Welcome to A Cosmology Group version 3.0

[ftessier]

It is proposed to host the ACG website (publicly visible, https://a-cosmology-group.github.io/acg/) using GitHub pages generated from a repository, with advantages in integration of version control, issues, proposed changes, discussions with rendered equations, notifications and sponsorship. Members who wish to contribute or participate in ACG discussions here are encouraged to create a github account (free) and share their handle to be invited as collaborators. Once the members of [email protected] (alias for [email protected]) start using GitHub discussions, their email will be deleted from [email protected]. However these members will continue to receive notifications from [email protected].

Here are some tasks on the way to hosting ACG via github pages. Feel free to add more, and comment below ideas to improve the transition and the new version.

• Create github.com/a-cosmology-group organization.
• Create github.com/a-cosmology-group/acg repository.
• Create a short HOWTO to introduce basic github usage to ACG members.
• Create first issue and a first pull request to show how that works.
• Share link of this repository with ACG members.
• Create teams in organization.
• Create a github sponsor link for donations.
• Create Discussion categories similar to gaggle mail lists.
• Publish repository as a standalone website (automated).
• Convert content from the existing ACG to markdown in this repo:
  • Home page
  • Resources
  • Organization
  • Newsletters
  • ACG talks
  • Essays
  • Media
  • Conferences
• Create repos acg and cg under organization a-cosmology-group.
• Create corresponding teams acg and cg.
• Migration of [email protected] users to a-cosmology-group organization
  • create a new GitHub test user; write a "How to Join ACG" procedure in acg/Wiki
  • Invite test-user to acg team; test discussion forum with email, etc. (practice for marmetl)
  • Invite one member to join acg team; ask for comments; edit procedure if needed
  • Write instructions on how to use create a GitHub account and navigate to discussions
  • Send instruction link to all ACG members and invite them to join a-cosmology-group
  • Remove members from 'Alt Observable'✓, 'Alt Cosmology'✓, and 'Tired-Light'✓, archive these forums and delete,
  • Archive [email protected] and delete.

[RedshiftDrift]

Consider GitLab instead... however GitLab lacks some tools
From their Pricing webpage, Free-GitLab is limited to 5 users, not enough for ACG. GitLab premium is US$29/user/mo, too expensive. I don't see the point in trying it.

'free' ACG GitHub-organization must be owned by paid user for functionality
The functionality we are getting with GitHub needs your pay account (US$4/mo). Will any of the other users need a pay account? If not, the cost for ACG is US$48/year and it's no problem.

new 'redshift' email @my-emailbox is invalid for .github/FUNDING.yml
The address works, I am receiving messages from GitHub there! It was created 14 hours ago, maybe it's not yet registered by GutHub?
Concern: Is this file public? Will my email be readable by every spammer?

Backup of acg on GitHub
We don't need to keep "issues" and "pull requests". It would be desirable to have a backup of Discussions and pages, etc., in addition to the repo.

Separate groups
ACG is currently split in two principal groups, with few users that are members of both.
What would work on GitHub, as per your suggestions, is to create two repos: a-cosmology-group/acg/ with the website repo, discussions, and wiki, and a-cosmology-group/cg, with repo, discussions and wiki. The Discussions could be tagged with the categories "models", "observable", "tired-light", etc. Then we create a Team for each Repo, as you suggested, and any user can be a member of a-cosmology-group/acg/ but a restricted number of users are members of a-cosmology-group/cg/, with the goal to have low notification rate in their mailbox.

[ftessier]

@marmetl I put your email address in the Code of Conduct, you may want to remove that and use a throwaway email instead (e.g., [email protected]). Let me know, I can remove your email from the repo history at all.

[RedshiftDrift]

The website is "backed up" de facto, since it is just the content of the repo (the html pages can be built offline with similar tools that github uses behind the scenes).

Ha! That's because you assume I use 'GitHub Desktop'! I don't, yet, but I will install it!

[ftessier]

Oh, I only meant there is no need to backup the pages rendered in html format. I don't use any git Desktop tool, only the terminal and Visual Studio Code. Simple, efficient!

[RedshiftDrift]

What's the "terminal"? ...Oh you mean the command line interface CLI?

[ftessier]

Yes, the CLI. I don't know what to call it anymore! Linux users call it the CLI or the console, and macOS users the Terminal. 🤔

[sahil5d]

😄 I'm @sahil5d

[RedshiftDrift]

Great to see you here @sahil5d !
I haven't graduated to owner, I can't invite you yet... but coming soon!

[ftessier]

@sahil5d I sent you an invite to the acg team.

[ftessier]

@marmetl, since the repos are public, we don't have to invite everyone to the teams. Anyone can submit pull request to propose changes, post issues or engage in discussions. The teams currently have write access to the repos, meaning people in these teams can actually modify the repo, for example merge in pull requests. This is how we work with EGSnrc, there are only 4 admins with write access, but many external collaborators submit pull requests.

On the other hand, if you WANT to use the cg and acg teams to keep track of membership, then I suggest you remove the teams write access to the repos, and (if you want) appoint individuals with write, maintain, and admin roles. You could also then limit the ability to create new discussions to team members, or make the repo private to the teams, things like that.

At any rate, let's discuss what you envision for the teams, and we'll figure it out.

[ftessier]

Yes, we could create two organizations, but at this point if there is just one repo in each org, then I would just use a repo for each, without the organization overhead. The acg could be public, and cg private. Will you want to store files in the cg repo, or just use the discussions board?

[RedshiftDrift]

... anyone with a github account can create new discussions, or comment on existing ones

A good feature for acg members.

... we could create two organizations, but at this point if there is just one repo in each org,...

Only one repo is necessary for all members. The current acg repo is perfect since there is only one website for A Cosmology Group and all files can be shared with everybody. Also, only one wiki is necessary for A Cosmology Group.

Will you want to store files in the cg repo, or just use the discussions board?

No, there are no files to store in the current cg repo. We only need the discussion board on cg to keep cg members isolated from everything that's happening in acg.

Perhaps the way to go is to leave acg open, and make cg private?

This sounds good. Would the two 'Discussions' boards be independent? That is, cg members would only receive email messages for discussions on cg, but not for discussions on acg?

I'm going to create a second account soon so we can test how this works.

[ftessier]

Yes, the separate repos are independent, each with its discussion thread. People will only be notified of discussions in the repo they are watching. If members of ACG know not to watch or post in the cg discussions, and abide by that, you can leave both open. But you can also turn cg private, so that only the named collaborators (or team) can view and participate in discussion. I presume this is the most straightforward alternative. I will change the visibility of the cg repo, so you can see what that entails.

[ftessier]

Done, cg is now private, hence only visible to the cg teams, to which you can add members. This implies that cg people need a github account to view the content.

[ftessier]

I have never used a repo just for the discussions, but why not? Plus, in time, if cg members want to store and share files, the repo is already there. I suggest editing the top-level README.md to guide new users towards the Discussions are initially.

[ftessier]

@marmetl in terms of ownership, I can transfer the organization to you, however this implies a paid account to preserve all features. Or we can transfer down the line. In the mean time I am happy to act upon requests that require ownership.

[RedshiftDrift]

There can be more than one owner; I read here

<<Organization owners have complete administrative access to your organization. This role should be limited, but to no less than two people, in your organization.>>

My question is, do both owners need a paid account? If not then you can add me as an owner, but if so then you can transfer ownership later to the next owner, no worries.

[ftessier]

Ah, I did not know. I made you an owner, fantastic!

[RedshiftDrift]

Now let's hope we haven't lost any features... ;-)

[ftessier]

I would like to turn on 2FA (two-factor authentication) for the organization. Can you enable 2FA for your account? It is better to do this now, before others members are added to the teams, because turning it on boots off members that do not have it enabled.

[RedshiftDrift]

2FA enabled for my account, go ahead!

[ghost]

Hi, I'm Louis @marmetl2, please sign me up with cg. Thanks!

[ftessier]

You might want to add people to the cg team and give read access to the team (which it currently has), instead of adding them to the repo itself. I find it a little easier and clearer to manage teams compared to repo permissions for individuals. For example, if you want later to create a team with write access, you can create a new team, which is easier than changing the permissions of each collaborator that should have write access. My two cents.

[ftessier]

For example, you can add @marmetl2 (who is that fraud?) to the cg teams, which will provide read access on the cg repo.

[RedshiftDrift]

I'm having problems understanding the hierarchy. Ok I get it now, I think!
I'm just going to play with this a bit more.

I see cg is listed as a member of a-cosmology-group/cg. Does that mean "the team cg is part of the a-cosmology-group/cg repo?
Louis Marmet is the admin, and A. Louis Marmet is an "outside collaborator", that seems good. You (@ftessier ) are not listed, which means you can be the owner or creator of cg but not a member?

I just realized I can:
1- add people to the cg repo,
Then the member appears as an "outside collaborator".
2- add people to the cg team (as a "collaborator"??)
If I add people to the cg team, will they have access to the repo?
3- add people to the a-cosmology-group organization (as a "member"??)
Then "A.L. Marmet" will get email notifications for every message in the acg repo (and team)? We don't want that.

