Transcript HyperNews for LHCb

HyperNews for LHCb
Tim Adye
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
LHCb Core Software Meeting
12th July 2006
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Outline
• What is HyperNews?
• Why switch?
• Advantages and disadvantages WRT Simba2
• Why not some other technology?
• Some use cases
• How do we get started?
• Start with lhcb-core-soft?
• References
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What is HyperNews?
• For us, it could be a replacement for most Simba2
mailing lists
• Also has features of
• web fora / bulletin board systems (like RootTalk)
• news/announcement system (like Usenet)
• Not intended to replace TWiki or web pages
• Open-source project
• Originally hypernews.org (at least since 1994)
• Adopted and improved by BaBar (since 1997)
• Now in use by H1, STAR, Geant4,...
• more recently CMS and ATLAS
• Continuing development within the HEP community
• HyperNews server managed by LCG/SPI
• Now includes an LHCb instance
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Why Change from Simba2?
• Web archive is central to HyperNews
• single, integrated, system instead of disjoint mailing lists
• displays threads
• Threads, sub-threads, individual postings have a static URL
for easy reference
• easy to browse, very fast to search
• I searched for “database” in 250,000 BaBar posts. It found
18,000 in under a second
• different views, eg.
• show recent posts in all or some fora
• show whole thread/forum text on one page (eg. to print)
• Can post via the web or e-mail
• can post Wiki-like “smart text”, plain text, HTML
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Give it a try in the
“HyperNews Test Forum”
HyperNews Features (2)
• Can subscribe to receive posts as e-mails
• Simple and powerful control of what you receive
• Whole forum or individual threads
• Automatically subscribed to replies to your posts
• Can switch off all e-mails without losing subscriptions
• eg. when going on holiday – it’s all still there when you get back!
• Reply to post with e-mail, or follow link to web display
• ... or keep up-to-date / catch up via the web
• “recent posts” page
• ... or some people use a combination of the two
• New discussion fora can be requested by web form
• Sends me an e-mail and I then create it manually
• still a rather cumbersome process
• includes creating Simba2 back-end, so may take a day or so
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Limitations of HyperNews
• All fora are open to all collaboration members
• private lists should remain in Simba2
• All e-mails to/from HyperNews are converted to
plain text
• attachments are stripped off – give a URL instead
• good practice anyway – don’t fill up peoples’ inboxes
• URLs are automatically turned into links in web view
• Used to be a problem with threading posts from
Microsoft Exchange
• MS hotfix in January (applied at CERN, RAL,...)
• After only 29 years, Microsoft support SMTP RFC!
• HyperNews development continues
• Eg. limited attachment support
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Why not use <insert-cool-technology> instead?
• I haven’t done a survey but, for collaboration, I
find HyperNews the most convenient
• cf. Usenet, BBS (like RootTalk), discussion ‘blogs
• and of course mailing lists and private mails
• It is widely used in HEP, so familiar to some
• Ask any former BaBarian, and they’ll tell you how much
they miss HyperNews
• LCG run the server for us
• We know the developers
• at SLAC and CERN (Pete Elmer, CMS)
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Discussion fora (1)
• Everyone should subscribe to “HyperNews System
Announcements”
• New fora announced here, allowing people to subscribe
• Eventually could migrate nearly everything that currently
has a mailing list
• Eg. one forum for each detector and software subsystem
• In some cases, it is useful to have separate “development
discussions” and “user questions” fora
• Experts subscribe to, or watch, both
• Users post to the latter, receive e-mail responses without
having to subscribe
• Can also browse/search this forum to see if it has already been
answered
• Soon users start to help other 
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Discussion fora (2)
• “Task forces” and system/paper reviews have their own fora
• Separates out short-term discussion, while maintaining a record
in the archive
• Can also be used as a shared record of important e-mails
• Eg. communications with journals, approvals, minutes of external
meetings, etc.
• Just forward them to the appropriate e-mail gateway address
• I already created some generic fora
• Linux, programming, and (La)TeX questions
• HyperNews announcements, feedback, and test
• Use “HyperNews Test Forum” to play with the system
• CERN Computing Announcements
• Automatic feed from [email protected]
• Chat and discussion that doesn’t fit elsewhere
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Other Use Cases
• If a question or discussion has come up before, just
post a link to it
• No need to copy text
• The questioner can see the full discussion / thread
• Sometimes a discussion strays to another forum’s topic
• Post replies in new forum with link to old + quick link oldnew
• Short-term documentation, recipes, and kicks can be
posted as a HyperNews announcement with a link from
the documentation
• When it becomes obsolete, remove the link
• a record remains of what people recommended
• Sort-term only: not a substitute for proper documentation!
• Can easily migrate to Wiki
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How do we get started?
• If people approve, can start using it for new fora
right away
• Ulrik Egede already asked for one
• Try migrating an existing list, see how it goes
• Start with lhcb-core-soft?
• Post an announcement to list
• close the old list to new posts?
• Migrate the rest adiabatically, or all at once?
• Probably easiest to let each group manage their own
transition
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Would be useful to decide on some forum
categories early on
• Fora requested by each group, but categories
defined in advance
• can be changed of course, but not from the web form
• Currently have:
•
•
•
•
Computing
Computing Operations
General Discussions
HyperNews
• Perhaps add:
•
•
•
•
•
• or one category per
subsystem?
• Could add now or later:
• National Discussions
• Collaboration Matters
• Journal Paper Reviews
• Detector Operations
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Online Computing
Offline Computing
Physics Analysis
Trigger
Detector Subsystems
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Final Thoughts
• Effective communication is crucial in a large(ish)
geographically-distributed collaboration like LHCb
• Meetings, documentation, TWiki, and e-mail all useful
forms of communication
• But e-mail has problems when collaborating with
many people
• private e-mail restricted to those in the loop
• mailing lists OK for announcements, not so good for
discussion
• mailing lists most useful if also easily used after the fact
• HyperNews addresses these issues
• makes collaboration e-mail more Wiki-like
• encourages open communication
• opens up archive – documentation for free
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References
• HyperNews development
• D.A.Smith, P.Elmer, T.Hung,
HyperNews - managing discussions in HEP, CHEP06
• http://hypernews.slac.stanford.edu/
• LHCb instance
• https://hypernews.cern.ch/HyperNews/LHCb/top.pl
which will be linked from (if LHCb HyperNews is approved)
• https://hypernews.cern.ch/
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