Need to find a 'forum' to work in

[djbard]

We need some kind of working space that we can use to share updates on work-in-progress and discuss results. It needs to be able to host uploaded images etc, and allow comments and discussion. Organisation by tasks on a to-do list would be ideal. Github isn't really the appropriate place place for this kind of detailed discussion. Options include: Trello, google+ circle, wiki page (hosted at slac?). Preferences? Other ideas?

[drphilmarshall]

I like having our planning/to do list via github issues, which are easy to comment on and satisfying to organise and tick off - ie for this activity I vote for the status quo :-) For showing plots and results, I guess we need a system with very low barrier to entry: paste in image, add text, ask for feedback. Google+ could be nice, and is low barrier. We could also use github issues for this too though.

In terms of keeping a well-organised record of our progress, is it possible to go straight to latex? This could be most efficient - but can also lead to sprawling tex files that need a lot of refactoring. If anyone could ever be bothered with wikis then github offers those too, but like I say. I guess it's the research notebook emulation part I am missing - is this what you feel you get from trello, Josh?

I am not really concerned about privacy and am typically fine with doing everything in the open via github. The only real reason IMO to not work in the open in this case is to maintain the blindness of the GREAT3 challenge: if we want a private github to keep the GREAT3 code in (the specific great3 tractor script, plus any post-processing code) we can use the DESC repo.

On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 10:37 AM, djbard notifications@github.com wrote:

We need some kind of working space that we can use to share updates on work-in-progress and discuss results. It needs to be able to host uploaded images etc, and allow comments and discussion. Organisation by tasks on a to-do list would be ideal. Github isn't really the appropriate place place for this kind of detailed discussion. Options include: Trello, google+ circle, wiki page (hosted at slac?). Preferences? Other ideas?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/dstndstn/tractor/issues/17 .

[jmeyers314]

I think github issues is fine for things like todo lists, feature requests, and bug reports; i.e. things that will eventually get “closed". It doesn’t quite feel like the right place for posting results or keeping track of progress, however. Maybe this is where trello could come in? I think it satisfies your “low barrier to entry”, open, etc. requirements, and might be easier to keep organized than straight-to-latex.

-Josh

On Jan 10, 2014, at 10:58 AM, Phil Marshall notifications@github.com wrote:

I like having our planning/to do list via github issues, which are easy to comment on and satisfying to organise and tick off - ie for this activity I vote for the status quo :-) For showing plots and results, I guess we need a system with very low barrier to entry: paste in image, add text, ask for feedback. Google+ could be nice, and is low barrier. We could also use github issues for this too though.

In terms of keeping a well-organised record of our progress, is it possible to go straight to latex? This could be most efficient - but can also lead to sprawling tex files that need a lot of refactoring. If anyone could ever be bothered with wikis then github offers those too, but like I say. I guess it's the research notebook emulation part I am missing - is this what you feel you get from trello, Josh?

I am not really concerned about privacy and am typically fine with doing everything in the open via github. The only real reason IMO to not work in the open in this case is to maintain the blindness of the GREAT3 challenge: if we want a private github to keep the GREAT3 code in (the specific great3 tractor script, plus any post-processing code) we can use the DESC repo.

On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 10:37 AM, djbard notifications@github.com wrote:

We need some kind of working space that we can use to share updates on work-in-progress and discuss results. It needs to be able to host uploaded images etc, and allow comments and discussion. Organisation by tasks on a to-do list would be ideal. Github isn't really the appropriate place place for this kind of detailed discussion. Options include: Trello, google+ circle, wiki page (hosted at slac?). Preferences? Other ideas?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/dstndstn/tractor/issues/17 .

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[djbard]

My concern is really that the detailed discussion of the great3 work is not something github is designed to host - this is a code repository that other tractor users are signed up to, and I'm quite sure they don't care about the details of our testing for great3. Have you used github for organising non-code-related work before? I agree that issues directly pertaining to tractor should be kept here, but I'm willing to try trello for our work-in-progress research notebook. I hadn't considered the competition factor! I don't particularly care about that, but we should probably take the 'blind' part seriously.

[drphilmarshall]

Happy to give it a try. Has anyone else experience with trello? @dstndstn? Interested to see how it compares with posting in markdown to a wiki page, which always feels like too much effort to me, somehow. maybe I'm not doing it right.

On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 11:16 AM, Josh Meyers notifications@github.comwrote:

I think github issues is fine for things like todo lists, feature requests, and bug reports; i.e. things that will eventually get “closed". It doesn’t quite feel like the right place for posting results or keeping track of progress, however. Maybe this is where trello could come in? I think it satisfies your “low barrier to entry”, open, etc. requirements, and might be easier to keep organized than straight-to-latex.

-Josh

On Jan 10, 2014, at 10:58 AM, Phil Marshall notifications@github.com wrote:

I like having our planning/to do list via github issues, which are easy to comment on and satisfying to organise and tick off - ie for this activity I vote for the status quo :-) For showing plots and results, I guess we need a system with very low barrier to entry: paste in image, add text, ask for feedback. Google+ could be nice, and is low barrier. We could also use github issues for this too though.

