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Askbot
The Askbot instance is at http://askbot.esgf.org.
Askbot is a community-driven question and answer web application. Askbot enables users to both ask and answer questions, provides a meritocratic rating system (karma) in which quality answers are be identified and knowledgable users recognised for their expertise. Every user has a karma level which increases as they successfully answer questions that users find helpful. Similarly, each question and answer can be graded for relevance by users of the site.
Questions can be tagged by users allowing a categorisation scheme to develop organically and then can be curated by qualified users to maintain consistency. Askbot has a comprehensive notification system which enables users to follow certain questions and tags.
The ESGF Askbot was initially launched in July 2013, initially by PCMDI, and was redeployed at STFC in February 2012 where it is maintained under the IS-ENES2 project, as a replacement for the email-based CMIP5 Help Desk system. The site http://askbot.esgf.org is now managed by STFC on behalf of IS-ENES and ESGF on the JASMIN infrastructure. The ESGF Support Working Team (SWT) acts as expert agents on the site, answering questions and curating the tagging and incentive system.
Although users categorise their own query using tags, ESGF agents curate these tags to follow the sites tagging policy and maintain consistency. Through this mechanism The ESGF Support Working Team are developing a flexible tag schema following the Data Reference Syntax DRS. SWT agents from IS-ENES and the wider ESGF community monitor the system to answer the questions that are posted. Askbot integrates well with the ESGF authentication system allowing users to login with their ESGF OpenIDs. This has also enabled the site to avoid excessive spam, which is often a serious problem with open Q&A sites.
The ESGF Askbot replaces the CMIP5 Help desk previously provided by the IS-ENES project. Users interacted with the CMIP5 Help Desk through an email address and then received tracked responses via email. The workflow of answering queries was managed using the footprints web application, visible only to those answering queries, which provided a means of allocating from multiple institutions to answer the query and clear history and metrics on question categories. The footprints system was run by STFC and first-level triage was done by a team of data scientists at STFC who allocated queries to experts within IS-ENES and the wider ESGF community.
The strenghs of footprints are that users receive help via email: a channel which is convenient and private; and that there is a clear allocation of responsibility to individuals to resolve the query. Dispite these positive features, the experience in IS-ENES1 was that a private query tracking system failed to scale to the level required for CMIP5.
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Information on the queries remained private and therefore other users could not learn from previous answers. Many common questions were asked and answered repeatedly.
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The expertise needed to answer any one query were often distributed accross several different people and insitutions. E.g. a problem which appeared from the users perspective to be about data download at one institution may be related to authentication at an entirely different institution. This is a feature of the ESGF federated architecture which made identifying people responsible for queries particularly difficult.
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The volume of queries didn't match the level of resources available from those with sufficient knowledge of the system.
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The ESGF Support Working Team should login with their ESGF OpenID and create a profile detailing their role (e.g. administrator of a particular node)
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Use your real name and add details to your profile.
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Use Gravitars to add a photo of yourself
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A user asks a question.
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ESGF SWT members regularly check the "unanswered" question page and notice new questions (also email notification should tell us).
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Answer a question or up-vote answers that look correct.
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Retag questions according to the Tagging Conventsions (see below)
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There are 3 ways of updating the question: Add a question comment, add a answer comment or add a new answer. Use comments to clarrify or ask for clarification. Use answers to suggest different solutions.
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Hopefully the user will "tick" the answer that solves their problem. The issue is now regarded as closed.
Users asking questions can choose which tags they use to classify the question. Askbot's auto-complete feature helps keeping the number of tags reasonable by suggesting similar tags as you type. However, there is still a tendancy for tags to become inconsistent. The best solution to this is to regularly retag questions as they are reviewed by support staff.
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All tags are case-insensitive so don't worry about matching the case of accronyms.
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Tags which map naturally to ESGF serach facets should be retaged as .. E.g. "project.cordex" or "model.hadgem2-es"
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Avoid terms that would not be meaningful to end users. E.g. "web-fe" is meaningless to most users
| Tag | Purpose and guidance |
|---|---|
| registration | Creating user accounts and registering for groups |
| search | Search through the web interface |
| search-api | Search through the API |
| installation | Installing ESGF nodes. Should be mainly covered on [email protected] |
| download | All download methods |
| wget | Download with wget |
| login | All login methods |
| openid | Login with OpenID and other uses of OpenIDs |