[RedshiftDrift]

@marmetl2 received an email notification about @doctorlard 's post on acg - not the desired behaviour.
I will add @marmetl2 to the cg team instead...

[ftessier]

Organization

For the record, a github organization contains (amongst other things):

• Repositories (public or private)
• People (github accounts, invited by the owner, that are part of the organization)
• Teams (groups of People, by invitation by the owner)

Each of these is a tab near the top of the organization page.

Think of nrc-cnrc/: People is a pool of all staff (that requested access in this case). Then there are separate repos, and there is a team of developers for each repo (my choice). Or in corporate parlance:

• the organization is the company
• the people are all the staff
• the teams could be: Sales, Marketing, IT, Finance, etc.
• and the repos could be different portfolios.

Repositories

At the level of each repository, the admin can grant access permissions to both individuals or teams.
The way I use this in an organization is that I grant access based on teams for organization people, and reserve invitations to individuals for external collaborators, that are not part of the org. This clarifies the permission list in the repo settings.

Notifications

Email notifications are set up for each user, and via the Watch button near the top right of the repo page

Under this button menu is where one can set the granularity of notifications for this repo. Each user can set overarching settings under their account settings:

I don't know what are the default settings there, but I presume by default one does not receive notifications for repos they are not part of (as a team or individual).

So yes, it may be that members will have to click on the Watch button.

[doctorlard]

Hi, I'm also here. I actually work with git, linux and web development for my job, so I'm happy to help drive a bunch of that. Static site generators are perfect for this sort of thing. I also hack on Wikidata, which is a great place to store, derive and link citations (papers, journal articles etc.).

[RedshiftDrift]

Thanks Jonathan, would you know how to configure Jeckyll to have webpages with a side column that would list the content of the site? (This would imitate the current ACG website, or something like GitBook does...)

[doctorlard]

That should just be a matter of choosing a theme that does that, and configuring it so it has a consistent "menu" and displays it appropriately (separation of form and content), c.f. http://jekyllthemes.org/

[doctorlard]

(note to self more than anything) it should also be possible to choose/enable latex math formulæ using mathjax for display, if it isn't enabled already.

[RedshiftDrift]

I renamed the teams as acg-team and cg-team. There were too many things called acg which brought confusion to @marmetl

I tried to start a new team-discussion following these instructions:

.
.
.
However, "Discussion" does not appear in the menu:

.
.
.
Any idea why @ftessier ?

[ftessier]

I recall a mail from github a few months ago that announced they were canning Teams discussions. Perhaps that is why the tab does not show anymore. Under our EGSnrc team, I see that the tab is gone, and that our previous exchanges are now available in JSON as an archive.

I guess github decided, as I did, that teams discussions were not very useful and confusing. I never used them, aside from test message to see if team members received them 😆

[ftessier]

Yep, here is the sunset notice from February:

https://github.blog/changelog/2023-02-08-sunset-notice-team-discussions/

[ftessier]

And finally, yes, joining an org team makes you a member of the organization! So everyone in the cg-team or acg-team teams will be a member of the organization a-cosmology-group.

[ftessier]

Thank you 🙏🏻 for renaming the teams with a -team suffix, I was going to suggest that this morning, lest our discussion becomes unintelligible!

[ftessier]

Interestingly, https://github.com/watching shows the watched repositories for the current logged in github user.

[RedshiftDrift]

My tests are over. (I have removed @marmetl2 from cg-team, and then from the a-cosmology-group organization).

My conclusion is that the discussion structure of a-cosmology-group cannot be adapted to GitHub Discussions. With Gaggle.email, a member starts a new discussion by:

• Writing and sending an email to [email protected] (it's that simple).

On GitHub, starting a new cg-discussion requires the user to:

• Create a new/login to a GitHub account,
• Authenticate with 2FA,
• Navigate to the cg-repo,
• Navigate to Discussions,
• Write and send the message.

All that assumes that the user has edited personal user-preferences to block messages from other parts of the a-cosmology-group organisation. (By default new users receive notification for most everything!) This requires that each user understands GitHub's repos and organizations, which is too much to ask just for participation in a discussion forum.

Unless there is a way to reduce these five steps to only one, it's best to keep using Gaggle.email for cg-discussions.

---

However, here is what I suggest for acg-discussions. It's more or less the original intention, but we keep Gaggle.email.

