by RJN » Fri Oct 15, 2010 4:07 pm
It is coming up on a year since the last major change for the Asterisk. I do not think the Asterisk's shape should remain forever constant. I welcome suggestions for improvements. First, should any forums be closed or moved underneath other forums? Here are some changes that might be considered:
The Asterisk Cafe and Open Space seem to have a lot of overlap, should they be combined?
The Science Labs seems to get few comments. Should it be moved under "Learning and Resources"?
The whole "Learning and Resources" section receives relatively few comments. Should comments on them be closed and people who want to comment directed to The Library of the Discussion Forum?
Should a new Learning and Resources classroom titled (something like) "Classroom: Cool Lectures from Anywhere" be added, where, for example, YouTube lectures from Feynman and Hawking could be linked?
In general, I would like to make the Asterisk more appealing to newbies with sincere astronomy questions, on one end, and professional astronomers on the other end. How should we do this? I worry that many newbies are intimidated, while many pros are likely lost to
Evaporative Cooling. Still, here are two suggestions to get more pros to post:
Editorial Forum: Here prominent astronomers, astrophotographers, astro-bloggers, and veteran Asterisk board members (500+ posts or so) would be invited by this forum's moderator (volunteers?) to have their say about something astronomy or APOD or Asterisk related. It would be sort of a perpetual guest blog column, with a new column posted once a week or so for browsing and comments. I think a number of prominent sky enthusiasts would provide an editorial for this forum if asked.
Obituary Forum: Unfortunately, my official thesis adviser, Robert H. Koch, died this past week. There were emails circulating about him among many of his former students and colleagues as well as some comments on Facebook, but no real place for people to contribute memories of him. And I think several people would have wanted to share memories of him. I suspect the same was true for John Huchra, who died last week, but even his Wikipedia page leaves no place for people to leave their memories. Perhaps the Asterisk could take up this role. I would bet it would be slow going at first, and the Asterisk should not want to compete with a site set up by family or friends (in that case we would just place a link), and we would not want negative memories either.
Thoughts?
- RJN
It is coming up on a year since the last major change for the Asterisk. I do not think the Asterisk's shape should remain forever constant. I welcome suggestions for improvements. First, should any forums be closed or moved underneath other forums? Here are some changes that might be considered:
The Asterisk Cafe and Open Space seem to have a lot of overlap, should they be combined?
The Science Labs seems to get few comments. Should it be moved under "Learning and Resources"?
The whole "Learning and Resources" section receives relatively few comments. Should comments on them be closed and people who want to comment directed to The Library of the Discussion Forum?
Should a new Learning and Resources classroom titled (something like) "Classroom: Cool Lectures from Anywhere" be added, where, for example, YouTube lectures from Feynman and Hawking could be linked?
In general, I would like to make the Asterisk more appealing to newbies with sincere astronomy questions, on one end, and professional astronomers on the other end. How should we do this? I worry that many newbies are intimidated, while many pros are likely lost to [url=http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=21579]Evaporative Cooling[/url]. Still, here are two suggestions to get more pros to post:
Editorial Forum: Here prominent astronomers, astrophotographers, astro-bloggers, and veteran Asterisk board members (500+ posts or so) would be invited by this forum's moderator (volunteers?) to have their say about something astronomy or APOD or Asterisk related. It would be sort of a perpetual guest blog column, with a new column posted once a week or so for browsing and comments. I think a number of prominent sky enthusiasts would provide an editorial for this forum if asked.
Obituary Forum: Unfortunately, my official thesis adviser, Robert H. Koch, died this past week. There were emails circulating about him among many of his former students and colleagues as well as some comments on Facebook, but no real place for people to contribute memories of him. And I think several people would have wanted to share memories of him. I suspect the same was true for John Huchra, who died last week, but even his Wikipedia page leaves no place for people to leave their memories. Perhaps the Asterisk could take up this role. I would bet it would be slow going at first, and the Asterisk should not want to compete with a site set up by family or friends (in that case we would just place a link), and we would not want negative memories either.
Thoughts?
- RJN