[Sea-mat] Question - Who is the owner of the SEA-MAT site?

[Lisa Kempler]

Hello, Rich.
Nice to meet you, Matthias, at least virtually.

Thanks for getting back to me, both via phone and email.

Sorry for my slow reply - I was at AGU, now I'm out for a week, and somewhere in the middle your emails vaporized from my Inbox. Recalling I never responded, here I am.

Good discussion here.
Sounds to me like there are two separate topics here.

1) Whether and how to get the MATLAB tools on the SEA-MAT page into more maintainable and searchable location.  Good question
I believe some of them already are in GitHub or File Exchange.  I didn't check all. Not sure, like you said, if they're all still usable.
If you were willing, it would be worth checking what's where and maybe last time updated to figure out how much is still up-to-date and worthy of referencing.

Note that there is a GitHub peering capability in File Exchange, which means that code can be posted in GitHub and then essentially pointed to from FE for download, so that there aren't two code hosting locations.  See here for an example:  https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/52707-geoscience-community-codes-gismo?s_tid=srchtitle (look in upper right). 
Or you could choose to put them only on File Exchange, which doesn't have the same sort of collaborative development options as Git. Regardless, Google will easily find either option, particular if there are decent descriptions in the summaries, which is a key objective (discoverability). 

To answer Matthias' question, I actually can't put them on File Exchange or GitHub.  Putting them there makes me the owner - I'd be responsible for the code, will receive questions and comments, and if anything needs to change. Me being the owner of record doesn't make much sense, as I'm not familiar with the contents. The owners should really post and own it. It's their choice how they maintain and support the code once it's posted. 
If that was implied, sorry. My goal is to make good tools available via their rightful communities.

2) The SEA-MAT page.

Generally speaking, I like topic-oriented pages. They're good for web searchers who are looking for a type of tool. They can see them all aggregated in one location. If there's a supporting site or owner, they can get questions answered that way. GitHub also has the option to group tools, so that's another option. If the SEA-MAT page were sufficiently current, you could keep it up for a while. If there were another logical owner, maybe it could be transitioned. But, Rich, you're right, in principle;  once every tool that's current has already been migrated to GitHub or File Exchange, the page is logically redundant.

Up to you how you want to handle it, of course. If you had an idea for a new owner, that could work, too.
Do you know how much traffic it gets? That might be the deciding factor right there. 

What do you think?

Lisa

-----Original Message-----
From: Matthias Lankhorst [mailto:mlankhorst at ucsd.edu] 
Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2016 5:02 PM
To: Signell, Richard <rsignell at usgs.gov>
Cc: Lisa Kempler <Lisa.Kempler at mathworks.com>; sea-mat at whoi.edu
Subject: Re: [Sea-mat] Question - Who is the owner of the SEA-MAT site?

Hi,

I didn't exactly remember that I was on this e-mail list, nor do I know what SVN or PR means. I share Rich's sentiment that most of the stuff on the page is probably not being maintained but still useful, one way or the other. I probably haven't downloaded anything recently, but given that I have (and use!) many of the packages on my local computer, I assume I must have in the past.

I know github, and am pretty sure this would work.

I also know Mathworks FileExchange, which I am sure will work. If Mathworks is willing to host these packages there (and Lisa is willing to be the person pulling them all in), that will be a wonderful solution. Lisa, is that what is behind your question?

I also noticed that Lisa's original e-mail is dated more than a month ago. It only arrived in my Inbox today. Not sure what went wrong there (moderated e-mail list with hibernating moderator?).

Regards, Matthias



On Tue, 2016-12-13 at 15:30 -0500, Signell, Richard wrote:
> Lisa,
> 
> I started this site about 20 years ago when we didn't have things like
> GitHub, and we had these highly-curated lists.   I don't think there
> have many (or any?)  modifications to that page in the last 10 years 
> or so.
> 
> I'm guessing a lot of the packages on SEA-MAT are stale, with more 
> recent versions on SVN or Git somewhere, but there is a chance that 
> some of those packages are still useful and SEA-MAT is the only place 
> to get them.
> 
> I'd actually like to shut this page down since I don't really maintain it.
> 
> Perhaps we could move all the code to Github and let people update it 
> via PR or raise issues to point to newer versions of the code....
> 
> Ideas?
> 
> -Rich
> 
> On Mon, Nov 7, 2016 at 3:57 PM, Lisa Kempler <Lisa.Kempler at mathworks.com> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> >
> >
> > My name is Lisa Kempler. I work with the oceanography and other 
> > geoscience communities who use MATLAB.
> >
> >
> >
> > I’ve been to the SEA-MAT site multiple times and often point others to it.
> >
> > I was wondering who manages this site.
> >
> > I’d be interesting in talking with them.
> >
> >
> >
> > Please let me know who to contact. Thanks.
> >
> >
> >
> > Lisa
> >
> >
> >
> > Lisa Kempler
> >
> > MATLAB Community Strategist
> >
> > MathWorks
> >
> > 508-647-7462
> >
> > www.mathworks.com/products
> >
> > http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Sea-mat maillist  -  Sea-mat at whoi.edu 
> > http://mailman.whoi.edu/mailman/listinfo/sea-mat
> >
> 
> 
> 

--
_______________________________________

 Dr. Matthias Lankhorst
 Scripps Institution of Oceanography
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