Suggestion: user-moderated FAQ

[AstrGerdt]

Hi,

I know, I know, this is the support forum, but I found no other forum that is more closely matching this post than this one since the old suggestions forum disappeared.

I had the following idea:
Creating a user-moderated FAQ could solve a lot of problems in this forum.
The number of repetitive and most often simple questions in this forum has increased significantly during the last year (STF not applied to exported JPG, needing to re-install scripts after update is normal, just to name a few).
However, nearly always the answer to these regular questions is buried somewhere deeper in the forum and people can't easily find it when learning how to use PixInsight and not knowing how things are called.
By introducing a user-moderated FAQ, these informative answers could be collected in one place and made easier to find. As I said, all the knowledge is there, the problem is finding it when needed.
In this FAQ, users could ideally add a question and answer in one go. This would then need approval by one user whose account has been active for more than a few days. This ensures some quality of the answers.

Suppose the following scenario:
A simple yet repetitive question is asked. One of the two probably well known users who most often answer this kind of questions writes a comprehensive answer to the question. The work has already been done at this point.
By simply copy-pasting or slightly rephrasing the question and answer, a perfect entry for the FAW could be generated with very little more work than what has already been done.

I really don't know how much effort this takes, especially the moderation and approval part. I would fully understand if this is deemed too much work for now by the PI team.
However, I also think this could solve some of the problems in this forum and help us all get more focused on achieving quality and solving important problems.

CS Gerrit

 

[cloudbait]

Hi,

I know, I know, this is the support forum, but I found no other forum that is more closely matching this post than this one since the old suggestions forum disappeared.

I had the following idea:
Creating a user-moderated FAQ could solve a lot of problems in this forum.
The number of repetitive and most often simple questions in this forum has increased significantly during the last year (STF not applied to exported JPG, needing to re-install scripts after update is normal, just to name a few).
However, nearly always the answer to these regular questions is buried somewhere deeper in the forum and people can't easily find it when learning how to use PixInsight and not knowing how things are called.
By introducing a user-moderated FAQ, these informative answers could be collected in one place and made easier to find. As I said, all the knowledge is there, the problem is finding it when needed.
In this FAQ, users could ideally add a question and answer in one go. This would then need approval by one user whose account has been active for more than a few days. This ensures some quality of the answers.

Suppose the following scenario:
A simple yet repetitive question is asked. One of the two probably well known users who most often answer this kind of questions writes a comprehensive answer to the question. The work has already been done at this point.
By simply copy-pasting or slightly rephrasing the question and answer, a perfect entry for the FAW could be generated with very little more work than what has already been done.

I really don't know how much effort this takes, especially the moderation and approval part. I would fully understand if this is deemed too much work for now by the PI team.
However, I also think this could solve some of the problems in this forum and help us all get more focused on achieving quality and solving important problems.

CS Gerrit

Great idea! When you come down to it, well over half the problems we see here probably derive from just a handful of misunderstandings, and we see post after post about them.

 

[robyx]

Hi all,

This is a very good suggestion indeed, we discussed several times about handling the most asked questions with a FAQ but never concretely implemented anything yet.

This post would be a good spike for us to start approaching this, we discussed it again and decided to put some effort on that. As a first step it would be great if you would like to support this initiative by listing which are the most asked questions you think it’s worth to have in the FAQ, then we’ll manage to create a closed dedicated section in the forum where we post question and reply one by one, providing a comprehensive discussion on the topic and references to materials where possible.

Looking forward to have your initial support!

Robyx

 

[cloudbait]

Hi all,

This is a very good suggestion indeed, we discussed several times about handling the most asked questions with a FAQ but never concretely implemented anything yet.

This post would be a good spike for us to start approaching this, we discussed it again and decided to put some effort on that. As a first step it would be great if you would like to support this initiative by listing which are the most asked questions you think it’s worth to have in the FAQ, then we’ll manage to create a closed dedicated section in the forum where we post question and reply one by one, providing a comprehensive discussion on the topic and references to materials where possible.

Looking forward to have your initial support!

Robyx

An "absolute beginners" workflow description would be nice. Collect darks, collect flats, collect biases (and probably not separate darks for the flats), collect lights, pay attention to gain and offset if they are options, don't worry about dithering or drizzle, basic WBPP, basic channel combination, basic gradient correction, basic color calibration, basic stretching.

Common problem: some process or script is lost after an update. Usually fixed with check for updates or reset updates.

Common problem: proper installation of Gaia DR3 and DR3/SP files (and what processes use each).

Common problem: alignment errors caused by failure to use CosmeticCorrection (maybe less of an issue with the new WBPP workflow).

Common problem: oversubtracted darks.

Common problem: issues with ImageSolver, usually involving seeding values.

Common issue: image is green.

Common issue: saved JPEG is black.

Common issue: location of settings files with different operating systems.

Common source of confusion: which key processes and scripts require data that is either linear or stretched?

 

[chris.bailey]

Common problem: issues with flat fielding, often lack of corresponding calibration files.

