Rubin Observatory Users Committee
Report from 2024A meeting (Mon, 6 May 2024)
As in previous reports, we congratulate the Rubin Team on their continued efforts and success with engaging the user community. We are impressed by the responsiveness of the team and their efforts to improve the user experience.
Findings:
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Although we recognized that the Rubin team has made a sustained effort on documentation, there remains a significant barrier to entry via a steep learning curve with the Rubin Science Products. We recommend the creation of a centralized page containing introductory information about the Rubin survey generally, the specific science goals, the production and synthesis of data previews, and foundational training information on getting started with the RSP.
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We recommend that a request for feedback to the UC be made at any formal conference or meeting of Rubin-related scientists. Specifically, we envision this occuring at the Science Collaboration meetings, DP0 assemblies, RCW, PCW, and tangential meetings. Similarly, to this end we recommend a standard and uniform slide deck introducing the Rubin UC members and goals. For example, the UC has already received a large number of responses to our direct email campaign. It would be helpful to have a mechanism for collating the results. To support that process, we request that the Community Science Team (CST) provide or suggest a means of collecting and organizing that feedback. We recommend a standard google form (or something analogous) that can be distributed easily to community members to provide feedback on the data products that can be easily organized and accessible by anyone with access.
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We found that many of the UC members had not finished the requested testing of the DP0.3 exercises. We recommend that testing requests include an explicit deadline and that it is made clear that using the answer key is acceptable if necessary.
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We recommend soliciting community member feedback and testing for the DP0.3 exercises at Rubin related meetings, such as those listed above.
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We recommend earlier advertising of the open UC meetings to the community, especially advertising by UC members, to ensure that there are a large number of community members that we can listen to. To further increase the participation, we stress the importance of such opportunities during formal Rubin conferences or meetings (see finding 2).