[Bldg-sim] Should onebuilding.org mailing lists transition to Discourse?

Wed Dec 16 08:33:41 PST 2020

Erik,

Thanks for the background. I really like your last point about a central place for BPS data (material properties, curves, etc.) and think that could potentially be hosted by the IBPSA-USA GitHub organization in a repository or GitHub page.

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Matt Steen BEMP
Senior Building Performance Engineer
ambient energy
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From: Erik Kolderup <erik at kolderupconsulting.com>
Sent: Monday, December 14, 2020 6:47 PM
To: bldg-sim at lists.onebuilding.org
Subject: Re: [Bldg-sim] Should onebuilding.org mailing lists transition to Discourse?

Some thoughts/history on the IBPSA-USA BEMBook Wiki, one of the wikis...

As Nick noted, this Wiki was not intended to replace email lists. The thinking was that there could be a 3-level hierarchy of 1) email lists/Unmethours, 2) the Wiki, and 3) BEM Library. Issues that were frequently discussed on the email lists could be captured in the crowd-sourced Wiki, and then some of those topics could be formalized in a curated library (https://www.bemlibrary.com/)

Here's the link to the Wiki: bembook.ibpsa.us<http://bembook.ibpsa.us>. It has not been maintained for several years now. At the time, there was an editorial committee of IBPSA-USA members who reviewed contributions. Prior to setting up the wiki, the IBPSA-USA Education Committee developed an outline called the BEMBook Body of Knowledge, which was a list of topics they thought energy modelers should know about. That list forms the contents page of the wiki: https://bembook.ibpsa.us/index.php?title=Knowledge_Area_Table_of_Contents#practitionersbemoverview.

I think there were a few problems with the idea and implementation of the wiki, but one of the main problems was the idea of publishing an outline in which most of the topics had no content. There is some useful content, but most of the links lead to empty pages, making navigation frustrating.

It was also tough to get good contributions. Some of the current content was written by people provided with modest honorariums to kick-start the process. Other pages were written by students as a condition of receiving an IBPSA conference travel scholarship.

There was also a bit of a learning curve to creating pages in the Wiki, which was a barrier to people adding content.

Regarding the future, I think that a Wiki could be useful as a place for commonly used reference information to reside. A few things that come to mind are tables of material thermal data, performance curves for generic HVAC equipment, and typical operation schedules. Each of us may have our own go-to reference sources that we've identified over time. Perhaps we can share via a Wiki. Perhaps folks have better ideas?

-Erik

Erik Kolderup, PE, LEED AP
erik at kolderupconsulting.com<mailto:erik at kolderupconsulting.com> | 415.531.5198 | www.kolderupconsulting.com<http://www.kolderupconsulting.com>

From: Nicholas Caton <Nicholas.Caton at se.com<mailto:Nicholas.Caton at se.com>>
To: Anthony Hardman <anthony at greenengineer.com<mailto:anthony at greenengineer.com>>, Jason Glazer <jglazer at gard.com<mailto:jglazer at gard.com>>, "bldg-sim at onebuilding.org<mailto:bldg-sim at onebuilding.org>" <bldg-sim at onebuilding.org<mailto:bldg-sim at onebuilding.org>>, "equest-users at onebuilding.org<mailto:equest-users at onebuilding.org>" <equest-users at onebuilding.org<mailto:equest-users at onebuilding.org>>
Cc:
Bcc:
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2020 08:47:01 +0000
Subject: Re: [Bldg-sim] [Equest-users] Should onebuilding.org<http://onebuilding.org> mailing lists transition to Discourse?
I was personally involved with that “wiki” effort, and I am glad you reminded me Anthony.  “Lessons learned” with that experience may be helpful to collect for Jason while considering options for this transition, if anyone else has any memories from that experiment.

I recall (years later, mind) that the wiki was not intended to replace, but rather to augment/supplement the mailing lists.  The function of the wiki was to create a better place to archive/publish specific sorts of threads/content involving lots of imagery.  Icing on the cake would have been the capability to allow for collaborative contributions/editing/cross-linking/tagging, so that these articles/guides could benefit from many perspectives and grow to become a more useful/accessible archive of information over time.

At that time, I was a little more active in generating step by step guides (that I would later reference and re-send into the lists as topics resurfaced) with lots of deliberate text formatting (color, indents, bullets, etc.) & imagery to help others pick up on a procedure or process/feature.  A shortcoming of the mailing list archives (then and now) is that text formatting typically ends up totally stripped, and images would be un-inserted and retained (if at all) as a series of cryptically named attachments instead of in-line with the text, as originally composed.  The wiki looked like a worthy experiment to circumvent that set of archival issues, and better capture that sort of material for easier access and retention.

The wiki effort kinda fizzled in large part (I think) because a wiki-based platform requires of the target audience/community: (1) a small but meaningful increase in effort/time to access/search for information, relative to the fully automated mailing list option that brings the content to you, and (2) for contributors, a LOT more time/effort (relative to emails) to contribute and deal with formatting/tagging/etc.  A minor contributing factor may have also been “contributor fragmentation” as around the same time period IBPSA was trying to launch a wiki effort with similar goals (I do not recall exactly what extent these efforts overlapped on a timeline).  Either initiative might have seen a lot more immediate growth/success all the involved contributing parties were consolidated into one effort.

I think a wiki may remain an ideal format for something like the doe-2 reference/engineering manual, or similar large bodies of relatively static work that could benefit from infrequent & disparate (but peer-reviewed) edits/additions from time to time.

As it stands, we can all recognize active contribution/participation on the mailings lists remains a high hurdle for the community at large.  I think the main hurdles preventing more active contribution from the community include:

 *   Participation takes time/effort out of the day.  It’s hard for most with jobs including energy simulation to justify fitting something like emailing strangers a priority.  A new platform should place ease of accessibility (reading and contributions) as a penultimate priority.  Access to read/contribute/search should ideally require a few clicks as possible.
 *   Ego – I think a lot of engineers suffer a mental hurdle in asking questions or responding in a public forum.  It’s a tall order in some work environments/cultures to open up and admit “I don’t know something,” especially in a public forum where your admission ends up “on the record.”  As a younger engineer especially I would get really hung up on this, until I figured out the people asking the most questions were often the smartest ones in the room.  A new platform might pick up a few more questions, especially from new and intermediate modelers, if it’s easy to submit queries in an anonymous fashion?
 *   Propriety – It can be hard to ask a question sometimes (and especially attach a model) when the nature of the post/question can result in a clear line of identification to an active project, customer, or company.  The same concerns can make it difficult to share a working example/solution when you see someone ask for something at your fingertips.  We all want to be good stewards of potentially sensitive information.  It would be neat if a new platform could offer solutions to make it easier to ask questions anonymously, perhaps someday including scripts and/or guides to “anonymize” project files to make it easier to upload with confidence.

~Nick

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Nick Caton, P.E. (US), BEMP

ニック ケートン, P.E. (US), BEMP

Senior Energy Engineer
Energy Manager, Yokota Airbase
ESS - Energy & Sustainability Services

M JP
M US
Email

+81 . 070 . 3366 . 3317
+1   . 785 .  410  . 3317
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