Common problem: not turning off screen stretch so output jpgs are dark.

Common problem area: issues with image solver. Mirror imaging, acquisition software not writing compatible headers.

Common problem: issues with OSC . Fits origin etc

Common problem: updates in general. Loosing plug-ins after updates.

 

[dld]

Common problem: User credentials for forum are different from user credentials for software distribution.

Common problem: Using masters created by software other than PixInsight.

Problem: Using tiff files or even jpegs as lights/calibration masters.

Problem: Forget to use the "Pure RAW" Raw format preference for DSLR data.

Give an idea of the time and storage requirements of the key PI processes. For example, why debayer require such amount of storage. No need to use O() notation , just stress that the time/storage computational cost usually does not grow linearly with the amount of input frames.

 

[chris.bailey]

Common problem: Gain/offset consistency from calibration frames to light frames.

 

[AstrGerdt]

I see what I can add to the already existing, pretty extensive list:

Common problem: I can't use SPCC because there is no valid astrometric solution, what should I do?

Common problem: There is an astrometric solution, but SPCC detects no or only very few stars? => Is the FOV large enough, try lowering the minimum detection SNR. Is the solution actually correct?

Should I use DBE, ABE or GC? => GC > DBE > ABE

A module is missing for no reason => Process -> Modules -> install modules -> search

What is the actual difference between linear and streched data? Maybe also describe why some processes like SPCC rely on linear data.

Where can I find my current version number? Where can I find an update for the core applicaiton?

I need support! What should I do? => All updates installed? Does the problem really affect a product of the PTeam or is it a third party software? (I think especially the last part could be increasingly important for the PTeam....)


@robyx My original idea was not so much that you guys from the PTeam answer the questions but instead the users of the forum, but in a strictly moderated manner where questions need to be approved before they are published.
Don't get me wrong, the technical insights of the developers are unmatched in the userbase. However, most of the posts of the PTeam tend to be rather technical and in-depth. While this is perfect for experienced users, new users struggle with this. If I think 5 years back in time when I was around 15 and started getting serious about this hobby, I would not have understood those technical descriptions, although I have always been kind of a science guy.
Additionally, user-moderation would probably allow for a more dynamic nature of the FAQ.

Another idea: We can add tags to questions we ask here. Is it possible to add tags for every process that is affected/mentioned in the FAQ entry? This could possibly be integrated into the core application itself by grouping FAQ entries by tags directly in the documentation browser. Although this is a far shot probably.
But nonetheless, it would be great to have this FAQ accessible from the core application so all users know about it.

CS Gerrit

 

[pfile]

another FAQ (or frequent problem really) is mixing capture applications when trying to calibrate data in PI.

related are certain images which are destroyed by dark subtraction due to the need for a pedestal.

another one is the mysterious loss of process modules, sometimes caused at installation time by various antivirus programs, but also sometimes PI just fails to load a random module at startup and then the functionality from that module is missing. solution: ask PI to search for modules and reinstall them with Process > Modules > Install Modules... [edit, oh i see this was already called out above]

there are a lot of licensing questions that are covered by the official PI faq, which no one reads... i wonder if it is possible to make people check a box that says they've consulted the original and/or this new FAQ before posting?

 

[cloudbait]

another FAQ (or frequent problem really) is mixing capture applications when trying to calibrate data in PI.

related are certain images which are destroyed by dark subtraction due to the need for a pedestal.

another one is the mysterious loss of process modules, sometimes caused at installation time by various antivirus programs, but also sometimes PI just fails to load a random module at startup and then the functionality from that module is missing. solution: ask PI to search for modules and reinstall them with Process > Modules > Install Modules... [edit, oh i see this was already called out above]

there are a lot of licensing questions that are covered by the official PI faq, which no one reads... i wonder if it is possible to make people check a box that says they've consulted the original and/or this new FAQ before posting?

I doubt anybody at PI will admit it, but it's hard to believe that there isn't some kind of bugginess in the updating system. These module losses just happen too often to think otherwise. Maybe related in part to some kind of system or operator error, but it seems like something that the code should be better at detecting.

I don't think checkboxes indicate that something has been read. Cf. the South Park Humancentipad episode.

 

[pfile]

I doubt anybody at PI will admit it, but it's hard to believe that there isn't some kind of bugginess in the updating system. These module losses just happen too often to think otherwise. Maybe related in part to some kind of system or operator error, but it seems like something that the code should be better at detecting.

I don't think checkboxes indicate that something has been read. Cf. the South Park Humancentipad episode.

well, of course answering truthfully is voluntary but it will keep an honest man honest as they say. if the "post" button is disabled until the box is checked, or if the post button redirects to a page that forces you to check the box before actually posting, it will probably cause some percentage of the people asking questions to go read the FAQ first.

 

[Juan Conejero]

I encourage you to post a bug report with the steps necessary to reproduce the problem you are describing. We'll gladly work to solve it ASAP, as we always do when a reproducible problem is reported.

