Forum Features

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As a part of the I2U2 proposal LIGO stated (task 4.3) that "We will also use our experience from Einstein@Home, a distributed computing resource for LIGO data analysis, which includes a community structure of participant forums". We felt that we could make good use of existing software from Einstein@Home, with appropriate modifications, to create a venue for interaction and collaboration between teachers, students, and scientists, which would facilitate inquiry-based learning.

A prototype site has been set up, at http://tekoa.ligo-wa.caltech.edu (it's actually hosted on a test server in New York, but proxied transparently via our machine at the LIGO Hanford Observatory while we test it).

What we do with these tools is up to us. We could easily move them to the Argonne servers as they are, or with minor modifications. Or we could take them as a proof of concept prototype and then re-write the whole thing from scratch in JSP.

Contents

General Site Features

Before we look at the individual components on the site (the forums, the glossary, the front page/RSS news) I would like to mention some of the features in place on the entire prototype site. Many of these have been inherited from the BOINC forum software we started with, but in some cases the feature or function has been tweaked to be more appropriate to our educational use (or it could be tweaked as needed):

  • Individual logins (one per person - the existing QuarkNet site has students working in groups)
    • Logins based on a unique personal identifier (an e-mail address, though it does not have to be valid)
  • Ability to "stay logged in on this computer" across browser sessions (via cookie)
  • Individual user profile, with space for a picture, a general description of the person, and a particular description of what they are working on or their role in I2U2.
  • Affiliation: each user can indicate an institutional affiliation (what school are you with?). At present this is limited to one institution per person, but could be expanded (see below). (We just use BOINC's "team" mechanism for this, so you may still see a reference to a "team" somewhere, though I've tried to change this to "institution")
  • Special user classification (or 'roles'): users can be classified as a student, teacher, administrator, developer, etc (up to 12 roles). Could be expanded to a more general Role-based access control system system. (See WikiMedia's wiki software for a good example: m:User rights.) This feature could be expanded to a full roles-based permission system (see below).
  • Navigation:
    • Common header for every page, which shows who is logged in (upper right), and with quick link "home" (upper left) via the project logo. This is a common interface feature in many Internet sites, including Facebook, Google, Wikipedia, etc..
    • Quick links under header to major sections of the site. And the same at the bottom of each page. These could be expanded to pull-down menus if necessary, but the idea is that experienced users who know where they want to go can get to any major section of the site quicly from any page. And they can do so from the bottom of any page, at which point they have likelly finished what they were doing on that page.

Front Page

  • Simple layout designed to be easily used by both new visitors and seasoned veterans, who may be students, teachers, administrators, developers, or just interested outsiders.
  • Purpose: near the top of the page we have a simple statement of purpose for the site which is visible to new users and to search engines. It's just a summary, with links to details in other places. It's likely only of interest to new visitors, so keep it short.

Navigation

  • Quick e-Lab selection to get users quickly to where they want to go. Also common nav links along the top in a nav bar at the top *and bottom* of each page.
  • Major links column - currently only a rough draft, can and should be edited. Just place here the MAJOR links of most importance to someone who comes in to this main portal page.

Status Box

  • Status box can quickly show status of servers and site. Admin or operator can easily put a brief paragraph here, but automated status info also shows up (eg. when database server is down). User status info can also be displayed (eg. when user needs to validate e-mail address.)


Front Page news

  • For important topics or announcements, not just current status.
  • Also served as RSS news.
  • History of all articles. Separate old new page




Forums

  • Uses common interface and conventions found on most forum or bulletin board systems found on the Internet. Based on the forums used by BOINC projects like SETI@Home and Einstein@Home, with some modifications for use as a logbook for I2U2.
  • Arranged by Category -> Forum ("room") -> Thread -> Post. (Would be possible to add other layers or organizing principle). I can easily imagine the site populated with hundreds of rooms, organized not just by category but perhaps also by state, school, maybe even teacher. But the fundamental objects are "forum/room" which contains "threads".


  • BBcode used to facilitate formatting but to prevent use of HTML, which has potential for abuse. BBcode is a common markup system used in other on-line forums, so we've not created anything new here, though we can alter the markup ourselves if needed.
  • double square bracket notation [[keyword]] provides a direct link to the glossary.
  • Avatar and some personalizing information included next to every post, to make the interaction between users more personal, which one hopes will facilitate better collaboration.
  • Abililty to restrict read access and/or write access per category or room. (much room for expansion)
  • Administrative feature allows an admin (or maybe a teacher) to give a user a "timeout" for 1-hr to 48 hrs, to limit abusive behaviour.


