Contact/Help | Rufus Bowen's Notebook

Site Instructions

We have tried to make it as simple and easy as possible to use, but there are always some tasks which are complicated enough that you might need a little help. Below, we have collected some tips from current users for some of the more common gotchas, please read through them to see if they can help solve your problem. If not, please don't hesitate to use the contact form to ask a site administrator for more help.

Please note, all new accounts on this site are moderated. On signing up for this website you will be asked for a username and an email address. Your request will be sent to the site administrators for approval. When your account is approved, you will get an email with instructions for creating a password and completing your profile, you will then be able to start using the site.
At the moment, comments are also moderated. This means that when you leave a comment it is not; automatically published. Instead a notice is sent to the site moderators who can then approve the message if it is appropriate. When your comment is approved, you will get a notice by email and your message will be published on the site.

Adding Comments

Comments are available on each individual problem. At the bottom of each problem page there is a form which will allow you to post a new comment. If you post a comment like this, you are replying directly to the content of the problem itself, if you want to reply to someone else's comment (i.e. make a comment on a comment), you can use the reply link beneath the comment you want to reply to. Adding comments this way allows them to be threaded (visually they are indented) giving each comment a context.
Comment support referencing the bibliography. References are made by including the citation key or "citekey" in a tag within your comment. For example, if you wanted to refer to a paper which has the citekey "PS97", you would write it as [bib]PS97[/bib]. A small bibliography would automatically be attached to your comment and linked to the referenced item. The simplest way to find citekeys at the moment is to browse the citation links page. The first column in the table on that page lists the citekey. A search feature for the comment editor is in development and should be available soon.
This site supports LaTeX for the inclusion of math. To use this feature, surrounding any formulae with dollar signs (e.g $\LaTeX$) and the results should render as LaTeX when you submit the comment. For more information on this and on how to use the comment editor in general, see the filter tips page.

Bibliography

Bibliographic entries are available to allow you to provide references to in your comments. A bibliography with some useful entries has already been constructed and can be viewed by clicking on the Bibliography link in the page header. If you can't find the reference that you need we encourage you to add a new entry to the bibliography by clicking on the Add Bibliography Entry link in the sidebar (when you are logged in). That link will take you to a form where you can describe the reference using standard bibliography parameters. You can fill in the form manually, adding title, author etc, or you can use the "Paste BibTeX Record" button. Clicking on that button will give you and area where you can paste a valid BibTeX entry to prepopulate the form fields. After saving your new entry you will see a summary of the new entry along with the generated citekey and your entry will be added to the global bibliography.
A very useful source of citations is the Google Scholar service, which supports export to BiBTeX which can then be directly added to the site using the "Paste BiBTeX Record" button as described above. To use it, simply search Google Scholar for the paper you want to reference, then click the "Cite" link underneath the correct search result and finally click the BiBTeX button in the window that opens. Copy the resulting BibTeX into your clipboard then come back to "add bibliography entry" page, click the "Paste BibTeX Record button and paste in the contents of your clipboard. When you hit save, that record will be saved to the site and you will see a page with the citation key so that you can start using it.