Starship Asterisk*

Whoever it is that does such things - you should have an obvious link to APOD. I have been looking at APOD daily for years, and only the other day when I was looking at http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120524.html I somehow found myself on this forum. Maybe I clicked the wrong button. I am glad I did, but how many others are there like me that would be glad to find this forum, but have no idea.

The "Discuss" link at the bottom of every APOD page takes one to the discussion thread, here at Asterisk, for that day's APOD.

As you have seen from the APOD you link to, APOD links to this discussion site on occasion (in addition to the "Discuss" link). In this month alone, APOD has linked to this discussion site at least 12 times, including the May 24 link to the 2nd assessment poll. Some links have been separate from the text, as on the 24th, and others have been within the APOD text; links have gone to the annular eclipse Gallery thread, the two assessment polls, an APOD collection thread (of partial/annular eclipses), a poll asking whether people had seen the day's image before, the Supermoon gallery, and the Extraordinary Concepts in Physics course (one of two free courses on this site). Sometimes the links go to the day's discussion thread too, such as one on March 5 which asked "Can you identify any of the landscapes?"

(I track the links from APOD to Asterisk to pair up with Google Analytics to see which links had the most influence on Asterisk traffic. I'm sure I've missed some, but I've got most of them. APOD has run many links to Asterisk.)

I think many people just don't see the Discuss link, and just don't click on other links that APOD has; what else could APOD do to make it clearer that there are discussion forums for APOD? This is a serious question. We would like more people to participate! How else can APOD get people's attention? Please help!

owlice wrote:I think many people just don't see the Discuss link, and just don't click on other links that APOD has; what else could APOD do to make it clearer that there are discussion forums for APOD? This is a serious question. We would like more people to participate! How else can APOD get people's attention? Please help!

The main APOD page has a very dated design. It looks like pages from 20 years ago.

Perhaps it's time to consider a more modern approach- still just a very simple CSS styled, no script page, but one with a more conventional navigation menu on the top? I don't even think most people see the text at the bottom as navigation links.

Hush...the forum is not existing! It is a conspiracy that such thing as a forum for anybody to shout out their opinion exist. It is the biggest non existing secret
ever apod came with, besides hiding all the Martian pictures!!!

I have my shortcut go straight to the index page! There is an index link on the APOD page but I don't think newbies know what it is for!

I almost never see the main page. My favorites link is to the forms. From there, i access the main page for the big APOD picture, which i only do once a day anyway. Otherwise i'm always going to the forums to see what's up. Why don't you try putting discussion forums in red

Perhaps what is needed is to change out the Hyperlinked Text at the bottom of the frame (< | Archive | Index | Search | Calendar | RSS | Education | About APOD | Discuss | > )for a more user friendly and more visual bank of buttons

Haven't we had this discussion before? Bolding, colorizing, and redesigning the page have all already been suggested and rejected.

Indeed. And all I suggested in that other discussion was to bring the code up-to-date, so that it validated -- a minimal standard if ever there was one. But that too was rejected. But it's not the fault of Robert and Jerry, I'm sure. Rather, much of the NASA web site is made up with old, poor code. It's NASA that must fix this wholesale, not just Robert and Jerry for the APPOD page, and certainly not our hard-working Asterisk forum people.

Rob

I was hoping to read suggestions by the original poster, since he's looking at all of this with fresh eyes, but in the meantime, perhaps long-term Asteriskians might post how they found Asterisk, what first brought them here?

I don't really remember, but it seems like i ran across a short article somewhere that spoke of an APOD and gave the clickable url to it, and said something about how you could view Hubble pictures there. As i had already seen a few Hubble pictures on TV, i wanted to see more. Once i was here, i ended up finding the index page and made it a favorite, As you can go anywhere from there. As i was then new to computers, it took a little while to accomplish this now simple task. And to make things worse, i kept getting lost in the forums and would have to exit the whole thing and start over. It was like i landed on a strange planet(php) that had a strange way of operating. I still can't do a -view topic- (there's no instructions) I almost figured it out, but it doesn't really matter anyway, as i don't remember where to find what i wanted to -view-. So i just do simple posts and forget about the rest, and wonder why the computer restricts me to 3-pictures a post, when there are posts with more than 3.

owlice wrote: perhaps long-term Asteriskians might post how they found Asterisk, what first brought them here?

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap040913.html

Couldn't say why you have a 3 image limit. In my post above I linked 8 images of Buttons for suggestions but when I submitted the post and viewed it, It looked terrible so I did a quick edit and resubmit to eliminate the images.
I had no trouble with 8 images though

I guess the computer likes you, BMAONE23.

bystander wrote:

owlice wrote: perhaps long-term Asteriskians might post how they found Asterisk, what first brought them here?

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap040913.html

Yet you didn't join for another two years! Why? Did you read Asterisk regularly before that first foray and joining?

Apparently I registered just to count some rainbows. I am pretty sure I was browsing the forum for a long time prior to that. The "what's your say?" type APODs seem to be the best way to get people to participate.

geckzilla wrote:Haven't we had this discussion before? Bolding, colorizing, and redesigning the page have all already been suggested and rejected.

When was that discussed?

Some of that was discussed in APOD assessment poll #2, as well as in a few follow up PMs.

Rob

owlice wrote:Yet you didn't join for another two years! Why? Did you read Asterisk regularly before that first foray and joining?

You asked what first brought me to Asterisk. I didn't start actively posting until 2007/02/12. Only three posts before that. I was a true bystander.

Chris Peterson wrote:

geckzilla wrote:Haven't we had this discussion before? Bolding, colorizing, and redesigning the page have all already been suggested and rejected.

When was that discussed?

Also a bit here.

I can't remember exactly how I found my way here, but I'm pretty sure it was through another astronomy website. It was a couple of years before I found the 'Discuss' link and wondered if I had anything meaningful to contribute.

I still wonder.....




And I'm not sure that the link for discussion is that difficult to find: there seem to be all kinds of guest/anonymous posters chiming in.

Indigo_Sunrise wrote:

And I'm not sure that the link for discussion is that difficult to find: there seem to be all kinds of guest/anonymous posters chiming in.

I don't think the discuss link is hard to find; it seems to be the index page that is troublesome! Maybe all forums should be channeled through the index page including the discuss an APOD!

owlice wrote:

Chris Peterson wrote:

geckzilla wrote:Haven't we had this discussion before? Bolding, colorizing, and redesigning the page have all already been suggested and rejected.

When was that discussed?

Also a bit here.

I looked through both threads, and I don't see any discussion on the issue of an APOD redesign. All that stuff seems to be about the design of the Asterisk forums.

So again, I'd say that APOD needs a redesign. It would be trivial. It would make it appear more modern, it would make it easier to read (from an ergonomic standpoint), it would make navigation much more obvious, and would probably drive more viewers towards the discussions here. And there's really no reason why a little CSS should have any effect on existing APOD parsing software at all. I don't think there's any policy at NASA that would limit changes, either. I've personally assisted in creating and modifying pages hosted within the NASA.GOV hierarchy, and there were no regulatory hoops to jump through.