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
>
>
>
>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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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
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
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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?)
>
> --
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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)

Matthias Koeppe

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Jun 22, 2024, 1:18:45 PM (10 days ago) Jun 22
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Reviving this old thread from 2021, as we are currently taking stock of the project infrastructure (discussion in https://groups.google.com/g/sagemath-admins, updating the wiki page https://github.com/sagemath/sage/wiki/Infrastructure).

- server uses Askbot 0.7.59 (a 2020 hotfix of a 2015 version); current: 0.12.2 (2023)
- https://ask.sagemath.org/questions/ looks at least 10 years out of date re web design
- the "0 years ago" bug still shows

Matthias Koeppe

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Jun 23, 2024, 6:31:50 PM (9 days ago) Jun 23
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Some more links regarding migration from AskBot:
- LibreOffice migrated to Discourse in 2021: https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/migration-from-askbot/66564

kcrisman

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Jun 25, 2024, 1:23:50 PM (7 days ago) Jun 25
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Some more links regarding migration from AskBot:
- LibreOffice migrated to Discourse in 2021: https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/migration-from-askbot/66564


Two questions:

* Did anyone (not necessarily William) ever contact the developer?  I agree that responsiveness/development of the project is evidently an issue, but you can't respond without being asked.
* Does it look like the questions and answers for LibreOffice migrate well?  There is a huge amount of answers which would be pretty bad to lose (they are often the first link when I search for some issue I'm having in Sage, and I am sure I'm not alone in that). 

Kwankyu Lee

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Jun 27, 2024, 4:44:06 AM (6 days ago) Jun 27
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Tangentially related: why don't we use GitHub Discussions, for whatever discussions? Does it cost?

Kwankyu

Dima Pasechnik

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Jun 27, 2024, 10:33:16 AM (6 days ago) Jun 27
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On Thu, Jun 27, 2024 at 9:44 AM Kwankyu Lee <ekwa...@gmail.com> wrote:
Tangentially related: why don't we use GitHub Discussions, for whatever discussions? Does it cost?

no, it does not, but it's the question of potential importing/exporting data. It appears to be not quite supported:

IMHO Discussions appear as an off-shot of Issues, so that Issues are not used for not pointedly technical issues.
(They also have Polls - something that is potentially useful)

Dima

 

Kwankyu

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Kwankyu Lee

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Jun 27, 2024, 5:32:01 PM (5 days ago) Jun 27
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On Thursday, June 27, 2024 at 11:33:16 PM UTC+9 Dima Pasechnik wrote:
On Thu, Jun 27, 2024 at 9:44 AM Kwankyu Lee wrote:
Tangentially related: why don't we use GitHub Discussions, for whatever discussions? Does it cost?

no, it does not, but it's the question of potential importing/exporting data. It appears to be not quite supported:

I see. Thanks. 

But exporting the entire data in the drastic situation that we leave from github seems a different matter from github providing data export feature as regular API. 
  
IMHO Discussions appear as an off-shot of Issues, so that Issues are not used for not pointedly technical issues.
(They also have Polls - something that is potentially useful)

I agree.  Discussions is for all other issues that do not fit github Issues, which is oriented for technical issues seeking solutions as PRs. 

We may run Discussions as a place to discuss wishlist items, questions, ideas, and planning, etc. or as developer blog. 

Matthias Koeppe

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Jun 29, 2024, 11:14:54 PM (3 days ago) Jun 29
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Another migration route that we could consider:
Importing the messages from AskBot into Google Groups (merging with the sage-support group).

I don't visit ask.sagemath.org much, so others who are regulars there may correct me, but it seems that the whole downvoting/upvoting / karma / accepting answers mechanism of this forum may have little value, as most questions have 0 or 1 answers. So if that's lost in the migration, perhaps not much is lost.

Importing stuff via mailbox files to Google Groups is explained for example in https://geek.co.il/2018/05/16/migrating-google-groups-archives-between-accounts

On Saturday, June 22, 2024 at 10:18:45 AM UTC-7 Matthias Koeppe wrote:

Dima Pasechnik

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Jun 30, 2024, 10:45:41 AM (3 days ago) Jun 30
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On Sun, Jun 30, 2024 at 4:14 AM Matthias Koeppe
<matthia...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Another migration route that we could consider:
> Importing the messages from AskBot into Google Groups (merging with the sage-support group).

