Proposal: Splitting the forums into Fact and Fiction?

[Harry]

Can you say the ranking going up from the least downloaded addon? Has the Lera System been downloaded seven times this week or seven times since it has been uploaded?

Sorry, can't find out the rank without doing a more time consuming analysis. It was seven downloads within the past five days (the other numbers were for the last 5 days too).

Harald

[rthorvald]

The problem here isn??t whether people prefers fictions or factual addons,
the problem is volume. As more fantasy is created than fact, the real work is
too easily obscured. This isn??t just a problem for those that are in the market
for finding addons, but also, and maybe more important, it is a problem for
those that works on them. At that, since fictions are more visible than factuals
these days, Celestia might well be too easy to dismiss for a casual guest on the
forums as a toy. And *that* is the real problem - because of this, we might lose
contact with professionals that under other circumstances could have contributed
significantly to the development.

Before anyone starts jumping on this, no, i don??t belittle the work on fictionals
here - i am making fictions myself. But me using Celestia as a playground does
not change my respect for the program as an astronomy tool, which is what it is.

The reason we get so much fiction here, is it is easier to make scifi than fact, and
fantasy is even easier. And so the volume goes up, but only in the fictional arena.
When the volume goes up, the noise level does too, meaning quality gets spread
thinner. New users will see the "pop culture" side of Celestia long before they
discover it??s educational merit, or the fascinating real space aspects of it. That
can be a real problem in recruiting developers and scientists, which naturally have
other agendas than playing with the Death Star, but whose contributions would
enhance Celestia??s value a good deal more than a rendering of a Jules Verne
comet - which is fun and pretty, but is no contribution at all to the quality of
the software it runs in.

That is why i think separating fictions and factuals is a good idea.

Look at the Motherlode: notice that the factual addons are listed very prominently,
while the fictions are all collected together under a single link. This is done quite
deliberately.

Note that i don??t think fictionals are unimportant to Celestia; they can be an inspiring
resource - addon makers do help each other by developing and showing
new techniques in both fictions and factuals.

So, maybe the Addon Forum should be allowed to evolve to a general discussion forum,
and, as i suggested earlier, we should establish a new, dedicated forum for
Science Addon Work to go along with it.

- rthorvald

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

When I mean people getting along I'm not talking about people being friendly with eachother or not, I'm talking about people getting along by not being annoyed by the amount of fictional addons being announced in the addons forum.

Yes. That's what I said.

Prefer? I don't prefer anything, I don't really care that much whether the addon forum gets split up or not or even fictional addon announcements being moved to another place altogether, just as long as they exist.

If you don't really care, then why exactly are you commenting so much on the subject here? I'm not saying that fictional addons should stop altogether, I'm just proposing that they're separated from the factual ones.

But these seem to me more like things that would be discussed in the Celestia Development forum, and those people probably aren't doing too much with the addons that you mentioned so that's why they are pretty quiet. Fridger, for example is probbaly not talking about his multiple stars stuff because he is working on his improved Titan texture, which is something factual that is getting around the forum.

The Development forum seems to be mostly dominated by programming issues lately. Which is mostly what's it's for, I guess, but there's very little talk of improving the realistic parts of celestia. But I guess the Development Board probably should be the place that realism should be discussed, since that affects the core of Celestia.

Why not use Celestia for things other than education? People can, and they think it's fun doing this, I don't see the worry because as long as people like you are interested in eductaional stuff, Celestia will always have a factual use. If things started sliding the other way it would be a bit worrying too and would probably cause the fictional addon people not to be as interested in Celestia because noone else is. The fact is that Celestia is going to be used for both purposes and that is going to be very hard to change.

You really are missing the point... Unless Chris changes the whole program so that people can't add to it outside the core developer group, fictional addons will always be here. But one of my concerns is that we're not getting in new people who are interested in developing the realistic side of things - partly because it does (as Fridger pointed out) require some specialised knowledge, but also partly (as Runar pointed out) because the fictional stuff is much more visible. Maybe people are put off from contributing realistic add-ons because of that.

I don't think it's good enough to shrug and say "let it evolve the way everyone wants it to go". We need to get some focus back on the realistic aspects of the program. I know we can't stop people from developing fictional material, and I don't want to do that - I just want to make the factual development more visible and see that pushed forward.

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

In an attempt to get the ball rolling, I started a thread on the Development board asking for the latest status on realistic features in Celestia. So if you're developing those, please post on that thread

[t00fri]

I appreciate the points made by Runar and Evil Dr Ganymede. I think they are really valid.

Bye Fridger

[Michael Kilderry]

If you don't really care, then why exactly are you commenting so much on the subject here? I'm not saying that fictional addons should stop altogether, I'm just proposing that they're separated from the factual ones.