Logbook Modifications

  • Logbook modifications -

Modifications made to perserve discussion facility but to also make it more like a logbook. See also the CI wiki on logbooks [link]

  • Threads sorted in chronological order. Quick jump to last unread post, or last post in thread.
    • Ability to attach a file (image or otherwise). Images show a thumbnail and give a link to a larger image (if there is one). File attachments just let you download the file.
    • Keyword classification of postings.
    • Preview before posting


  • Each thread is shown in chronological order, as is the custom for logbooks. An optional feature lets the user jump to the first unread posting

Glossary (wiki)

It became clear early in the development of the LIGO e-Lab and Analysis Tool that there was a need for a place to record all sorts of technical information, starting with the definitions of terms and acronyms, but also technical information about the LIGO hardware and software. We set up a wiki for this, which is currently called the "glossary", though that name is probably not the best description of the role this part of the site could play. The software used for this is called "MediaWiki", and it is the same software which is used to run the Wikipedia and its sister sites. I originally used this just to try it out, because it seemed easy in a technical sense to set it up. But I like this particular brand of wiki for a number of reasons that are quite independent of the underlying technical nicities.

The most important feature of the "glossary" is that it is a collaborative effort. There is no way with the limited manpower we have available that we can create and populate a database or reference site which can contain all the information necessary to really understand the LIGO hardware, software, and e-Lab. More importantly, the needs for collecting such information will grow as the project grows, and therefore it is a requirement that adding and editing information be as easy as possible, with appropriate restrictions to prevent abuse and to preserve and improve quality. We also feel that allowing students and newer teachers to participate is an important part of the learning process, since I2U2 is founded on the idea that one can best learn about science by participating in scientific activities, rather than just watching from the sidelines.


