I am requesting a new category on LSST Community - “Rubin Commissioning” for collecting commissioning discussions and questions from the science Collaborations and the general community. There have been many instances of the Science Collaboration asking how they can provide feedback and contribute to the Project on the topic of commissioning. Having a dedicated category on LSST Community would help facilitate these interactions as apposed to email where it is likely to get lost.
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Hi Chuck, sounds like a good idea. Please see this Meta post on how to propose a new category, it describes what we’d need in order to make the new category. This Meta post proposing a new category is also a good example to follow.
Also consider whether you think “Commissioning” might be a top-level category or a sub-category under “Science”.
The Ruben Observatory Commissioning & Science Verification effort desires input and feedback from the larger LSST community and propose a new top-level category for Rubin Observatory Commissioning & Science Verification. This new proposed category is to support community interaction and contributions to the Rubin Observatory Commissioning effort. The contribution can be in the form of proposed observing strategies during the planning phase to analysis feedback when commissioning data starting being obtained. This Category would be linked to the Project Commissioning Slack discussion channels including: #rubinobs-sitcom, #commissioningliaisons, and #desc-commissioning.
In this new proposed category we propose to have a subcategories for each of the Science Collaborations, the Project and General topics.
In this category, please start a new topic for each unique question. Use a succinct title containing representative keywords, and then describe your question. When necessary, feel free to upload plots or provide links to external material. If discussions evolve into different issues, start a new thread. This will ensure that the information we generate will be searchable and easily accessible to all.
We believe it is better for this new category be at the top-label and not under the Science top-level category. There will be many discussions related to commissioning that are not necessarily of general interest to the science of the LSST. This Category will be monitored and moderated by the Project Commissioning Science and Verification team along with volunteer effort from the science collaboration commissioning liaisons.
I wonder if to start it might not be better to not sub-divide this by SC? Perhaps the subcategories could be SC Input and Questions, Project, and General. There is already local discussions in the SCs themselves. These sorts of discussions could still be reported with the proper keywords.
If instead, the intention is to give the SCs themselves a place for internal discussion, you might want to do that in addition with the intention being clear in the category name.
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The sub-categories of SC Input, Project and General sounds great! Let’s start there. We can adapt as input comes in.
I’ve been thinking a bit about the proposed sub-categories. I’d like to propose not having any, and starting with just a top-level Commissioning category.
Generally, I have the impression that over-categorization can become an issue for Forums. Instead, we could start with a top-level category and then respond to usage with sub-categories as need arises.
In this particular case, I suspect that having a “General” sub-category would be redundant with the top-level “Commissioning” category, and that dividing topics up into “Science Collaboration” and “Project” sub-categories might be antithetical to the desire for SC-Project interaction regarding commissioning.
Thoughts on moving forward without sub-categories?
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Hi @cclaver, a couple more details to iron out before we can get this set up.
Below I wrote a first draft of the text for the “About the Commissioning category” topic that will be posted immediately when the category is made. This is all based on the text you provided above, just reformatted to match the style of other “About the…” topics. Thoughts on this text?
Also, I have a couple of questions.
- I was wondering if “the Project Commissioning Science and Verification team” is a formal team name. The term “Rubin Observatory Commissioning and Science Validation” is also used. Are these referring to the same thing?
- I’d like to suggest that all new topics in the “Commissioning” category show up in only one associated LSSTC Slack channel (perhaps a new one named, e.g., #commissioning-clo). To avoid situations in which, for example, three Slack conversations about the same Community post proceed independently. I’d also like to propose that it might be preferable in this case to not link this category to Slack at all. Thoughts?
- Surely the answer is yes but I want to be totally sure before writing it in a topic: the Science Collaborations’ commissioning liaisons have all agreed to be responsible for monitoring this category?
Category Name: Commissioning
Notes about category settings:
This is not a Q&A-style category and does not require the “select solution” capability.
The default security settings will be adequate for this category.
Text for the “About the Commissioning category” Topic:
For discussions related to Rubin Commissioning. To support interactions with, and contributions from the science community, regarding Rubin Observatory Commissioning and Science Validation. Potential topics include observing stratgies, data analysis, validation techniques, and planning for early science.
All are welcome to create new Topics and to post replies to others. When necessary, feel free to upload plots or link to external studies. As discussions evolve, please create new Topics with succint titles to make material more searchable and accessible.
This category will be monitored by the Project Commissioning Science and Verification team and the Science Collaborations’ commissioning liaisons.
All new topics will also be posted in three LSSTC Slack channels: #rubinobs-sitcom, #commissioningliaisons, and #desc-commissioning
[Followed by the “new to community” content in all “About the …” topics.]
@MelissaGraham I think you are right about getting rid of ‘General’. But much like (say in DM) splitting user support and development discussions is useful, I think that having two categories will be useful here too.
To the extent that we use c.l.o for commissioning related discussions, I think it is useful to have a separate category for that and for interactions with the SCs. Speaking as someone who wears both hats, I think having a place to see the list of those issues clearly separated will be useful to both sides. As a commissioning team person, we have a set of requirements to fulfill and technical discussions we need to have about that. As a SC commissioning person we have a set of suggestions and questions we would like the commissioning team to think about and consider especially if they might fulfill the also fulfill commissioning needs at the same time. They are pretty different in scope.
If on the other hand, c.l.o will only be used for SC interactions, and not internal technical discussions, then I agree we don’t need them. Rather than calling it project it could also be called SIT-COM which is the actual team name. So it could be “SC Input and Questions” and “SIT-COM”.
I am open to starting with simple general forum for Rubin Obs. Commissioning. Giving it more thought, as you have done, I agree compartmentalizing is not in the best interest of what I/we are trying to achieve with this category.
Let’s go without sub-categories. 
I am not sure the wider community a cognizant of the SIT-Com moniker.
Let’s see how the forum develops to start and then we can decide if sub-categories are needed.
I agree with starting simple and creating structure as we go. Does community support labels so that multiple labels can be applied to conversations rather than having to categorise?
@cclaver, I’ve set up the new “Commissioning” category and filled in the “About the Commissioning category” topic. I did not yet link it to any LSSTC Slack channels and also left out the phrase “and the Science Collaborations’ commissioning liaisons”, but if you can respond to my questions above then I can make updates as needed.