Europa is not so detailed

[t00fri]

Doctor Ganymede,

I'm truly sorry that you don't like what I have to say, and I'll try to restrain
myself in the future. My anger got the better of me, and I apologize.

I *do* think that I should have the right to express my opinion though. Just as
you have the right to criticize my posts, then I have the right to say what *I* think.
Admittedly, my posts are not phrased in politically-correct terminology, but I'm
afraid that I just can't help that. I am what I am.

Take care, Bob

Hi all,

I kept out of this dispute for good reasons, including the fact that I am rarely successful in this discipline, because of my "direct" manners...

A few days ago, I extracted a collection of DanielJ's last 40 posts out of about 200 in total into a file. I think it is no good style to publish it, since the "condensed form" of his posts is more than revealing...And this is not my 'glass of beer' anyway...

To be fair: On my well known "distorted scale";-), his posts do not appear to be overly agressive or offensive.

However, subjectively at least, I find them most uninspiring, insisting and largely superfluous. Let me emphasize again, this is a subjective impression, your mileage may vary considerably;-). I shall not contest any different opinions.

For me this sort of posting just leaves a sad feeling about what is going on around here recently...In fact, I have received a number of PM's already by people expressing their consensus.

Let me emphasize that it is not at all the point here to attack one particular person. I have really nothing against DanielJ! But if there is no interesting counterbalance anymore happening in the forum, certain uninspiring kinds of posts tend to become overwhelming and make some of us "nervous", i.e. bored to death...

Probably this attempt again went the wrong way...Sorry.

Bye Fridger

[bh]

Calm down guys or this will get closed...stay on topic.

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

I *do* think that I should have the right to express my opinion though. Just as you have the right to criticize my posts, then I have the right to say what *I* think. Admittedly, my posts are not phrased in politically-correct terminology, but I'm afraid that I just can't help that. I am what I am.

I'm not suggesting for a minute that you don't have a right to express your opinion. But this has nothing to do with "phrasing things in politically correct terminology" - this is more down to basic etiquette. I don't believe for a minute that you can't help being rude and aggressive, and frankly I don't believe people who claim they can't help sounding like that. It is quite possible to be direct and honest without being offensive or patronising in the process - it just requires some patience and self-control.


Fridger - as I suggested earlier, I think it's entirely up to individuals to make this place seem "less boring" to them - start threads of interest to you, contribute to interesting discussions etc. I don't see these forums as being boring or turning that way at all myself, I haven't perceived any drop in the quality of discussion here, and neither do I think that the forum is being overwhelmed with "negative posts". Evidently you see it differently, but the fact that I disagree means that not everyone is seeing this "decline" you feel is happening.

Frankly, I don't even have a clue what you mean when you talk about "uninspiring posts" - there has never been an obligation for posters to "inspire" readers - and I think it's a bit much to expect every post to do that and it's an unreasonable standard to set. Besides which, it's an incredibly subjective thing to get frustrated about - what you consider 'uninspiring' may be considered interesting by others.

It may even be that you yourself are losing interest in Celestia - have you considered that? I've seen this sort of thing on other forums, and I've even had it happen to me on occasion - I find myself becoming bored with discussion boards, but then I realise that I'm actually getting bored with the whole thing, and that's nobody's fault but mine. Sometimes it's just time to move on or have a long break away from something. Maybe that's what's happening to you.

But if that's not the case, then why don't you start more threads to provide this "interesting counterbalance" that you seek?

[t00fri]

But if that's not the case, then why don't you start more threads to provide this "interesting counterbalance" that you seek?

Evil Dr.,

I think my record is not bad at all, as to attracting people's interest with my threads;-). Really many (including recent ones) have attracted between 1000 and 2500 visits by people. Rarely they level in below 500. Just go and have a look (and compare the numbers e.g. with yours). And they cover many different aspects...

I am not lazy either, as it seems from the actual top-ten poster's list:

Code: Select all

1   selden  NY, USA                 04 Sep 2002           2725
2   don        Colorado, USA        13 Jul 2003          1512
3   t00fri    Hamburg, Germany      29 Mar 2002           1486
4   chris     Seattle, Washington 28 Jan 2002            1428
....


So why again did you make that particularly inappropriate suggestion above??