Google Groups' interface is pretty bad, one cannot do maths, or
properly format things.
(and who knows for how much longer they keep it free, or support it at all...)

I'd rather seriously consider moving to Discourse (which does have an
importer from askbot)
> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sage-devel/156bc1f2-d4c5-4b9f-8ce7-cbac89f2d07bn%40googlegroups.com.

Emmanuel Charpentier

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Jul 1, 2024, 5:18:17 AM (2 days ago) Jul 1
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Le dimanche 30 juin 2024 à 16:45:41 UTC+2, Dima Pasechnik a écrit :
On Sun, Jun 30, 2024 at 4:14 AM Matthias Koeppe
<matthia...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Another migration route that we could consider:
> Importing the messages from AskBot into Google Groups (merging with the sage-support group).

Google Groups' interface is pretty bad, one cannot do maths, or
properly format things.

This is important for our subjects. :
  • For code, one can make do with the  "Markdown Here" plugin, but 
  • I am not aware of any convenient way to use LaTeX.

The only workaround I found was to use emacs' sage-shell's inline typesetting , export the result to PNG and paste that as a picture in Google groups' Web interface. Choreish enough to be dissuasive, and sometimes ugly as hell...

BTW  : if anybody is aware of a way to get typeset snippets in the damn Google Groups interface, I'd be delighted too hear frim him/her...
 

(and who knows for how much longer they keep it free, or support it at all...)

I'd rather seriously consider moving to Discourse (which does have an
importer from askbot)

and is yet another nosy cookie monster... I have to use it for mc-stan (a probabilistic (Bayesian) modeling tool) Q&A, and do not relish it...

My two (€)cents...

Sébastien Labbé

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Jul 1, 2024, 9:18:36 AM (2 days ago) Jul 1
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I don't visit ask.sagemath.org much, so others who are regulars there may correct me, but it seems that the whole downvoting/upvoting / karma / accepting answers mechanism of this forum may have little value, as most questions have 0 or 1 answers. So if that's lost in the migration, perhaps not much is lost.

 

ask.sagemath.org receives questions and answers on a regular basis and still today. Not later than last week, a user was happy for my answer : https://ask.sagemath.org/question/77821/stanley-reisner-ideal-from-polytope/. Also, I would say it is mainly a community of *users* of SageMath. Questions are asked by users. But, also, the answers are given mostly by users that are no so much developers. For instance Samuel Lelièvre, Karl Crisman, Thierry Monteil, rburing are among those [https://ask.sagemath.org/users/] who have answered the most questions and gathered more that 10000 points of Karma. I don't agree that this has little value: I dare anyone here to reach this value! But you will not see these top Karma users in the top committers of the git of sagemath. It is just another way of investing the community. By answering questions on a daily basis, Samuel, Karl and Thierry gathered through the years an enormous experience of what a normal user of SageMath needs are, and what improvements should be made to SageMath, etc. I have great respect for them and for the time they and many others have spent on ask trying to provide the best answers. I think moving ask to some website made for developers (e.g. Github Discussion?) is very bad idea, because it will kill this community of users which is still alive today.

Sébastien


Marc Culler

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Jul 1, 2024, 4:37:47 PM (2 days ago) Jul 1
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Thank you Sébastien for standing up for users, for distinguishing between users and developers, and for recognizing that those two groups have different needs.  May your Karma increase exponentially!

- Marc

Matthias Koeppe

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Jul 1, 2024, 4:41:19 PM (2 days ago) Jul 1
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On Sunday, June 30, 2024 at 7:45:41 AM UTC-7 Dima Pasechnik wrote:
On Sun, Jun 30, 2024 at 4:14 AM Matthias Koeppe
<matthia...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Another migration route that we could consider:
> Importing the messages from AskBot into Google Groups (merging with the sage-support group).

Google Groups' interface is pretty bad, one cannot do maths, or
properly format things.
(and who knows for how much longer they keep it free, or support it at all...)