I'm commenting because some of the comments put here I didn't quite agree with and I have the right to have my own say, even if it's just to say I'm not leaning towards either side of the addons board getting split up or not.

The Development forum seems to be mostly dominated by programming issues lately. Which is mostly what's it's for, I guess, but there's very little talk of improving the realistic parts of celestia. But I guess the Development Board probably should be the place that realism should be discussed, since that affects the core of Celestia.

This could be a better way to sort this out, as I would consider binary stars and new Titan textures more the developing side of Celestia rather than basic addons, this way we won't have to create new sections.

You really are missing the point... Unless Chris changes the whole program so that people can't add to it outside the core developer group, fictional addons will always be here. But one of my concerns is that we're not getting in new people who are interested in developing the realistic side of things - partly because it does (as Fridger pointed out) require some specialised knowledge, but also partly (as Runar pointed out) because the fictional stuff is much more visible. Maybe people are put off from contributing realistic add-ons because of that.

In my opinion factual stuff is still easily seen, on the home page of the Celestia Motherlode you can clearly see a message and link to the Eductional Activities of Celestia. And if people aren't noticing this then why exactly is Runar's mostly factual sun texture doing so well in the Motherlode download charts?

I don't think it's good enough to shrug and say "let it evolve the way everyone wants it to go". We need to get some focus back on the realistic aspects of the program. I know we can't stop people from developing fictional material, and I don't want to do that - I just want to make the factual development more visible and see that pushed forward.

Maybe we should just let Celestia go the way it is a bit. I think people are getting a bit worried because Celestia is changing and they are thinking too much about the negatives of this when we should really all be having fun with the program, however we do it. As long as it lasts, Celestia won't live forever, nothing does.

Michael Kilderry

[Bob Hegwood]

Here's an idea worth floating about... Maybe?

Mr. Kilderry has an obvious love for all things fictional in Celestia, and he
also has his very own forum for use by others with the same interests.

Michael? Rather than using for forum exclusively for Lera, why not do a little
work to promote your forum as the place to go for the latest fictional
add-ons for Celestia?

Just a thought, but it might serve both forums better?

Thanks, Old Brain-Dead.

[Michael Kilderry]

I'd rather keep my old forum for Lera, as I put in another post, if we were going to put the fictional addons there it would be biast because of all the forums about one addon in particular and probably one lonely forum to talk about the rest.

But I may make another forum for fictional addons if the developers of those think it's a good idea.

Michael Kilderry

[Cham]

I cannot understand this : a whole forum is dedicated to a small, personal, fantasy addon !? Whatever the explanations, this is totally beyond me.

[t00fri]

I cannot understand this : a whole forum is dedicated to a small, personal, fantasy addon !? Whatever the explanations, this is totally beyond me.

What is particularly interesting is that there are only a handful of registered users and almost every one has become Moderator...

Bye Fridger

[selden]

Cham and Fridger,

Please remember that creative and artistic people often tend to do things in ways that seem strange, counterproductive and non-intuitive to us stodgy realistic folks. That's part of what it means to be artistic. It isn't right or wrong, just different. Some claim that these differences are due to whether one has "left brain" or "right brain" dominance. How true that is, I dunno.

Michael,

Don't let us stodgy old geezers intimidate you. So long as you enjoy what you're doing, and it doesn't hurt anyone, keep it up! Practice makes perfect, and I'm sure your artwork will continue to improve.

[hank]

So, if I understand correctly, the proposal is to replace the current "Celestia Add-ons" forum with two new forums, a "Celestia Fictional Add-ons" forum and a "Celestia Factual Add-ons" forum. That doesn't sound hard to do. I assume that everyone would be welcome to participate in either forum (or both), as their interests dictate. I guess I don't understand what the objections to this might be.

- Hank

[Cham]

I agree with Hank. I think this is very "natural" to ask to split the addons section into two pieces :

CELESTIA FACTUAL ADD-ONS
CELESTIA FICTIONAL ADD-ONS.

Chris ?

[t00fri]

I agree with Hank. I think this is very "natural" to ask to split the addons section into two pieces : FACTUAL ADDONS and FICTIONAL ADDONS.

Chris ?

In fact this subdivision covers about every possibility, since the official (i.e. non-add-on) Celestia development will always be FACTUAL. Unless Chris changes his mind, which seems hard to believe

Bye Fridger

[rthorvald]

I agree with Hank. I think this is very "natural" to ask to split the addons section into two pieces

I don??t think it is neccecary to go this far. Isn??t it simpler to add one extra forum for Factual work, and keep the existing one for Addons in general?

-rthorvald

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

I agree with Hank. I think this is very "natural" to ask to split the addons section into two pieces

I don??t think it is neccecary to go this far. Isn??t it simpler to add one extra forum for Factual work, and keep the existing one for Addons in general?