Bye Fridger

[Bob Hegwood]

I don't believe for a minute that you can't help being rude and aggressive, and frankly I don't believe people who claim they can't help sounding like that. It is quite possible to be direct and honest without being offensive or patronising in the process - it just requires some patience and self-control.

Okay, I'm practicing patience and self-control now...

You don't think it rude and offensive for someone to constantly gripe about
new features and the Celestia package in general? It seems to me that you need
to look at where you're posting your comments for a start...

I liked very much how you completely ignored my apology in your quotation too.
I think maybe I'll just say goodbye to you assholes.

Goodby!

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

My suggestion is not even remotely "inappropriate" - I'm not questioning your past record, in fact I'm well aware of it. But so what? If anything, someone with your experience on a board should know that sometimes you get a load of interesting topics coming all at once and other times there's nothing much going on that grabs you, and that sometimes you'll have people who are very helpful or very annoying. It all comes and goes though.

All I'm saying is that you shouldn't expect people to post things that interest you, and I don't think you're particularly justified in being annoyed if they don't. The last thing we need here is for someone to declare that a post is "not interesting enough" and to berate the poster for it - that's just ridiculous! That is not a remotely constructive attitude, and I certainly don't see the use in it. There's room enough here for everyone at every level of expertise or interest.

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

You don't think it rude and offensive for someone to constantly gripe about new features and the Celestia package in general?

Has Daniel "constantly griped" about YOU personally? No.
Has Daniel constantly complained about your own work? No.

So why do you take his criticism so personally?

Hell, at worst all he's done is claim that things don't work or ask why something hasn't been implemented yet without thinking the problem through first. That's hardly a capital crime and that's certainly a far cry from your claims that he "constantly puts down Celestia".

As for your "apology" - sorry, it didn't wash. You basically said "sorry about this instance... but there's no guarantee that I won't respond in a similar manner in the future, because that's just the way I am". Which is hardly convincing as apologies go.

[t00fri]

My suggestion is not even remotely "inappropriate" - I'm not questioning your past record, in fact I'm well aware of it. But so what? If anything, someone with your experience on a board should know that sometimes you get a load of interesting topics coming all at once and other times there's nothing much going on that grabs you, and that sometimes you'll have people who are very helpful or very annoying. It all comes and goes though.

All I'm saying is that you shouldn't expect people to post things that interest you, and I don't think you're particularly justified in being annoyed if they don't. The last thing we need here is for someone to declare that a post is "not interesting enough" and to berate the poster for it - that's just ridiculous! That is not a remotely constructive attitude, and I certainly don't see the use in it. There's room enough here for everyone at every level of expertise or interest.

Evil Dr. ,

please just grant me that I can judge what is interesting and what is boring in rather general terms. Let me most strongly emphasize that my respective judgements are largely unrelated to my personal interests!

On the one hand, there are posts that apparently have involved some kind of investigation beforehand: pointing out some relevant announcement on the WEB perhaps, a new texture, Celestia in the news, some astrophysics discussion, the changing light in Spitsbergen, ... ...just not something that most of the better read people here know in and out.

And then there are these many many other posts....

If there is a significant number of people who all put in some enthusiasm and work to contribute /inspiring/ posts and other things then a certain attractive standard arises and prevails in the forum that prevents naturally too many posts of the "other" kind.

Note, this is not a matter of a single "super poster"-person. It needs to arise as a coherent effort by a number of dedicated people...

I assure you we had that before to a much higher degree than now!

If you don't see what I am trying to say, too bad...

Bye Fridger

[God]

Ok children, play nice or I'll take away your toys

Shouldn't these last few posts be sent to purgatory? We see enough of this type of bickering everywhere else, just move on and continue building a great program! Thanks for your time.

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

I can sorta see what you're getting at, but I feel you're asking and expecting too much of this forum - or any forum, for that matter.

Maybe it's your choice of words here... it's one thing to ask people to do a little research or put a little thought in before they post a question or request, but expecting messages to be "interesting" or "inspiring" is entirely subjective - posts that you think are "interesting" or "inspiring" may not be thought of that way by others. And to be honest, I don't see why your opinion of what is "interesting" or "inspiring" is any more valid than mine or anyone else's here.


