Providing Support to the Community

Given the high-profile nature of Rubin Observatory within the astronomical community, and our policy of making all of our software available to the public under open-source licenses, we expect substantial interest from the community in general, and from the Science Collaborations in particular, in using and understanding both our code and our data products. As they do so, they will undoubtedly have questions and require technical support or algorithmic help. When we enter operation, the project’s Community Engagement Team will coordinate a system for helping people find the answers they need, as described in RTN-006. However, during construction, members of the Data Management team have the most expertise and experience, so it is natural that the community will turn to us for help. It is important to manage these interactions in a way that:

• Makes information available to the greatest possible number of consumers;
• Avoids overwhelming our limited development resources with community requests;
• Facilitates transition to the operations-era community support model.

To this end, you are requested to follow the policy described in DMTN-155 when contacted by members of the community looking for support. That document provides a detailed policy and accompanying rationale; to summarize, the aim is to redirect all requests for help to the Community Forum where they can be properly addressed, rather than having members of the DM team directly answer questions on Slack or by email.