Stack Exchange Question & Answer platform

Have you ever been stuck when trying to get a hydrological model to work, not able to find the solution in a manual or from colleagues, and struggling to contact an expert with time to assist?

Are you an advanced model user who wishes they could help others more, but don’t have much spare time for added meetings or troubleshooting via email?

Are you an instructor who spends a lot of time answering the same modelling questions from your students many times over?

The Stack Exchange platform is a readily available resource that can easily be used as a support system for hydrological modelling. It is a well-known, free, question-and-answer (Q&A) website. Anyone can create a log-in and ask or answer a question, tagging it for specific themes. Questions and answers on the site are then easy to search for and find. For hydrological modelling questions, we advocate use of the Earth Science Stack Exchange.

By using such a platform, we can:

• make support for hydrological modelling, across various modelling tools, more accessible and transparent online, and
• become more efficient in providing one another with support by documenting questions and answers on an easily searchable website, such that advanced users do not need to answer the same common questions multiple times over.

Researchers, students and practitioners are encouraged to add their model-related questions to the platform using clearly specified tags, and answer each other's questions, starting a critical mass of activity on the site. This will strengthen the modelling community in South Africa and can also facilitate engagement with overseas users of the same modelling tools. The material below describes how Stack Exchange works and gives guidelines for use in this context.

Lecturers, instructors, advanced users: Consider transitioning from answering questions via email to answering them on Stack Exchange. Request that the person asking puts their question on the site and sends you the link it. You can also post common Q&A’s to the site in advance (you can answer your own question) and direct people to look there first before coming to you with questions.

Students, newer model users: Try asking your questions on Stack Exchange rather than via email. With time there will be more and more Q&As on the site so you can search existing posts for help first, before posting a new question. When you’ve posted a new question, you can send the link to a lecturer or advanced user who you think can answer it and ask them if they can answer via the site.

Everyone: If you’ve worked through a problem on your own, with a group, or with an instructor, do the community a favour and post it as a Q&A on Stack Exchange. One person can post the question and another can answer, or one can post both Q&A. This allows anyone in the world to find the Q&A, and you may even get suggestions of other more efficient solutions.