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+unsubscr...@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. -- 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+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sage-devel/20211214234339.GC5262%40metelu.net.