In terms of keeping a well-organised record of our progress, is it possible to go straight to latex? This could be most efficient - but can also lead to sprawling tex files that need a lot of refactoring. If anyone could ever be bothered with wikis then github offers those too, but like I say. I guess it's the research notebook emulation part I am missing - is this what you feel you get from trello, Josh?

I am not really concerned about privacy and am typically fine with doing everything in the open via github. The only real reason IMO to not work in the open in this case is to maintain the blindness of the GREAT3 challenge: if we want a private github to keep the GREAT3 code in (the specific great3 tractor script, plus any post-processing code) we can use the DESC repo.

On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 10:37 AM, djbard notifications@github.com wrote:

We need some kind of working space that we can use to share updates on work-in-progress and discuss results. It needs to be able to host uploaded images etc, and allow comments and discussion. Organisation by tasks on a to-do list would be ideal. Github isn't really the appropriate place place for this kind of detailed discussion. Options include: Trello, google+ circle, wiki page (hosted at slac?). Preferences? Other ideas?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub< https://github.com/dstndstn/tractor/issues/17> .

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/dstndstn/tractor/issues/17#issuecomment-32056267 .

[dstndstn]

I would prefer to do our Great3 work out in the open. I think it's safe to assume nobody is going to "steal" our work -- part of the point of winning the Great3 challenge is the chance to write up your results, so I can't really see how stealing someone else's method benefits the thief, aside from maybe winning $500 worth of consumer electronics.

I can set up a mailing list, if you prefer that for posting work. I have used trello before, but mostly as a spectator in a project, so I don't have any strong feeling about it.

cheers, --dstn

On Fri, 10 Jan 2014, djbard wrote:

My concern is really that the detailed discussion of the great3 work is not something github is designed to host - this is a code repository that other tractor users are signed up to, and I'm quite sure they don't care about the details of our testing for great3. Have you used github for organising non-code-related work before? I agree that issues directly pertaining to tractor should be kept here, but I'm willing to try trello for our work-in-progress research notebook. I hadn't considered the competition factor! I don't particularly care about that, but we should probably take the 'blind' part seriously.

— Reply to this email directly or view it onGitHub.[1065981__eyJzY29wZSI6Ik5ld3NpZXM6QmVhY29uIiwiZXhwaXJlcyI6MTcwNDkxNDUxNSwiZGF0YSI6eyJpZCI6MjMzMTQzNTh9fQ==--52eef45e920f00cf227efb183d60 bb8af9bcc7c7.gif]

[drphilmarshall]

I guess its the blind part I was thinking about - the weak lensing community should be trying to avoid groupthink wherever possible. But its probably an academic question - if we don't tweet our commits I expect it will all be fine ;-)

I've only used github for code and/or latex (=code) projects - but its optimised for agile development, and its interesting to think about developing a science investigation in the same way. I have never tried using issues for individual investigation steps but its not crazy, I think. The closing of the issue would just be filing that report page away, its all still there in the system. Maybe its the way the issues are presented in th ebrowser that makes it feel like they are the wrong way to do things? Trello does seem to have a nice layout, from what little Ive seen of it.

Well, how about we give trello a try, and keep using the tractor issues for both code problems and discussion like this - they function as an archived email list anyway. (One where you have to remember not to swear, though. ;-) I believe I have a trello account already, with username @drphilmarshall. Want to kick us off, Debbie, and we'll see how we go?

On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 11:27 AM, Dustin Lang notifications@github.comwrote:

I would prefer to do our Great3 work out in the open. I think it's safe to assume nobody is going to "steal" our work -- part of the point of winning the Great3 challenge is the chance to write up your results, so I can't really see how stealing someone else's method benefits the thief, aside from maybe winning $500 worth of consumer electronics.

I can set up a mailing list, if you prefer that for posting work. I have used trello before, but mostly as a spectator in a project, so I don't have any strong feeling about it.

cheers, --dstn

On Fri, 10 Jan 2014, djbard wrote:

My concern is really that the detailed discussion of the great3 work is not something github is designed to host - this is a code repository that other tractor users are signed up to, and I'm quite sure they don't care about the details of our testing for great3. Have you used github for organising non-code-related work before? I agree that issues directly pertaining to tractor should be kept here, but I'm willing to try trello for our work-in-progress research notebook. I hadn't considered the competition factor! I don't particularly care about that, but we should probably take the 'blind' part seriously.

— Reply to this email directly or view it onGitHub.[1065981__eyJzY29wZSI6Ik5ld3NpZXM6QmVhY29uIiwiZXhwaXJlcyI6MTcwNDkxNDUxNSwiZGF0YSI6eyJpZCI6MjMzMTQzNTh9fQ==--52eef45e920f00cf227efb183d60 bb8af9bcc7c7.gif]

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/dstndstn/tractor/issues/17#issuecomment-32057190 .

[davidwhogg]

whoops didn't mean to close this

[dstndstn]

Trello seems to be working, for now. Closing this, since there is no remaining action item.