We cannot reproduce any of the issues being reported, such as missing modules and scripts after updates, at application startup, etc. This has never occurred on our working and testing machines, and quite a few of them run PixInsight on all platforms daily. There has yet to be a single event similar to what you describe in over 15 years. Our modular system and our update system are stable and remarkably secure.

We are not responsible for problems caused by third-party software, including antivirus applications, malware, and bloatware utilities, or for hardware-related failures. The reported issues do not happen under normal working conditions. Please stop describing these issues as PixInsight bugs when this cannot be demonstrated.

 

[cloudbait]

I encourage you to post a bug report with the steps necessary to reproduce the problem you are describing. We'll gladly work to solve it ASAP, as we always do when a reproducible problem is reported.

We cannot reproduce any of the issues being reported, such as missing modules and scripts after updates, at application startup, etc. This has never occurred on our working and testing machines, and quite a few of them run PixInsight on all platforms daily. There has yet to be a single event similar to what you describe in over 15 years. Our modular system and our update system are stable and remarkably secure.

We are not responsible for problems caused by third-party software, including antivirus applications, malware, and bloatware utilities, or for hardware-related failures. The reported issues do not happen under normal working conditions. Please stop describing these issues as PixInsight bugs when this cannot be demonstrated.

You may not be responsible for problems that occur because of issues caused by third-party software, but if the source of such issues can be identified, it's just good business to build in fixes when possible. As you noted earlier, you're increasingly dealing with, shall we say, less technically savvy customers.

 

[fredvanner]

We cannot reproduce any of the issues being reported, such as missing modules and scripts after updates, at application startup, etc. This has never occurred on our working and testing machines, and quite a few of them run PixInsight on all platforms daily. There has yet to be a single event similar to what you describe in over 15 years. Our modular system and our update system are stable and remarkably secure.

And I've never had any problems with repositories, scripts and updates ...
... but, as @cloudbait notes, users regularly report problems ... and other users describe workrounds to fix them ... and users report these workrounds have fixed the problems ... it does sound buggy ...
I suspect that what is actually hapenning is that some third party applications (that I don't use) have peculiar behaviours on some platforms (that I don't use). The published "fixes" frequently use PI capabilities I never touch (Install Modules; Feature Scripts) - but since (like the rest of PI) these have little or no documentation, users wander around in the dark until they stumble on a solution.

 

[cloudbait]

And I've never had any problems with repositories, scripts and updates ...
... but, as @cloudbait notes, users regularly report problems ... and other users describe workrounds to fix them ... and users report these workrounds have fixed the problems ... it does sound buggy ...
I suspect that what is actually hapenning is that some third party applications (that I don't use) have peculiar behaviours on some platforms (that I don't use). The published "fixes" frequently use PI capabilities I never touch (Install Modules; Feature Scripts) - but since (like the rest of PI) these have little or no documentation, users wander around in the dark until they stumble on a solution.

I've never had a process or script disappear after an update or under any other circumstances. But example: I'd say that one time in ten or fifteen, when I get a notice when I start PI that there's an update, I tell it to go ahead, I get a success message. At some point I exit PI and don't get the expected "Do you want to run the installer" message. PI just closes normally. To install the update, I have to open PI again, let it download again (which it does), then close PI to get the updater. I honestly believe that's a bug I'm finding. It's subtle and could be very hard to track down, but there's nothing out of the ordinary on my system that should be causing this. It only happens when I don't immediately close PI after the update, but continue using it, so it's open for a while first. But even that doesn't usually stop PI from detecting that there's a pending update when I shut down. It's minor, it's easily worked around, and it's intermittent enough that sorting its cause might not be worthwhile. That doesn't mean it's wrong to call it a bug.

 

[Juan Conejero]

As noted above, please post a bug report with a detailed description and the steps necessary to reproduce the problem consistently on our machines under normal working conditions. Until this happens, there will be no bug but just a culture of rumors and ways to work around problems caused by third-party applications and possible system and hardware failures. We cannot help with these issues.

 

[fredvanner]

As noted above, please post a bug report with a detailed description and the steps necessary to reproduce the problem consistently on our machines under normal working conditions.

This post is totally off-topic (this thread is about a user-moderated FAQ list, in case we forget)...
... but I doubt if it will be removed ...

 

[bitli]

To come back to the topioc:
- Clarification of the meaing of warnings as "Insufficient data storage capabilities" and many others that can usually safely be ignored.

 

[FlapAstro]

Some more…

Common question: how to configure swap folders?
Common problem: path / file name gets longer than default limit in Windows. How to resolve?

/Ralf

 

[tom886]

It's not about bugs who can't be reproduced, it's about support questions, who are repeatedly asked.
If for example a computer crashes, damages for example the settings files and the user has problems after that, then the questions show up.
And I doubt that the PI team crashes their PCs/MACs on purpose to figure out what could happen after that.

Common problem: Where do I find the settings files on my machine (Windows, MAC, Linux)?

Cheers
Tom