you can search through for what you need!

Just take your time, search and try.

I started research in the time when soviet officers programmed nuclear ballistic in binary.:

I saw that piano hand-work myself... in 80th

Then, I remember assembler, cobol, algol in 90th ... and then the first GAUSSIAN magic !!!

For decades nobody would give a hint how to program.

Because,

it used to be

"if you learn, than others would fail to survive physically".

After all you may ask the team if you can become a developer of CP2K.

Good weekend, and best wishes

Victor