How we interact on Neurostars

Courses Neuromatch Academy
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To make the most of our neurostars discourse, we will all adhere to these basic rules.

Most importantly, we treat each other with respect and support people of all backgrounds and identities. Please read up on our Code of Conduct here. Please report any violations against our philosophy of mutual respect through this form.

On to some practical matters:

Naming: please add the pronouns with which you would like to be addressed to your profile name. Common examples include: (they/their), (she/her), (he/him), (ze/zir).

Sub-categories: Our discourse has several different sub-categories and depending on your status - observer, student, teaching assistant (TA), mentor or admin - you may not have access to all of them.
Your Pod: each group of students share a private interaction space with their TAs and mentors to discuss lectures, tutorials & projects and set up private meetings
Projects: a space to discuss projects, data and ideas across pods
Tech stuff: technical issues with Zoom, Colab and other technologies
Professional development: mentors offer advise to TAs and students
Job board: mentors and TAs can post job opportunities for everyone to see
TAs: training, information & continued support for TAs
Mentors: meet colleagues, discuss projects and find collaborators from around the world
Mentors & TAs: a space for all TAs and mentors to interact across pod-boarders

Topics and tags: Add new topics of discussion to the sub-category they best fit into and add at least one tag. Tags will help other users to find your topic. We have created tags in five different categories, but you can also add your own.
WxDy: each day has its own parent tag (e.g. W2D3 for week 2, day 3), subtags for each day include intro, outro as well as all scientific concepts covered that day
technical: zoom, colab, pythonSetUp, neurostars, AV
python: numpy, pandas, matplotlib, tensorflow, pytorch
prof-dev
mentors: collaboration, dataset-published

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Neurostars is the main communication platform during the Neuromatch Academy course. Here is how to use it.

Rules

Most importantly, we treat each other with respect and support people of all backgrounds and identities. Please read up on our Code of Conduct here. Please report any violations against our philosophy of mutual respect through this form.

#Navigating through Neurostars: How to use discourse

Edit your profile

Naming: please use your actual name as your profile name and add the pronouns with which you would like to be addressed. Common examples include: (they/their), (she/her), (he/him), (ze/zir).

When you get started, please introduce yourself in 2-3 lines, ideally with links for contact (mail/twitter/linkedin).

How to find information

The Neurostars platform serves as a general communication platform for the Neuromatch academy, simultaneously subserving 3 purposes:

  • Announcements from the organizers
  • Internal organization of subgroups
  • General forum for discussions

As a communication platform, where content is solely entered in the form of messages, structure is provided by categories and tags given to messages.

Categories

Categories determine who has access to a message. You’ll find other categories besides ’Neuromatch Academy’, which are open-access and share the same platform.

At this level, you’ll mostly find general information from the organizers, such as
* Announcements
* FAQ (Summaries for each day)

Within the* ’Neuromatch Academy’ category you’ll find sub-categories, which are again used to restrict access to certain groups of people. For example, each pod will have a special sub-category, which can only be seen by members of that pod. Depending on your status, you may find the following subcategories:

  • Your Pod: each group of students share a private interaction space with their TAs and mentors to discuss lectures, tutorials & projects and set up private meetings
  • Projects: a space to discuss projects, data and ideas across pods
  • Tech stuff: technical issues with Zoom, Colab and other technologies
  • Professional development: mentors offer advise to TAs and students
  • Job board: mentors and TAs can post job opportunities for everyone to see
  • TAs: training, information & continued support for TAs
  • Mentors: meet colleagues, discuss projects and find collaborators from around the world
  • Mentors & TAs: a space for all TAs and mentors to interact across pod-boarders

Tags

We created a hierarchy of predefined tags and sub-tags, such that messages can efficiently be found by relevant people. Please use them! You may create your own if necessary.

To make the structure of tags a little less confusing, here is a list of tags and corresponding sub-tags to use:

  • WxDy — each day has its own parent tag (e.g. W2D3 for week 2, day 3)
    • concepts — topics taught that day
    • intro
    • outro
  • technical
    • zoom
    • colab
    • pythonSetUp
    • neurostars
    • AV
  • python
    • numpy
    • pandas
    • matplotlib
    • tensorflow
    • pyTorch
  • prof-dev
  • projects
    • dataset
    • tools
    • frameworks
    • github
  • mentors
    • collaboration
    • dataset-published

How to post

When you post messages, you’ll need to decide on a category/sub-category (which decides who is supposed to see your message) a tag (what your message is about) and ideally a sub-tag (to be more specific).

Use the drop-down menu to assign your message a sub-category and tags, such that others can find it. Messages to your pod can only be seen by other members of your Pod.

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Hi there,
do I understand it right, that the said tags and subcategories are in the making but not there already?
I can only see the high level categories and tags so far but nothing on the sub-category/sub-tag level and that confuses me. I cannot see the welcome-to-neuromatch-for-tas thread for instance, it seems that my user is not eligible for that link and I don’t know where to put that issue.

Best regards,
Sophie

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Hey Sophie,

  1. Yes, you’re right we’re still constantly changing this platform, and I haven’t changed the instructions yet. Will do.
  2. I think you haven’t given access yet. Don’t worry, there are lots of people and it is a rather tedious process, so please wait for another two days. You should get a separate invite email from Neurostars.
    Oliver
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Hey Oliver,

thanks for getting back to me.
I got an invitation email from Neurostars but it bounced me with the following screen when I clicked the link.
image

Best,
Sophie

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Ok, seems that I don’t have sufficient rights in the forum to resolve this issue. Could you try another username? I’m worried that this might become a common issue. If this doesn’t work, I’ll ask an admin for help.

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Hey Sophie,
This seems a bit techical, it looks like I can make you TA, but not give you access to your pod. So what I’m going to try is to deactivate you, which means that you’d get an email to activate your account again.

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Hey Sophie,
I requested an admin to give you access to your pod. They’re quite busy these days, but you’ll get access within 1-2 days.
Oliver

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Hey Sophie,
I think I figured out the problem (by sending an invite to another email-address of mine). I got the same issue when trying to use the link, but when I used a different browser, it worked! I guess that the platform is smart enough to figure out when there already is a user from the same browser window, and therefore prevents another Neurostars account to be created. Please let me know whether this would fix your problem.
Oliver

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