• Keep using Gaggle.email for announcements (and the possibility of reply, usually only one per announcement). There would be no changes for 27 cg-members, an every member of A-Cosmology-Group would be in the [email protected] forum (moderated).
• However, instead of a website on Hostmonster, the GitHub repo would be used for editing webpages and for discussions similar to those currently accessible to 48 members on acg-[email protected]. The a-cosmology-group organization would have a single repo and Discussions, accessible to everybody to look at. Members who want post on Discussions (not moderated) or write/submit-pull-requests to the acg-repo will need to create their personal GitHub account.

How does that sound?

[RedshiftDrift]

There are large components of this architecture that are still obscure to me.

That's one of the reasons why two platforms are necessary: all members of A Cosmology Group will remain on the Gaggle.email mailing list since most of them are only watching the discussions and won't be bother to learn to navigate the GitHub system just to read a few messages.

The most important reason for two platforms is that the professionals currently on [email protected] (physicists, philosophers, etc.) do not want to see their mailbox cluttered with public discussions (e.g. Han and Bud discussing "dimensional analysis", something any scientist learns as a teenager; or e.g. Olli's indecipherable philosophy)

[RedshiftDrift]

@Pierre314159 I will invite you to join a-cosmology-group on GitHub. You will need 2FA enabled to join the Organization.

Once you are a member it will be easier to use GitHub. You will see the `a-cosmology-group' organization listed in your personal organizations (click the OctoCat at the top-left of your screen)

[budrap00]

Hi Louis,

I'm in I guess. It seems to me that GitHub's primary usage is as a collaborative tool for coders, which raises the question, will any original post (as opposed to a comment) be subject to collaborative revision (as opposed to commentary)?

Regards,
Bud

[RedshiftDrift]

Hi Bud,
if by "original post" you mean discussions, it's not possible for members to modify someone else's post. You can only add comments to the discussions and edit/delete your own.

If by "original post" you mean files in the repo (website, code, papers, articles, etc.), these files can be added/edited/deleted by everyone. They are both subject to collaborative revisions and comments. See HOWTO.md for how to edit files.

[ftessier]

By the way, when editing on github becomes cumbersome, eventually, you can clone the repo on your computer and work on your local copy, pushing changes up to the origin repository on github. But that's another chapter... 😉

[budrap00]

Hi Louis, Are you saying that if you, Louis, write and post an original paper here, that any member can "add, edit and delete" that post??? With the obvious exception for collaborative efforts, that sounds like a recipe for chaos. Why would anyone want to post an original work under those terms and conditions? Bud

…

On Fri, Jun 2, 2023 at 3:54 PM Louis Marmet ***@***.***> wrote: Hi Bud, if by "original post" you mean discussions, it's not possible for members to modify someone else's post. You can only add comments to the discussions and edit/delete your own. If by "original post" you mean files in the repo (website, code, papers, articles, etc.), these files can be added/edited/deleted by everyone. They are both subject to collaborative revisions *and* comments. See HOWTO.md <https://github.com/a-cosmology-group/acg/blob/5a01a8f9b5ac409d3bbdf57e293c6d3e71d5405c/assets/HOWTO.md> for how to edit files. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#3 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/BAIWF7DBQK5QUP4UYBUG5S3XJJAGPANCNFSM6AAAAAAYNSAPNY> . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[ftessier]

@budrap00, git is a versioning system to end the chaos! Anyone can suggest changes through pull requests, but they must be approved before moving on. If the review honour system is not sufficient, it is possible to create code owners, required multiple reviews, etc. as gatekeeping mechanisms. The honour system means, for example, to add the original author as a reviewer, for example.

The world's software is built on git and github, with 100 million + repositories. It is very apt at ordering the chaos 😄

[RedshiftDrift]

In Git version control, he "add, edit or delete" operations are done in a separate branch until the changes are accepted by a GitHub maintainer. Then and only then are changes "merged" with the main branch of the repo (i.e. accepted as part of the system).

This prevents destructive mistakes (e.g. deletion), mischief (e.g. modify files) or chaos (e.g. moving files and breaking the website).
Even if the maintainers make mistakes, the Git version control always remembers previous versions and the repo can be returned to an earlier version.

(And @ftessier just answered as I was typing... ;-)

[ftessier]

Well said. In fact, it is quite difficult in git to remove anything from a repository once it gets going. Try! 😉

[RedshiftDrift]

@ftessier and ACG Group,
things are going well for the website on GitHub.

Things to complete

• resolve problems with deployment to pages workflow for generation of the website,
• upload most .pdf documents from the original site,
• establish the folder structure for the website.
• check if equations can be rendered in .html on the webpages.

Once this is completed, the website will be ready for ACG members to create their own webpages on the ACG website. (Claudio is already working on his webpage.)

[budrap00]

Nice work Louis!