I'd rather seriously consider moving to Discourse (which does have an
importer from askbot)

Yes, this would also be my top preference. 
Then we should also look into importing all messages of the sage-support list (and perhaps also sage-devel) into Discourse and then closing the Google Groups.

Matthias Koeppe

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Jul 1, 2024, 4:41:27 PM (2 days ago) Jul 1
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On Sunday, June 30, 2024 at 7:45:41 AM UTC-7 Dima Pasechnik wrote:
I'd rather seriously consider moving to Discourse (which does have an
importer from askbot)

I've created https://sagemath-test.discourse.group/ so that people can try out this system.

I've also sent out a few individual invites. People who would like to help configure it: I can elevate you to the admin role.

Matthias Koeppe

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Jul 1, 2024, 4:41:35 PM (2 days ago) Jul 1
to sage-devel
On Monday, July 1, 2024 at 6:18:36 AM UTC-7 Sébastien Labbé wrote:
I don't visit ask.sagemath.org much, so others who are regulars there may correct me, but it seems that the whole downvoting/upvoting / karma / accepting answers mechanism of this forum may have little value, as most questions have 0 or 1 answers. So if that's lost in the migration, perhaps not much is lost.

ask.sagemath.org receives questions and answers on a regular basis and still today. Not later than last week, a user was happy for my answer : https://ask.sagemath.org/question/77821/stanley-reisner-ideal-from-polytope/. Also, I would say it is mainly a community of *users* of SageMath. Questions are asked by users. But, also, the answers are given mostly by users that are no so much developers. [...] I think moving ask to some website made for developers (e.g. Github Discussion?) is very bad idea, because it will kill this community of users which is still alive today.

I share the same skepticism about using GitHub Discussions. 
But Discourse would be a direct replacement for AskBot; it is widely used with the same user-facing, not developer-centric, role.

Dima Pasechnik

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Jul 1, 2024, 5:34:20 PM (2 days ago) Jul 1
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I might try to admin there a bit.

Sébastien Labbé

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Jul 2, 2024, 3:47:48 AM (21 hours ago) Jul 2
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On Monday, July 1, 2024 at 10:41:35 PM UTC+2 Matthias Koeppe wrote:

I share the same skepticism about using GitHub Discussions. 
But Discourse would be a direct replacement for AskBot; it is widely used with the same user-facing, not developer-centric, role.


I checked Discourse Group yesterday [https://www.discourse.org/features]. It seems to be a nice tool that many persons may like. I see it as a kind of sagemath related social network. I believe that people may use it to share stuff that they create, etc, maybe also for asking questions. But, it does not seem to be a "question based" website as it is currently the case for ask.sagemath.org. I am worried that questions asked there will get buried in the noise. Also who will care to answer questions on a daily basis? I frankly believe that the Karma on ask.sagemath.org works. On ask, if I personnaly want more Karma, which I do, I need to be the first to give an answer and it needs to be a good answer, etc. I don't feel this will happen on discourse.

To summarize, I think Discourse looks great. I think it could be a nice way of developing a new community of SageMath users (in the spirit of http://planet.sagemath.org/?). But I don't think it may be a replacement for ask.sagemath.org or zulip.sagemath.org. Discourse, zulip and ask are three different things that are not meant to replace one another.

Sincerely,

Sébastien Labbé
 

Matthias Koeppe

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Jul 2, 2024, 10:35:57 AM (14 hours ago) Jul 2
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Karma and other gamification instruments are apparently available as a plugin. https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-gamification/225916

Dima Pasechnik

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Jul 2, 2024, 10:36:30 AM (14 hours ago) Jul 2
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On 2 July 2024 08:47:48 BST, "Sébastien Labbé" <sla...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>On Monday, July 1, 2024 at 10:41:35 PM UTC+2 Matthias Koeppe wrote:
>
>
>I share the same skepticism about using GitHub Discussions.
>But Discourse would be a direct replacement for AskBot; it is widely used
>with the same user-facing, not developer-centric, role.
>
>
>I checked Discourse Group yesterday [https://www.discourse.org/features].
>It seems to be a nice tool that many persons may like. I see it as a kind
>of sagemath related social network. I believe that people may use it to
>share stuff that they create, etc, maybe also for asking questions. But, it
>does not seem to be a "question based" website as it is currently the case
>for ask.sagemath.org.

