We Do Use IM in ATLAS and D0!

So, as an experiment, I turned on the little bit of toast that pops up on my desktop each time email arrives. The toast contains the subject line, and the first one or two lines of the email. I usually leave this off as I get email often enough I’d never get any work done I’d be so distracted by the torrent.

And I now realize we do use IM in ATLAS and D0. Just instead of this new fangled interface, we use our email as the interface. Lots of the emails are one line long – “did you try x” or “was is the Y environment variable set to?”

So you could never move this to be a general IM list or chat room. I suppose what you’d want is a community you could come to with “I’m trying to solve X” and then one person would say “Hey — I know a bunch about X – lets talk” – and then the chat occurs out of the sight of everyone else. Of course, the conversation is recorded (i.e. the solution is recorded) so that next time someone asks a question the first thing that happens is a robot responds with “Hey — these questions were asked in the past – they may answer it for you” or something like that.

Ok. That is the best I can do. I guess that is using IM as a help desk – a way to replace mailing lists.