Routing User Requests in Qiskit Slack to IBMers

[jwoehr]

When users ask questions in Qiskit Slack that require IBM response or intervention, how do Advocates and other helpful folks route these requests? I commented as follows in Qiskit Slack qiskit-advocates channel:

WIBNI we had a spreadsheet of who to ask about what components of IBM Quantum so when a user asks a question that requires an IBMer to answer we knew whom to ping?

These questions include things like account blockage questions, components of IBM Q Experience that are down, sophisticated programming questions that probably should receive some informal q-and-a before popping up in the always-overloaded Issue tracker, etc.

Handling these user requests is a non-linear problem with several interacting dynamics:

• It's good for users to know that their requests are heard and that an Advocate or Community Organizer is routing their request to the appropriate developer of administrator.
• IBM developers and administrators must not become overloaded by trivial requests.
• In theory, the community organizers should be able to route requests, but they cannot be everywhere, and they do not provide completely overlapping coverage. Also, IBM USA-oriented holiday leaves can seem long, especially to our large contingent of advanced users in countries that observe very different holiday schedules. My own inclination has always been to @-ping some IBMer who of course won't answer until after the holidays, but the user sees that their question is getting routed and is satisfied for the moment.

Is there a more systematic way to route user requests to IBM attention than that ad hoc way we do it now?

[javabster]

This is a great discussion topic @jwoehr! As you can tell from the slow response here the holiday scheduling part is definitely valid 😅

Another dynamic is that IBM Quantum is a fast moving team and people do move around different specialisms from time to time, so finding the right person to talk to that is still the right person to talk to can be challenging even internally.

I would be interested in hearing more from the community about what they would find the most useful mechanism for this kind of thing. Just getting a concrete list together fo what type of issues they most need help with would be a good first step. We do have this page in the wiki of this repo about where people can go for support, but perhaps there is more detail that could be added, or a different place to put this info where people can more easily find it

[jwoehr]

All the info about "where to get help" really comes down to "Read the documentation, and if you're confused, ask on Qiskit Slack."
Which people do: they ask on Slack. Some people get help. Some people get ignored.
If I think a user's question is worth an answer from an IBMer, who's the "duty officer"?
Mostly at this point if I don't know who does what, I try to flag Junye.
IBMers seem to be participating less and less.
Which I understand because Qiskit Slack is overwhelming at this point, almost 25000 accounts in the #general channel.
"It costs a lot to win," sang the Grateful Dead!

[jwoehr]

@javabster here's a link to one of those questions that it's very difficult for even a fairly well-informed user to answer for themselves, and for which a Google search will return any number of misleading out-of-date Qiskit documentation.

[jwoehr]

In particular, @javabster , the #applications channel doesn't seem to be getting adequately serviced. It's a class of questions I myself am not very good at answering, even partially.

[jwoehr]

The other constant stream of questions is the one about "What happened to x on IBM Q Experience" which of course only IBMers can answer. Sometimes the answering lags a bit.

[jwoehr]

Glad we had a chance to talk about this today in Qiskit Office Hours!