Wiki, Website and Handbook (and Extras)

One of the internal services roles as a member of the Predictive Brain Lab is the one to maintain the website, the lab’s handbook and the wiki (what you are reading now)

Necessary Steps

In order to be able to access all of these resources as an account owner you will need to request access to the lab’s account. This can be requested from Floris directly or the person that was previously in charge of the role.

In order to access all of the accounts, you need to be connected to the EduVPN. Otherwise, it will ask you for authentication of the accounts

Wiki

The management of the wiki should be relatively straightforward. The important thing you need to be familiar with is how to use GitHub. If you are taking this role, it is assumed you must have this knowledge. However, if this is not the case, you can look at the GitHub resources in the wiki and get up to speed!

You will be responsible to:

  1. Update the knowledge contained
    1. Adding input from other lab members in the forms of requests (in Github)
    2. Adding information mentioned during any lab meeting that might be relevant
    3. Filling a gap of knowledge on information that is useful for everyone at the lab
  2. Be sure that the page is still working and everyone in the lab (old and new members) has access to the information.

It is recommended to set specific date(s) during the time you are responsible for the maintenance of the wiki to ensure all the information is still relevant. There are certain factors that might be changing at the insitute make certain pages obsolte. In order for the wiki not to die (like previous attempts) it is important to make this a useful resource. Hence, you should also:

  • Schedule a general lab meeting to discuss how often people use this resoruce and how can we increase its usage

Website

Similar to the wiki, you will need access to the lab’s account to be able to edit the website. You will find everything you need to know about the website on the Drive of the account.

Your role as a website manager consists of the following tasks:

  • Make sure you update the profiles of the lab members if there are any new members/members leaving/requests for change (these will be received in the form of email)
  • Make sure you are keeping up to date uploading photos from social activities/outings
  • Make sure you are adding information about important events happening at the lab in the Social & News tab
  • Make sure that all the links on the website are currenlty working
  • If there are changes to the members of the lab, it is a good idea to take a new group picture during the Lab Retreat.
  • You should keep an alert of any new publications happening at the lab (you can add an alert with Floris’ name on google scholar)
  • You should add a button to the home screen advertising a position if one becomes available

For the management of the website, you can discuss with Floris is there are any specific tasks he would like you to get done or NOT to do.

Handbook

The handbook is a collective effort from the members of the Predictive Brain Lab to put in paper all the values, norms and expectations from everyone that joins the lab.

A part of your responsibility with your service role is to see that all the information present in the handbook is up to date with the norms that have been established in the lab. These tend to be dynamic which means that the information that has been written there can get outdated very quickly. Additionally, it is not just the norms but also the links or specific resoruces that might stop working at any point for various reasons. Your work is to make sure the document stays up to date and everything associated with it keeps working.

If you are unsure about norms/rules, discuss them with Floris. Otherwise, schedule a brief discussion during the general lab meeting.

How do you do this?

  • Most important: check that the link for the handbook is working and that the documents (doc, pdf) are available and working on Drive
  • Schedule on your agenda once every three/four months a check the functionality of all the different links.
    • On the same check, you should go through all the information and see whether anything has changed over the last months
    • If you make any edits, remember to share these with the group and update the review date on the document

MatterMost

The official communication channel for the lab is MatterMost. In general, there should be enough information in the handbook for everyone to be able to set their MatterMost account and get started. However, there might be cases in which things are not so straightforwards:

  1. When someone is struggling to open their account
  2. When someone external to the Donders wants to be part of the MatterMost

What do you do then?

To be able to access the mattermost, you need to login from the server of the faculty of social sciences. If you try to do it from somewhere else it will just not work. However, to be able to succesfully login, you will need to have a @donders.ru.nl account or one affiliated wiht the RU.

If the person trying to join does not yet have one, ask admin to provide one for them. If the person trying to join is external, you will have to follow these steps:

  1. Check this website where it tells you what to do (in case the information below is outdated)
  2. Email gitlab@socsci.ru.nl from your own Donders email requesting an account for the person that wants to join the lab
    1. You will have to provide the Name, Username and Email Address of the person that will be joining (they usually prefer if the email address you provide is linked to some other university institution where the person is currently affiliated)
  3. They administration will contact the new user directly with instructions on how to join

Extra (Security and Google Group)

Some of our resources, such as the handbook, are intended to be used by the lab members. However, as we are commited to OpenScience, they are also shared with the scientific community as a whole. Why? Because we believe other can also benefit from our work. The issue is that within the handbook, we have links towards documents that contain private information that we might not want everyone to access. Hence, we have made all these documents private so only lab members can access them.

How does this work?

When lab members join the Predictive Brain Lab, they will be automatically added to the Google Groups of the lab. Floris might do this or he might ask you to do it. Whenever someone joins, you should let them know that the email they decide to use will be the email that they need to use when trying to access any lab document. This means, they need to be logged in to that account on their Google Drive to be able to access any document.

If someone comes to you with access trouble, always check whether this is not because they are not logged in.

What does this work entail for you?

When you decide to create/edit a document that needs to be private and shared with all lab members, add the Predictive Brain Lab Google Group account to the users allow to edit/comment/see the document. This should give everyone in that mailing list access to the document.

The Predictive Brain Lab account should give you admin access to the Google Groups to do any edits you may need.