User Tracking

[cbezik]

One often desired goal is to provide some way to track downloads of people using SSAGES. A direct tracking of people who have cloned the repository is impossible, so our best bets are either to add either (or both) of a:

• Mailing list

• User forum

I have no experience setting up either of these things but I am sure some free service exists to coordinate them. We should decide which is best (or if both together is best), set them up, then provide links via this site.

[jonathankwhitmer]

I think a user forum such as google groups is best, because it emails a digest of the latest updates, thus serving the purposes of both. Hoomd functions this way [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/hoomd-users]. Of course, one must have a google account to do this, but we should be able to keep track of posters and subscribers easily using this.

If we're wanting to track downloads, github does not allow us to do this unless the repository is forked or the tarball is downloaded. I'm not sure if there is a way to have the repository be "partially" accessible where you can grab the tarballs but not the development version. If that was the case, we can track non-developers, and simply add those who want the development version to the developers list as collaborators.

Thoughts on whether this would work?

[cbezik]

I think the Google groups idea is very good, that seems like a common and efficient way to manage this sort of thing. I'm guessing a Google account won't pose a barrier to most of our users.

Off the top of my head, I think the only way to provide access only to a tarball and not allow cloning/forking of the public repository would be to not have a public GitHub repository, and simply distribute the tarball. Others should weigh in but I think we lose a valuable way for users to engage and keep the package updated if we block their access to a public repository.

It's also entirely possible that I don't know enough about git/GitHub to know what other options might be possible - I'll try to keep searching.