  • Same software as the Wikipedia (and all that entails)
    • Positive transfer of knowledge (either way): if you already know how to edit Wikipedia then you know how to edit our glossary. If you learn how to edit our glossary (it's not complicated) then you also know how to edit Wikipedia, or other MediaWiki sites.
    • Familiar look and controls
    • Lots of pre-existing supporting documentation and expertise
    • Many examples available
  • Individual accounts, with complete tracking of individual contributions
  • Anonymous editing can be completely disabled (Wikipedia allows it by policy, not because the software requires it, and they change the policy for pages which are abused)
  • Single sign-on (based on prior authentication to the BOINC part of the site)
  • Easist wiki markup: I now work with three different wiki systems (MediaWiki, Twiki, and Trac -- there are many more), and of those I have found MediaWiki to be the easiest for "casual" users to learn and use. (The Twiki wiki the developers are using at the CI in Chicago is a bit more arcane, and the Trac wiki used by the BOINC developers is even more awkward to use.)
  • Editing summary: every time someone edits a page they are requested to enter a simple summary of what they have added or changed. This is included in the page history, so that it's easy to see the evolution of each article. Changes can be marked as "minor". You can preview the results as you edit, or view the differences between the edited version and the original.
  • Talk pages: every article in the wiki has an associated "talk" page (labeled here by the "annotations" tab at the top of the page) which can be used for a meta-discussion about that should properly go in the article, or what has or should be removed or revised.
  • RSS feed: a list of the recent changes to the wiki is made available via an RSS feed. If you subscribe to this feed you can easily see what has changed recently without having to visit the "recent changes" wiki page. (See the discussion about RSS syndication for the front page news above, and in the developers wiki at http://www.ci.uchicago.edu/wiki/bin/view/I2U2/RSSNews)
  • Citations: a simple "extension" (see below) makes citing on-line sources very easy. Simply enclose the citation between <ref> and </noref> tags and this is turned into superscript reference number. Put <references/> at the end of the article and a list of all references is produced there.
  • Categories: - articles can be easily classified by categories (just put [[Category:whatever topic]] at the end of an article) to tag the article. There is a search facility which makes it easy to search within categories. An article can be in multiple categories. We could use this, for example, to categorize all pages which are relevent to LIGO or CMS, or all pages which are considered a part of "The Basics" or associated with a particular Milestone. For a demonstration just follow the "Categories" link in the navigation box at the left side of every wiki page to see the current categories.
  • Namespaces: The MediaWiki software supports the very useful idea of separate "namespaces". Article are in the "Main" namespace, while the "talk" pages are in the "Talk:" namespace. Images are in the "Images:" namespace, and help pages are in the "Help:" namespace. To jump to an article in one of the other namespaces just put the namespace in as a prefix, with a colon as separator. A "Special:" namespace is reserved for special function pages (like those which let you control viewing options, upload images, or export pages).
  • Custom namespaces: it is possible to create custom namespaces. We could have a namespace just for student posters (called "Posters:") or just for teaching materials. Some restrictions on who can read or write to these namespaces may be possible (I need to investigate this further to be sure of the details).
  • Templates: a wiki "template" is a "macro instruction", a shorthand notation which causes the contents of some other article to be inserted (from the "Templates:" namespace) into the present article. Parameter substitution is possible, so these are almost like functions or pre-processor macros.
A good example of the use of a template is on a "disambiguation" page, which tells you that there could be several articles which match a given search term. One only has to include the text {{Disambig}} at the beginning of such a page to have it display a standardized text box explaining the role of the page. For a demonstration, search for "LSC" in the glossary on the prototype site. You will find that "LSC" can refer to both the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Length Sensing and Control system, and there will be links to articles on both topics (though as of this writing both articles are not yet fleshed in).
  • Image upload: uploading and managing images is easy. Images go into a separate namespace and can then be easily referenced from any other page in the wiki. Provenence and permissions can be tracked via "notes" associated with the image.
  • Abuse: Most abuse scenarios have already been anticipated, many have already been tested
  • Patrol feature: someone with "patrol" role can cross check contributions of others
  • Watch this page' feature lets you monitor changes to selected page.
  • Extensions: an extension mechanism makes it easy to add new features without having to fork code. Third party extensions add features which are not a part of the core software. If an existing extension does not do what you need we can either modify one as needed, or easily create a new extension for the new feature.
  • Permissions: fine grain permissions controls make it very easy to manage access control policy. We can give separate permissions to students, teachers and administrators, based on a roles-based permissions system.
  • Help Links: the LIGO Analysis Tool help links now go to pages in the wiki, so that the help text can be easily edited and improved as the tool is developed and as our user base grows in size and experience.
  • Forum links: Wiki style links in the forums can automatically link to the glossary. Just say [[Tesla]] in a forum posting and it is translated into Tesla, a link to the article in the wiki on that topic. (This is properly a feature of the forum code, not the wiki, but I mention it here to show how easy it is to make these two systems work together.)

Future Potential

The 'prototype' site as it is currently set up is only a beginning. There is a lot more potential for additions and refinements. This section suggests some of the ideas which might be applied to making these tools more useful for I2U2 activities:

File Lockers

Users on the site can save files in their "locker", and reference these later. One could save a plot from the LIGO Analysis Tool, then use it in a discussion/logbook posting, or include it in a poster, or a wiki page. There would need to be a clear distinction between when the file is private (in the locker) and when it is public (copied to the forums or wiki). This would work for any kind of file, not just images. Students could also upload files (but watch out for viruses, music sharing, or other abuse).

Room ownership

Teachers could "own" a room, which would give them permission to change the name or description of the room, and to control access to the room. They could allow outsiders to read but not post to the discussion, or they could require that only "members" of the room could read and/or post. They would be the ones who control who is a "member" of the room.

Roles-based permissions

A replacement for the simple "special user" classification system now in place would be a more robust roles-based permissions system. (Explain here some of the differences...) MediaWiki already has a good roles-based permission system, so we would just need to build or copy a similar structure for the forum code.

Room creation

Users with appropriate permissions could create their own "rooms" (which they would own and control).


g-Labs: e-Labs for outreach

Experienced teachers, students, scientists, or others could serve as leaders of on-line study groups which could make use of a subset of e-Lab materials and activities for guided inquiry-based learning. These could be refered to as 'g-Labs'.


Minor improvments

  • The facility for validating a user's e-mail address could be improved. At present it only records the validation as true/false, but it would be more useful to have the date on which the address was validated.
  • Abililty for a user to have more than one institutional affiliation (eg. teacher or student could be with more than one school)

External Links


References

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