-rthorvald

We could do that, but the description of the boards on the main forum page needs to be changed to reflect that - the old Addons board would become the place to discuss and present fictional addons, and the Factual Addons board would be the place to discuss and present realistic ones.

Then again, I am growing more of the opinion that the Development board should be the place to present and discuss factual addons, because they're likely to be incorporated into future versions of Celestia.

[ajtribick]

Personally I think that calling the divide "fact/fiction" is a bit too general, and doesn't cater for the possibility of an add-on based on real data but which adds fictional data, an example would be an add-on providing textures and fictional moons for planets in a known extrasolar system such as Upsilon Andromedae. Since this kind of add-on is on the borderline, perhaps the term "fact" should be replaced by "limit of knowledge".

I am not so sure on whether fiction and "semifiction" should be separated, or even where the dividing line between these two should be drawn - if I create an imaginary system around Alpha Mensae that incorporates factual data about the star but no knowledge of any planets that Alpha Mensae may or may not have is this purely fictional or not? However I do think that "limit of knowledge" has a much clearer boundary, and the boundary between the two should be made more clear cut.

That said I do not think that fictional work should be dismissed entirely - in fact it was Don Edwards' HD 28185 add-on pictures that first brought me here, and creating a fictional work can give new insight into how the real world works - the Physics and Astronomy forum contains many posts about hypothetical situations such as the colour of the sky on a planet orbiting a different star type which were both a way of trying to get the most realism into an add-on and provided interesting and informative discussions about aspects of science.

I'm tending to side with Evil Dr Ganymede on this matter: limit of knowledge add-ons may perhaps be better located in the Development forum as these are closest to what Celestia has been created for, although this is far from ideal, as many add-ons which implement LoK (e.g. the asteroid belt add-on) are far too large or CPU demanding to include in the base distribution.

[t00fri]

Before all sorts of modifications are considered that mainly will elongate the list of available boards ...could someone try to list some names of people that would typically be involved with FACTUAL add-ons.

This would allow us to estimate how many people can be expected to actively contribute in a proposed new FACTUAL Add-on board.

As to myself, I am surely engaged with FACTUAL development, but rarely I do add-ons, besides gigantic hi-end textures. Most of the work I do, will eventually flow into the regular Celestia distribution. My texture add-ons will always be located and displayed at my TextureFoundry site.

Anyway, for textures, we have a separate board already.

So who are the potential FACTUAL add-on creators for whom a newly created FACTUAL Add-On Board could apply??
My suspicion is that the number will be surprisingly SMALL.

Bye Fridger

PS: Personally I really have split feelings concerning this whole proposal. The reason is that there is a huge "gray zone" that will be very hard to allocate. Cham's interesting black hole add-on, for example. Is this factual?

[Bob Hegwood]

PS: Personally I really have split feelings concerning this whole proposal. The reason is that there is a huge "gray zone" that will be very hard to allocate. Cham's interesting black hole add-on, for example. Is this factual?

This is why it really doesn't bother me, personally to do whatever you wish
to do in this regard.

I try to create factual add-ons, albeit simple ones, but I have the same
problem with a Tour of Mercury. Since we only have about 45% of the
surface in REAL photos, and since I simply can't stand the LOK masks,
I'm using a Mercury texture which is 55% fictional.

I have pointed this out in the script, and I have suggested using the LOK
mask for those of us who simply MUST HAVE reality only.

But where do we draw the line? I still think that this is too much ado
about nothing. If people are interested in Celestia, they'll be interested
if there are too many fictional add-ons or not. Like I said before, I like
reality, but I'm certainly capable of determining what I consider real,
from a fictional add-on.

Come to think of it... What's real to me may be pure fiction to
someone who knows more than I do.

Again, what's the big deal here? As Michael said, let's try to enjoy the
thing for a while. Sheesh!

Take care, Bob

[maxim]

Personally I think that calling the divide "fact/fiction" is a bit too general, and doesn't cater for the possibility of an add-on based on real data but which adds fictional data, an example would be an add-on providing textures and fictional moons for planets in a known extrasolar system such as Upsilon Andromedae. Since this kind of add-on is on the borderline, perhaps the term "fact" should be replaced by "limit of knowledge".

That's the reason why I divided my personal view onto the addons into three parts.

Calling it 'real','fiction' and 'fantasy' as I did, may however be misleading, so what naming scheme could fit better?

'fiction' is to me what you called 'semireal' or NASA likes to adress 'artists interpretation' on their illustration pictures - something that indeed exists, but could be pictured only more or less speculative until now. So Cham's black holes or this protostar addon, or textures where nonmapped parts are filled with fictious data belong to it.

So what about 'factual', 'conceptual' and 'fictional' instead?

maxim