Executive summary: 1. Send a 1-paragraph evaluation of your observing at the end of each night and/or run to the observing specialist for inclusion in the nightly logs. 2. Use the problem reporting web page, http://www.apo.nmsu.edu/Databases/send-pr.html to point out specific problems you encounter. 3. Communicate longer-term problems, concerns, and suggestions to your User's Committee representative. Hello all, Because of the nature of remote observing, the amount of feedback from the observers to the observatory about various concerns or problems they might have had, has been less than ideal. At observatories where the observers travel to the telescope, they interact closely and personally with the observing specialists, and thus can effectively communicate any problems they may have, or, indeed, let the observing specialist know when they are getting great data. When observing remotely, this communication is not always there. This has several consequences: 1. The observing specialist and the observer often have quite different perspectives on how a given night or run turned out; observers occasionally are frustrated when the night logs do not reflect the problems they have had. 2. The observer may be able to make constructive criticisms or suggestions for operations that could be to everybody's benefit. 3. There is no formal mechanism in place for observers to let the observatory know that things are going well. Of course, the APO User's Committee, with a representative at each member institution, is in place to form a communications link between the observatory and its users, but there is clearly a need for a more immediate path for users to make comments and suggestions. Observers will have comments for the night or for the run on two timescales: 1. Immediately after the end of the run; 2. Several days later, after they have had a chance to digest their data and/or compose their thoughts. For the former, we suggest that the observer write up a short paragraph or two at the end of the night, and e-mail it to the observing specialist, to be included in the night logs (after some suitable editing for brevity and clarity). If the observer is not able to do so right away (e.g., because they are too exhausted, simply need some time to gather their thoughts, or don't have anything to say), the observing specialist should send the logs out anyway; we definitely do not want to be in the position of having the observing specialists delaying the distribution of the logs by half a day while they wait for the report of the observer. Longer-term comments will come in two types: 1. General statements about the kind of science done during the run and how things went. 2. Specific recommendations, suggestions, or complaints about various aspects of the observatory. We have a mechanism in place for the latter, that is not widely known: one can issue problem reports from the Web: http://www.apo.nmsu.edu/Databases/send-pr.html This is sent to the technical staff at the observatory, and appropriate action is taken. You will get an e-mail from one of the observatory staff describing the response of the observatory to your problem report. There are means to check the problem report database to assess the status of a given problem report; see http://www.apo.nmsu.edu/Databases/query-pr.html In summary, I suggest that 1. All observers submit a brief (1 paragraph) description of how they thought their night went, by the end of the night or their run. If all went great, they should say so! This gets appended to the night logs put out by the observing specialist. If the observer doesn't get around to it, the logs go out anyway. 2. The observers are urged to use the problem reports page for specific suggestions, bug reports, or recommendations. 3. Longer-term complaints, suggestions, etc., be communicated to your representative on the User's Committee, and/or expressed in e-mail to the Observatory Director. If these pathways to communication are used by the user's community, the amount of communication in the 3.5m project will increase, to the benefit of everybody. Michael Strauss APO APO APO APO APO Apache Point Observatory 3.5m APO APO APO APO APO This is message 210 in the apo35-general archive. You can find APO the archive on http://www.astro.princeton.edu/APO/apo35-general/INDEX.html APO To join/leave the list, send mail to apo35-request@astro.princeton.edu APO To post a message, mail it to apo35-general@astro.princeton.edu APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO