by owlice » Fri Feb 03, 2017 9:53 am
mnash wrote:
Links to potentially unfamiliar astronomical terms are surely appropriate and useful, but it's a little insulting to assume that a reader needs help finding out about the most mundane and commonly known facts, and links to completely inane material are worse than unhelpful, they are distracting and diminish the intellectual appeal of APOD.
Matt,
Welcome to APOD and Asterisk! Yes, some APODs have more links than others and I think it's pretty normal that some links won't appeal to all.
APOD is written for a wide audience. It's an education and public outreach (EPO) service and is used in grade/middle/high schools in addition to college classes, and of course is viewed by adults with many different levels of knowledge about and interest in astronomy, from complete novices to folks with PhDs in astrophysics. APOD is translated into 20+ languages and is viewed all over the world by people with different levels of computer experience (so much so that I wonder whether I should point out that if you hover your mouse pointer over a link, most browsers will let you know where the link goes, making it possible to avoid clicking on, for example, the USA link leading to the USA entry in the CIA Factbook, a great resource).
Given the diversity of APOD's audience, one can easily imagine that what educates one may not educate another, and that what amuses one person might not amuse someone else. Chris could do without the cats -- nothing wrong with that! -- yet a lot of others like the links to animal pictures and look specifically for them by scanning the text and trying to figure out which link might lead to one. For this particular APOD, with text reading "clouds sometimes get in the way," why of
course there'd be a link to "Both Sides Now," which made me laugh.
You probably appreciate the Sunday APODs, yet these annoy some long-time viewers, as Sunday APODs are often repeats. Many viewers haven't seen them, however, and these repeats tend to be "really spectacular or important astronomy pictures" (as the
APOD FAQ says).
So I guess my point is that whatever annoys you about APOD now is likely to change over time!
![Very Happy :-D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
(For the record, I'm not annoyed by any aspect of APOD; I love it all.) Happy viewing, and again, welcome to Asterisk!
Owlice
[quote="mnash"]
Links to potentially unfamiliar astronomical terms are surely appropriate and useful, but it's a little insulting to assume that a reader needs help finding out about the most mundane and commonly known facts, and links to completely inane material are worse than unhelpful, they are distracting and diminish the intellectual appeal of APOD.[/quote]
Matt,
Welcome to APOD and Asterisk! Yes, some APODs have more links than others and I think it's pretty normal that some links won't appeal to all.
APOD is written for a wide audience. It's an education and public outreach (EPO) service and is used in grade/middle/high schools in addition to college classes, and of course is viewed by adults with many different levels of knowledge about and interest in astronomy, from complete novices to folks with PhDs in astrophysics. APOD is translated into 20+ languages and is viewed all over the world by people with different levels of computer experience (so much so that I wonder whether I should point out that if you hover your mouse pointer over a link, most browsers will let you know where the link goes, making it possible to avoid clicking on, for example, the USA link leading to the USA entry in the CIA Factbook, a great resource).
Given the diversity of APOD's audience, one can easily imagine that what educates one may not educate another, and that what amuses one person might not amuse someone else. Chris could do without the cats -- nothing wrong with that! -- yet a lot of others like the links to animal pictures and look specifically for them by scanning the text and trying to figure out which link might lead to one. For this particular APOD, with text reading "clouds sometimes get in the way," why of [i]course[/i] there'd be a link to "Both Sides Now," which made me laugh.
You probably appreciate the Sunday APODs, yet these annoy some long-time viewers, as Sunday APODs are often repeats. Many viewers haven't seen them, however, and these repeats tend to be "really spectacular or important astronomy pictures" (as the [url=https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap_faq.html]APOD FAQ[/url] says).
So I guess my point is that whatever annoys you about APOD now is likely to change over time! :-D (For the record, I'm not annoyed by any aspect of APOD; I love it all.) Happy viewing, and again, welcome to Asterisk!
Owlice