Welcome! We are so glad you joined us.
ESCS community
A place to discuss how we can make computational science more sustainable, to connect with other scientists, share best practices, ask questions etc.
The community has 3 components (so far!): this forum, a mailing list and regular community calls online. You can get involve in any/all of these, depending on your interests!
Here are some things you can do to get started:
Update your profile by adding your picture and information about yourself and your interests to your profile
Introduce yourself in the introductions topic to get to know the other members of the community.
Get to know the community by browsing discussions that are already happening here (check out all the categories!). When you find a post interesting, informative, or entertaining, use the 
to show your appreciation or support!
Contribute by commenting, sharing your own perspective, asking questions, or offering feedback in the discussion. Before replying or starting new topics, please review the Community Guidelines.
And don’t worry, you can always customise the level of notifications you get!
We haven’t created too many categories for now, we will create more as the community grows… any suggestions? Post them in Feedback!
All the topics related to getting started on this platform can be accessed by going to the getting-started tag!
A quick summary of Discourse’s terminology (but maybe best to check the full new user guide):
-
Topic: The collection of messages grouped together in a meaningful conversation, with a title, listed in a category, beginning with an Original Post, and including all replies in chronological order. Elsewhere this might be called a ‘thread’ but Discourse uses ‘topic’ since thread is used for linked elements that can go off in many different directions (and be confused with programming terms).
-
Post: Each element of a topic is referred to as a post. Each post has its own author and can be moved to a different topic if necessary, or even become the start of a new topic.
-
Category: The primary means of organizing topics. Each topic is placed in exactly one category. Categories have permissions which can restrict which users can create, reply, and see its topics. You can also configure notification preferences per category or even mute them as explained below. Categories are a similar concept to a ‘forum’ on other sites.
-
Tag: A marker placed on a topic to describe it. While a topic can only have one category, it can have multiple tags. New tags can be created by some users.
-
Channel: A group chat for more unstructured discussions. Channels can be public or private. And of course, there is always the option to DM individual users!
-
User : Discourse sites may be private or public for anyone to read, but you will always be required to register in order to create posts and record any actions such as bookmarking, liking, tagging, and flagging.
If you need help or have a suggestion, feel free to ask in Feedback or contact the admins.