That said - and I may be totally wrong here - I suspect the "problem" that you're complaining about is that originally this community was populated mostly by people who had a very strong interest in developing Celestia and producing add-ons. But as this community has grown with time, more and more "casual users" have joined the community - people who don't know as much about astronomy or how Celestia works, and who sometimes don't even care about improving Celestia - they just want to use it. I suspect you're railing against this, because it means that the discussion is less focussed on "interesting" things like development and is instead diluted by casual users who ask "silly questions" or talk about "boring" things. There's less of what you'd consider "signal" and more "noise" now.

But this change is entirely natural, and should be expected. This forum is no longer the exclusive domain of people who want to develop Celestia, but it sounds like you still want it to be.

Perhaps it might be an idea to create a new board here called "Celestia Q&A", that is a place where people just ask questions about how Celestia works. I guess this is what THIS board is supposed to be, to an extent. Maybe you don't like how it's not just developers who are on the Bugs, Development, Textures, and Add-Ons boards, but it's also the casual users who ask questions there?

If this is what's bugging you, then it's hard to see a solution to the "problem" that would appease you and still be practical. Do you really want to drive away people who aren't as interested in developing Celestia from here? Where else could they come an ask questions about the program? How else could people get interested enough to want to become developers themselves? Perhaps the whole BBS could be made accessible to developers only in order to shut out the less constructive users, but would that really be helpful in the long run? I don't think it would, myself.

If you really are so distracted and frustrated by the "noise" though, why can you not just ignore it? It's not stopping you from developing Celestia further, is it? The encouragement from other developers is still there, after all.


(oh, and we're not bickering. Well, I don't think I'm bickering with Fridger anyway - as far as I'm concerned, we're just talking).

[t00fri]

...

(oh, and we're not bickering. Well, I don't think I'm bickering with Fridger anyway - as far as I'm concerned, we're just talking).

I agree with Evil Dr. that we are peacefully discussing forum matters
which hopefully become increasingly constructive.

Rather than continuing with complaints about the decreasing level of
posts in the forum, a positive view is clearly also in my interest.

If indeed, as Evil Dr. pointed out, everyone else is perfectly happy,
I will just shut up (and 'retire'), of course. But perhaps, others
have also constructive proposals to make, how the forum life could be made
more attractive again.

As a reminder or illustration for some of you, let me mention below a
few subjective 'highlights' from my 2 1/2 years of being an active
forum member:

In many cases I enjoyed a lot to "collaborate" and discuss with
other forum members on small joint projects with regular reports about
our progress in the forum.

i) Texture, VT and Add-on fabrication, with lots of mutual exchange of image manipulation know-how. For a long time this was a really active "melting pot" of ideas and tips...

ii) Collection and production of (huge) location files.

I and later also Walton developed useful math/physics algorithms that prevent
overcrowded/overlapping labels. The resulting files were checked and
improved with the help of many forum members. Lots of interesting
discussions arose in this context e.g. about odd places
(Spitsbergen,...) that some of us have visited in real life!

Some of these joint efforts have found their way into the official
Celestia distribution, meanwhile.

iii) Joint discussions and interesting work on Saturn and its rings,
along with realization in Celestia!
Just in time for the arrival of the Cassini spacecraft!

iv) Lots of joint work on "mutual events" among the moons of Jupiter, Saturn,
Uranus and the Pluto/Charon system that convinced us all about the amazing
accuracy of Celestia and helped to eliminate remaining bugs in the orbit
codes.

v) Interesting discussions about 3d models and their placement, new
formats etc.

vi) Reports from new announcements by Space agencies, new photos, xyz
trajectory matters, educational aspects, documentation and scripting! All very
interesting/important stuff, I think.

vii) Joint discussions and exploratory work about possible (longterm)
extensions/enhancements of Celestia (e.g. "conformal
mapping of the whole Universe", "Celestia instruments/filters for
different wave lengths of light",...)

viii) General discussions about Astrophysics, Cosmology, Planetary
science, Sedna, Extra dimensions, Superstrings, Black holes and all that....

These were just a few themes that involved numerous members /together/, naturally
stimulating most worthwhile discussions...Such coherent
efforts have been responsible for the feeling among many of us that
the Celestia forum is an inspiring place to visit
regularly, rather than a waste of time!

The question is, whether all this is "history", or
whether we can continue along such lines and other new ones, to the
benefit/enjoyment of all of us!