you might look instead at something like
https://discourse.jupyter.org,
which obviously functions mostly as a question collection of forums.
(e.g. cf.
<https://discourse.jupyter.org/t/notebook-with-mathjax-without-internet-connection/23958/4>)

There is no numerical karma points on Jupyter Discourse - but it can be turned on:
<https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-gamification/225916>



I am worried that questions asked there will get
>buried in the noise. Also who will care to answer questions on a daily
>basis? I frankly believe that the Karma on ask.sagemath.org works. On ask,
>if I personnaly want more Karma, which I do, I need to be the first to give
>an answer and it needs to be a good answer, etc. I don't feel this will
>happen on discourse.

we can turn Karma on.

>
>To summarize, I think Discourse looks great. I think it could be a nice way
>of developing a new community of SageMath users (in the spirit of
>http://planet.sagemath.org/?). But I don't think it may be a replacement
>for ask.sagemath.org or zulip.sagemath.org. Discourse, zulip and ask are
>three different things that are not meant to replace one another.

Discourse is not meant to be as interactive as zulip, but it definitely can replace askbot - which is clearly a legacy, a digital debt which has to be restructured and paid off, otherwise one day it comes crushing down.
Discourse has many things askbot does not have, e.g. posting by email.
And it can be self hosted - if desired.

E.g. we can think of hosting Discourse where we currently host askbot.

Best,
Dima


>
>Sincerely,
>
>Sébastien Labbé
>
>

Dima Pasechnik

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Jul 2, 2024, 1:27:34 PM (11 hours ago) Jul 2
to sage-...@googlegroups.com
On Tue, Jul 2, 2024 at 3:35 PM Matthias Koeppe <matthia...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Karma and other gamification instruments are apparently available as a plugin. https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-gamification/225916

This one doesn't seem to be available in our test installation.
It could be it's only available for self-hosted installs.
> --
> 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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Matthias Koeppe

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Jul 2, 2024, 3:48:27 PM (9 hours ago) Jul 2
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On Tuesday, July 2, 2024 at 10:27:34 AM UTC-7 Dima Pasechnik wrote:
On Tue, Jul 2, 2024 at 3:35 PM Matthias Koeppe <matthia...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Karma and other gamification instruments are apparently available as a plugin. https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-gamification/225916

This one doesn't seem to be available in our test installation.
It could be it's only available for self-hosted installs.

The current test installation https://sagemath-test.discourse.group/ is my free trial of a "Standard" plan (https://www.discourse.org/pricing). 
Gamification would be additional feature of the "Business" plan (https://www.discourse.org/pricing).

However, my Discourse contacts indicated that as an open source project we may be eligible for free hosting (https://free.discourse.group/); I'm not sure but I think that may include the full feature set. I have applied for it and will report back.

Dima Pasechnik

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Jul 2, 2024, 9:17:18 PM (3 hours ago) Jul 2
to sage-...@googlegroups.com
On Tue, Jul 2, 2024 at 8:48 PM Matthias Koeppe <matthia...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Tuesday, July 2, 2024 at 10:27:34 AM UTC-7 Dima Pasechnik wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jul 2, 2024 at 3:35 PM Matthias Koeppe <matthia...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Karma and other gamification instruments are apparently available as a plugin. https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-gamification/225916
>
> This one doesn't seem to be available in our test installation.
> It could be it's only available for self-hosted installs.
>
>
> The current test installation https://sagemath-test.discourse.group/ is my free trial of a "Standard" plan (https://www.discourse.org/pricing).
> Gamification would be additional feature of the "Business" plan (https://www.discourse.org/pricing).

It's not listed among the plugins one will get from an upgrade, while
looking at the plugin settings on our test instance.
They either omit it, or don't offer it.


>
> However, my Discourse contacts indicated that as an open source project we may be eligible for free hosting (https://free.discourse.group/); I'm not sure but I think that may include the full feature set. I have applied for it and will report back.
>
> --
> 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/a7565083-020d-4d15-9645-25bb8665824fn%40googlegroups.com.
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