Welcome to the EAASI User Forum! This space is intended as a one-stop shop for EAASI community members - whether you’re affiliated with the Software Preservation Network, the EAASI Research Alliance, a digital or software preservation practitioner, or just an interested onlooker - to interact with each other, follow news and announcements from the EAASI team, discuss emulation and software history, or report bugs and issues with the EAASI platform. Anyone is welcome to register for an account and join in the conversation. This post is intended to provide some guidance on the Forum and its features, to get you started.
The EAASI User Forum is built on and hosted by Discourse. Any of their general documentation for new users should apply here, but I’ll highlight some particular things to note as well:
Categories
Any user who signs up for the EAASI User Forum can see a number of general-purpose sub-boards or “Categories”, including Announcements, Support, and Software and Emulation News. Each Category has a general description for its intended topics or questions, but please do not worry about posting in “the wrong” place. The EAASI User Forum is still a relatively new space, and we would rather you voice your thought or question and we can sort out the organization as we go.
If you are a member of an EAASI Research Alliance institution (or been given access to a hosted EAASI service by a member), you may also be added by an EAASI team member to a relevant “Group” and receive access to private sub-boards/Categories just for those Groups. The EAASI team adds users to these groups either based on external communications or using the domain of the email address you used to register. If you have any problems with permissions (e.g. you do not see these private/locked categories despite being affiliated with the Research Alliance, please contact @ethan.gates directly here (or by email at ethan.gates at yale.edu)
If you have suggestions for a new Category or other feedback on the Forum’s structure - there’s a Category for that! Please let us know by posting a new thread in the Site Feedback section.
Emails and Notifications
By default, users should receive an email notification from the EAASI User Forum when:
- When someone else directly mentions the user OR a Group that user belongs to in a topic (by using the “@[user_name]” or “@[group_name]” features when writing a new topic or reply)
- Someone directly messages the user (by clicking on their user name, then “Message” on their user profile, to start a private message thread)
- Someone quotes the user
- Someone replies to a topic that the user started
- The user has not “been seen” on Discourse in the last 60 seconds (that is - if one of the four actions above occurs, but the user is still currently logged in to the User Forum, they will receive a notification in the upper-right-hand corner of the Forum, but NOT an email)
Users can change and control their email preferences for the EAASI User Forum at any time by navigating to their profile Preferences:
This allows users to sign up for email digests, “Mailing List” mode (allowing the user to write replies to the Forum via email, rather than navigating to the Forum itself), and adjust the defaults above as desired.
By default users will also receive notifications within the Forum for any Category or topic if:
- Another user mentions their “@[user_name]”
- Another user quotes or replies to them in a topic
- Another user replies a topic the user started
Users can adjust these defaults on a global level, across the site, again in their profile Preferences:
Users can also receive and adjust notifications in the Forum for specific Categories or even individual topics, if desired, using the Notification “Bell” button on any given Category overview page, or on a topic (the Notification button can be found on topics on both the right side and bottom of the page:
Discourse offers a number of different notification levels, depending on whether the user wants to receive more or less granular notifications related to that Category or topic.