Bye Fridger

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

...all of which sounds exactly like you miss the days when the Celestia forums were more or less purely populated by active developers rather than also populated by people who have less experience and a more casual interest in the program as it is today. I don't see this as a bad thing myself, because that's how communities grow - there doesn't need to be an "us vs them" attitude over this.

As I said though, I don't think there's much one can do about it though. The "signal" from developers is still there and they haven't left, they're just buried under more of what you class as "noise".

The least drastic solution is that you just focus on the signal and ignore the noise.

A more drastic solution is that Chris somehow actively separates developers from users (perhaps he can allow a select group of developers to post to the development/textures/bugs/add-ons forums, but make them read-only for users so at least users can keep track of changes and new developments?). But I'm not sure that would be very constructive that would be in the long term, and it fosters an "us and them" attitude.

The most drastic solution would be to ban users from the forums altogether and only allow developers to read and write posts. I don't think this is very practical though.

Either way, think of it like this: if you still feel you have something constructive to contribute to Celestia and to the forums - which I'm sure you do - then I think there is absolutely nothing that is stopping you continuing to do that.

[granthutchison]

Another problem which may be contributing to Fridger's weariness (I know it's contributing to mine) is that there is actually much less significant to do with Celestia, now, from a purely astronomical point of view. When I first arrived I had a merry old time getting rotation axes aligned and tweaking asteroid flybys - Celestia was full of big, immediately rewarding projects for someone of my interests, and Fridger and I cooperated on many of these. Now I'm down to the tweaking and maintenance stage, where the benefits are much less visible and probably entirely invisible to many Celestia users. Fridger, of course, recently had the promise of his conformal mapping project to keep his enthusiasm engaged, and I sympathize with his frustration at being unable to keep something that interests him moving forward. I still have a few little self-assigned tasks on my drawing board, but they're kind of dull. Heigh-ho ... that's just the way these things go, and I don't think there's anything that can be done about it apart from realizing when it's time to move on to other things.

Grant

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

Grant raises an interesting point - that most of the "fun stuff" has now been developed and all that's left are tweaks. But that is obviously to be expected.

However, while the "core" of Celestia has been pretty much worked out, I don't think this is necessarily the case for other things. Marc is working on his database system, Selden's been adding various extragalactic catalogues, Rassilon was experimenting with new (fictional) star colours and textures at one point, and the problem of getting true multiple star illumination to work and real stars to orbit others remains to be tackled (and personally I think this is the most major thing that needs to be developed to make Celestia sa close to perfect as I'd like to see it). Plus one could find a way to place stars beyond the existing distance limits (I suggested a possible method at the bottom of this thread but nobody's commented on it).

So I think that there are still plenty of interesting things for developers to work on. The trick of course, is to get them interested in working on it

[granthutchison]

I'm not denying that there is much to do ... just that the stuff that interests me has either largely been done, or can't yet be done for lack of data or for lack of the capability in Celestia code (I'm not a C programmer, so can't do anything about the latter).
I very much agree that support for multiple stars would be a great step forward for Celestia ... and there's quite a lot of code and data on my HD at the moment which is ready to churn out binary orbits in Celestia format if and when that occurs.
But in the meantime there's a sense of the doldrums (for me, not for Celestia), and I just wonder if Fridger's ennui is coming from the same source.

Grant

[t00fri]

Grant, Evil Dr.,

I agree with the points you are both making more or less wholeheartedly.

Evil Dr.:
Perhaps it is a little exaggerated to state that 1-2 years ago the forum was largely populated by "developers". In fact the number of Celestia developers was pretty small back then;-). Besides Chris and Clint Weisbrod, I came in next and a few months later Christophe. For quite a while Chris, Christophe and myself were a rather "strongly coupled" team as to the coding of Celestia...


Basically, Evil Dr.'s analysis of the "signal/noise" ratio in the forum seems correct.

Yet I believe that also people with few Celestia-specific skills can make most useful contributions in various different forms. We have quite a few great examples among us;-)

The crucial task is to initiate plenty of motivation and interest in generally understandable form, the rest will presumably come all by itself...

A good example: back then, I tought (step by step) tutorials both to Rassilon and Don.Edwards on how to do basic image manipulation tasks with the GIMP (and similar) programs.

