HyperNews for LHCb

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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
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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 its 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 dont 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 ltinsert-cool-technologygt instead?

• I havent 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 theyll 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 info-experiments_at_cern.ch
• Chat and discussion that doesnt 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 forums
  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
• Could add now or later
• Journal Paper Reviews
• Detector Operations

• Perhaps add
• Online Computing
• Offline Computing
• Physics Analysis
• Trigger
• Detector Subsystems
• or one category per subsystem?
• National Discussions
• Collaboration Matters

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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/