[ftessier]

Beautiful! I tuned out a bit while teaching our course this week. I will continue to follow development, and help out when possible.

[RedshiftDrift]

Success ! MathJax runs on the website (see the $\sigma_8$ tension, second line...)

This is a bit complicated: the .md file runs through the .html converter Jekyll, and then when the .html file is displayed it runs through the MathJax converter. As a result,

inline equation are written $$E=mc^2$$ with two $$-signs

in the .md file.

[RedshiftDrift]

@ftessier I think the GitHub ACG Webpage is presentable.

Most files from the old website have been converted/copied and the folder/navigation structure has been changed a little. (I checked all your boxes above as 'done' :-) Thanks for all your help! I plan to add the few remaining files later.

Later this week, I will change the main pages on A Cosmology Group and A Cosmology Group so that they forward browsers to the GitHub ACG Webpage.

[RedshiftDrift]

Thanks! Xenu's Link Sleuth also found many broken links.

I fixed some 'internal' links that were typos in my translation to .md.

As for the external links that have disappeared, one has to google search the webpage to see where it has been moved... a lot of work!

I know that https://cosmologyscience.com/ref.htm is David Dilworth's website, and it's off-line temporarily, so we'll leave the link as is.

[ftessier]

Oh, my list is exhaustive, as far as I know, so there is only 15 404s.

[RedshiftDrift]

Not sure what you mean. The list is exhaustive, but does not tell us if the Error 404 is caused by a webpage that has disappeared, or if it simply has been moved!

For example, the 12th Error 404 link http://nautil.us/issue/15/turbulence/do-we-have-the-big-bang-theory-all-wrong produces an Error 404.

However, this page may have been moved since this link worked in the past. With a bit of searching I found that the page has indeed been moved to https://nautil.us/do-we-have-the-big-bang-theory-all-wrong-234989/.

I'll fix that one tomorrow...

[ftessier]

I get it. I thought you meant "a lot of work", as in there might be many more dead links. I will quickly check if I can recover some of them.

[RedshiftDrift]

@ftessier 80% of the broken links are now fixed!

[doctorlard]

If you have control of DNS you could point both cosmology.info and a.cosmology.info as CNAME to a-cosmology-group.github.io and adjust the GitHub so it goes into the / rather than /acg but I'm not sure how you've set that last bit up.

[RedshiftDrift]

Indeed @doctorlard, I looked into this a few weeks ago to be sure it could be done (before going through the trouble of building the site on GitHub).

It's just easier to forward the browsers to the GitHub webpage for now, but the final step will be to serve the GitHub page from cosmology.info, and I have access to the CNAME A-record in the c-panel configuration (on Hostmonster.com). The DNS records for cosmology.info can be set to a-cosmology-group.github.io/acg/, and the browser will show cosmology.info in the address bar.

The way it's setup is that the website a-cosmology-group.github.io/acg/ is associated with the acg repo through an IP address generated by GitHub that I copy to the A-record.

Hostmonster.com is currently hosting the ACG website/email for ~$110/year. Once the DNS record is changed we won't need them to host the website. I just hope they will accept to host the two URLs cosmology.info (at $30/yr) and cosmologystatement.org (at $35/yr) without charging to host the website on their servers...

[doctorlard]

Okay but DNS A and CNAME records can't use the "/acg" path of a URL since they only deal with domain names, so we'll need something else to handle that (or just move /acg to the / root, perhaps)

[RedshiftDrift]

You are right, but A-records also deal with IP addresses. GitHub generates an IP address for a-cosmology-group.github.io/acg/ which is copied to A-record. See here.

[doctorlard]

Yes, I understand how A and CNAME records work. What I'm saying is that you will need something else to handle the /acg URL path, because when someone arrives at the GitHub-hosted site from a cosmology.info redirect, the DNS will only get you as far as a-cosmology-group.github.io which is currently a 404, whereas the site is at a-cosmology-group.github.io/acg

[ftessier]

I believe github handles that, because you can publish a website from an organization repository.

[RedshiftDrift]

GitHub Pages is supposed to handle that using the Pages configuration of the acg repo.
We'll know soon if it works...

To do:

• forward cosmology.info to https://a-cosmology-group.github.io/acg,
• install BIND on my computer for diagnostics,
• configure GitHub custom subdomain, configure CNAME on HostMonster, etc.,
• configure GitHub enforce HTTPS encryption.

[RedshiftDrift]

It took a while for the changes to propagate through the servers, but it seems to work now! 😅

This can be tested by clicking the first link at the top of this discussion, and end up with https://cosmology.info/ in the URL bar of the browser. (www.cosmology.info also works.)