Just see now what came out of there!!

I am sure they might want to comment on that interesting time of putting our hands on textures jointly...

Last not least:
---------------
One of the basic reasons why I consider a substantial expansion of Celestia's functionality so important, is indeed to counteract stagnation and mere "tweaking & tuning" activities and also to keep Celestia competitive!

On the one hand, more and more commercial real time simulation programs are appearing on scene...

On the other hand, I just /know/ how much echo these "Conformal Universe displays" together with the huge amount of (forthcoming) relevant sky survey data created, both in the scientific community and in the media as well.

I also /know/ that we have a unique "consortium" of people here with just the right know-how to push Celestia far ahead by implementing that challenging mainsteam issue via a joint effort!

A second reason for my strong involvement with the "Conformal Celestia mode" and the "Celestia Instruments" idea is clearly the "fun part".

I would enjoy tremendously to try to do an excellent job here in collaboration with others that have various complementary skills to offer...

During my 11 year lasting involvement in the XEphem development, I learned the secret of the tremendous success of that program over a /very long period of time/: Every research institute/university in astrononmy and/or physics had it, since it offered a unique, most accurate functionality that served both the scientific community and interested lay persons, like amateur astronomers, for example.

Elwood Downey did not even have to do much advertisement. It was just known to be the best;-).

Celestia is certainly on the right track in that respect! We know about the interest from NASA and ESA...

Let me stop here to keep this thing readable;-)

Bye Fridger

[don]

Sure wish these forums had an active admin or forum-specific moderators, who could cut and paste topics that go OFF topic, into a new topic with an appropriate Subject. I had quit reading this topic because Europa looks fine to me, based on the reasons provided in the first few messages of this topic.

I had no idea the topic subject had CHANGED to that of a general discussion of the forums <sigh>.

Using the phrase "signal-to-noise ratio" only serves to enforce the "us-them" thing -- where scientists / developers / contributors are the "signal" and non-scientists / developers / contributors are the "noise". This is not good.

A better description would be to think of the entire set of forums as an international conference center which has many meeting rooms (individual forums) in it. Each room is normally occupied by folks who are interested in the topic of discussion the room is labeled for.

When forums are first set-up, the only members would obviously be the people who defined and set them up. In the case of Celestia, this would be the developers and scientists who created Celestia. Next, the contributors come along, and finally the general population who happens to stop by.

Now, we have rooms full of people with widely varying education and interests, not to mention that they are also from many different countries, which means that ugly language barrier thing can pop-up every so often.

This also means there will be topics of discussion that are of interest only to the general population, and other topics that will be of interest only to the scientists / developers / contributors. To call one noise and the other signal makes no sense. If you are not interested in a topic, then don't read it.

Maybe it's time to open some more rooms in the building, that define subdivisions of the existing rooms? Or, maybe add a forum admin and/or moderators, who will move topics to the forum where they should be, split topics that go off topic, etc.? The conference center has become quite busy compared to the past, and now needs some volunteers to help keep it organized, neat and clean, etc.

Any suggestions that would allow all of us to continue to mingle effectively and enjoy ourselves while here?

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

Well, note that I'm being devil's advocate when I suggest splitting up the forums or actively separating users from developers (I may be raising them as options, but I don't think it's at all necessary).

I think everyone naturally considers some topics to be signal and others to be noise to an extent - it's unlikely that people will be equally interested in EVERYTHING that is said here by everyone, after all, and there's no escaping that really.

[t00fri]

Using the phrase "signal-to-noise ratio" only serves to enforce the "us-them" thing -- where scientists / developers / contributors are the "signal" and non-scientists / developers / contributors are the "noise". This is not good.

Don,

I agree with you. The wording is no good. I did not introduce it in the first place, but picked it up in the sense of a "shortcut" for the issue under discussion.

Sorry.

Yet, the problematics is independent of the wording used to characterize it. So just replace it by whatever you prefer. I am with you.

Bye Fridger

[don]

Well, note that I'm being devil's advocate when I suggest splitting up the forums or actively separating users from developers (I may be raising them as options, but I don't think it's at all necessary).

Yes, I understand. All options should at least be brought up.

... it's unlikely that people will be equally interested in EVERYTHING that is said here by everyone, after all, and there's no escaping that really.

Correct.

Any other suggestions?