selden wrote:Please remember that this site is not only for professional astronomers. It needs to be approachable by people with little or no previous knowledge of astronomy or physics. And it needs to help those people become comfortable with astronomical terminology and information so they can be proficent in using Celestia.
I think this is part of the 'dilution' problem that Fridger's always made a big deal of - that the Celestia community has gone from being just a small dedicated group of experts and programmers to being a small, dedicated group of experts and programmers buried in a bigger group of spectators with little or no knowledge about those things. While there's not much that can be done about that, it does increase the signal to noise ratio somewhat.
Heck, the creation of the Purgatory board is a symptom of this. When the forums first started it wasn't necessary to have a dumping ground for non-Celestia related chatter. But as the community grew, we had more posts that were beyond the focussed ranged of topics that the original community were talking about, culminating eventually in Purgatory. But there is no obligation or reason whatsoever for Purgatory or any Off-Topic board to exist here or on any other boards at all - plenty of boards don't have a 'random chatter' area and they're quite well off for it - it keeps discussions focussed on what the board is made for.
The problem is this I think - that while it's inevitable that the community will grow beyond a small group of experts, if development of the program is to remain focussed them it's imperative to keep the bulk of the board focussed on what those experts and developers want. The Development should be for talking about programming, the Addons board should be for talking about addons, the Bugs board should be for talking about bugs, the Scripting board should be for talking about scripting, and the P&A board should be for talking about physics and astronomy... and there is no reason whatsoever for any of this to be discussed at less than an advanced, professional level.
I'm certainly not against new input, and I'm not against newcomers asking basic questions, but it has to be done in a serious way to maintain the standards of the community.
Although it may not have been presented in the best way, quizes like the one Telepath posted are one way to help with this.
I really have to disagree. His 'quizzes' and 'brainteasers' have been so vague that there's no educational value to them at all.
Unfortunately, the Celestia Forum site does not (yet?) have a Forum that would be an appropriate home for informal, fun items like this. As you know, the name "Purgatory" is quite off-putting. I'm sure that many people never read any of its threads just because of the name. Certainly there have been people who were quite upset when it was suggested that their off-topic discussions should be moved there.
I don't see why the Forums should have a place for "informal, fun items" though. And I guess Chris called it "Purgatory" because he really didn't want to have it there in the first place - the point was to make it unattractive to put people off posting here. It's a dumping ground for irrelevant chatter (like that quiz).
I've often touted a reorganisation of the forums anyway (among other things, I think we do need a separate 'Models" board since there's a lot of discussion now about spacecraft models etc). But the community is only going to remain focussed if there's active moderation of topics on the forums that moves any and all irrelevant matter to Purgatory where it belongs.
Part of the problem also is that Chris doesn't really take maintenance of the forums seriously at all. We've been complaining about spambots for years and only recently did he decide to finally do something about it. He doesn't really play an active role in the running of the forum and doesn't really do any moderation himself either, often disappears for months and isn't around to do anything on the boards... fact is, we need people running the forum who are actually active members of the community here and who are interested in the upkeep of the boards. We need more willing moderators to spread the load from Selden (who as I understand it didn't really want the role in the first place, though he's done a good job so far regardless). I think this is the only way we can keep the standards high round here and keep the discussion focussed.
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