More problems with Forum software

[mecej4]

At the top of the MKL forum there is a link with the text "Click here for more information about private thread." Clicking on the link leads to a "Page Not Found" message.

Is is no longer possible to post privately?

[TimP]

"Send author a message" was suggested recently as the replacement for private posting.  This caught me by surprise as well. In some cases it might require customers to wait until someone who can take responsibility enters the thread.

I'm getting more messages this way than I consider appropriate.  If someone has a question which is clearly related to the thread and doesn't need to be private, I'd prefer to see an ordinary reply.

[mecej4]

"Send author a message" is not of much use -- it would just send the message back to myself -- when one is starting a new thread and wishes to make the post readable only by Intel staff.

In my particular case, the reason to go private is as follows.

A number of MKL F77 examples concerning adding and multiplying sparse matrices use Cray pointers and the corresponding mkl_malloc() and mkl_free() calls. These can be quite confusing to casual users of Fortran, as you can see in a recent post (Topic 391169) in the MKL forum.

I wanted to post modified versions of the examples that use ALLOCATE and DEALLOCATE instead of going the Cray pointer route, as dynamic allocation is available in all F9+ and in some F77 compilers, with a request to replace the old examples with these modifications or something similar. However, there is a stern copyright message at the top of the example files which forbids modification without Intel's written permission. I thought that I'd play it safe and post the modified files privately.

[TimP]

I agree with the suggestion about replacing Cray pointers in MKL examples, particularly when not based on portable iso_c_binding equivalent methods, by allocate and deallocate.

If you find it reasonable, I would post your suggestions as documentation issues against MKL on premier.intel.com, explaining that you would have preferred the forum if private posts were still available or you could get assurance which counts as "written permission" for forum posts.

[mecej4]

TimP,

I followed your advice and posted the suggestion with the files to Premier Support. The issue number is 696127 .

[SergeyKostrov]

It gets a little bit confusing because you're mixing discussions about Forum website and MKL problems in the thread titled More problems with Forum software. Unfortunately, I see that some problems with IDZ website ( described during last 8 months ) are Not solved.

[mecej4]

Sergey Kostrov wrote:

It gets a little bit confusing because you're mixing discussions about Forum website and MKL problems in the thread titled More problems with Forum software.

I agree. The old forum software (if I remember correctly) allowed the title of a response in a thread to be a modification of/different from the original title -- a feature that helped reduce confusion when a thread subject started diverging or morphing.

I wonder how many users, given the choice between the new and old forum behavior, would choose to keep the old one. This speculation, of course, is from a user perspective, and does not take into account the maintenance and searching issues of running a number of forums.

[Todd_R_Intel]

I removed the comments from the top of thread so we no longer have a broken link (sorry about that). I'll ask about putting some useful information --- hopefully something about how you can use the 'message' feature to do something like what you want.

I also received your message in premier support (with attachments) and will look into how you can share them, or how we can incorporate the improvements. Thanks for your contribution!

Todd

[mecej4]

I also received your message in premier support (with attachments) and will look into how you can share them, or how we can incorporate the improvements

Thanks for the rapid response, Todd.

The examples included with MKL illustrate sparse addition and multiplication for four argument types: real, double precision, complex and double complex. The attachments that I provided covered only the real type. If you wish I can provide the modified examples for the other types (six more files, which I already have ready to send).

[SergeyKostrov]

>>...I wonder how many users, given the choice between the new and old forum behavior, would choose to keep the old one... I think new IDZ users who registered on IDZ after August 2012 simply do not know about existence of ISN ( previous version of website ). However, I could count about 10-15 the most active ISN & IDZ users ( with a couple of posts every day during last 1.5 years ) who are aware of all these problems and provided feedbacks, expressed concerns, reported problems, etc.