Deletion of Physics & Astronomy Forum?

[selden]

Gentle folk,

I'm seriously considering proposing to Chris that the Physics and Astronomy Forum be deleted.

Unfortunately, there are too few people frequenting the Celestia Web Forum who have both adequate scientific knowledge and the patience needed to interact with people who lack that knowledge.

As an alternative, I think it may be more appropriate to redirect people to a Web Forum like http://www.bautforum.com/
where all forms of questions are allowed.

[Malenfant]

Hell, no!

I have long espoused that it should ideally be strictly moderated so that discussion is on scientific matters only, and that anything else gets shunted off into Purgatory. That's the only way it's going to be really educational for anyone, and that's the only way you're going to get the people who do have the knowledge to stay there. As it is there's only a minority of threads there that are problematic anyway.

You don't need to do that moderation if you don't want to, but you do have the power to delegate the job to someone else. But I think it would be very foolish and detrimental to Celestia's development to delete the whole board.

[ajtribick]

Ditto Malenfant.

There are still interesting threads going on there, and also it is probably useful to add-on developers looking for some advice on realism.

It's the forum I frequent most on here, if only to post some news on discoveries that people might find interesting here.

[t00fri]

Gentle moderator/admin,

well... just before Chris left for Bolivia and after you had locked my long Purgatory thread "And the effect of this Quiz was" , I communicated with Chris about this whole unfortunate P&A issue.

One of the predictions I made during our repeated mail exchange about the P&A board's fate, was the rapid further deterioration of it's quality, leading soon to what you are asking in this thread . Given the agreement of Chris' and my views about the whole matter, I can anticipate that Chris surely would be unhappy about P&A being closed down for good in this Celestia forum.

Although I have stopped posting in P&A, I voted NO.
I still think it satisfies some useful purpose.

[comment deleted ...s.]

Finally, let me repeat that I plan to address basic questions and concepts of modern astrophysics & cosmology elsewhere (as much as time permits) ...


Personally, I found today's P&A thread by Frank about the finiteness or infinity of our Universe to be an EXCELLENT illustration for

a) the general interest of users in this forum in such basic questions

b) the need for clarification of such delicate yet very important concepts by a professional expert (or better several such experts!)

c) the urgent need to review concisely the recent seminal cosmic microwave experiments (WMAP, BOOMERANG,...) along with their amazing and solid cosmological implications about the topology and the finiteness issue of the Universe.

Bye Fridger

[Malenfant]

[content deleted ...s.]

[t00fri]

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[rthorvald]

I'm seriously considering proposing to Chris that the Physics and Astronomy Forum be deleted.

As an alternative, I think it may be more appropriate to redirect people to a Web Forum like http://www.bautforum.com/
where all forms of questions are allowed.

I voted no. This because even though i very seldom post there, the few times that i have have been useful in a way that the baut can??t possibly be: here, everybody instantly recognize the relevance for Celestia in my posts, they would not over there... But bautforum is certainly a good additional site: i??m not a member, but enjoy reading it a great deal.

- rthorvald

[Cham]

Selden,

deleting the P&A board wont prevent users to post P&A questions in other boards (users, addons, etc...). This may lead to some problems there, so I think it's a better "compromise" to keep the P&A board on the Celestia forum.

Just my 2 cents.

[Dollan]

I also think keeping that forum would be more beneficial than detrimental. As to whether or not a particular subject is "smart" enough (to paraphrase), those that think not are free to ignore it.

...John...

[Malenfant]

[content deleted ...s.]

[t00fri]

[content deleted ...s.]

[John Van Vliet]

i vote NO . Even though my posts arn't long i do indeade like the threed , and injoy it . It is a nice place to have some fun ,even though at this time i have no majore contributions to make to it .

[Rassilon]

I am always enlightened by the P&A board and feel that its absence would be missed...

[buggs_moran]

I voted no as well.

It may not be often, but I do find good topics and information in there at times. Plus I agree wih Cham. I fear you might find an overflow effect into the other forums of P&A questions, unless we don't mind that since they will be related to addons and development. If, however, it is a matter of moderation and time, I can see why redirecting people to antoher forum would be preferred or relegating P&A discussion to purgatory....

Regarding your statement Selden, "there are too few people frequenting the Celestia Web Forum who have both adequate scientific knowledge and the patience needed to interact with people who lack that knowledge."

I think that happens in many of the forums here so it is not the best arguement for eliminating the forum.

[ElChristou]

No... (I like to read good info in P&A even if there is less nowadays)

[selden]

Malenfant and T00fri,

I'm deleting some of your posts in this thread because they are irrelevant to whether or not the P&A forum continues. Please keep your personal disagreements in private mail.

[t00fri]

Malenfant and T00fri,

I'm deleting some of your posts in this thread because they are irrelevant to whether or not the P&A forum continues. Please keep your personal disagreements in private mail.

After seing all this editing and after some PM's with Selden, can I change my previous NO vote somehow into a YES vote?

I hope this was not an offensive question, Selden?

[ajtribick]

Actually, you know what, I think I change my vote do deletion of the P&A forum.

Most knowledgeable contributors have either abandoned the shatters.net boards altogether or do not appear to have the patience or will to deal with the threads found on the P&A forum. This can only lead to the situation in which the entirety of the P&A threads are mindless philosophical navelgazing, and any threads with relevant questions will go unanswered. If an add-on developer has questions about realism etc, then presumably an "add-on under construction" thread in the Add-ons forum would suffice.

In addition, since the majority of developers do not frequent this board, the Development forum seems rather superfluous, similarly because the development team isn't on these boards, the Bug reports forum presumably also goes unread by those with the ability to fix these problems in the main distribution. Thus both of those two forums can probably go. In addition, since we are informed that most communication between developers happens in private emails, the mailing list on sourceforge is probably unnecessary too. Those developing patches can presumably announce releases in the Users forum where they would have a wider audience.

If people see the need to preserve old discussions, maybe make the forums read-only instead of all-out deleting them.

Since add-on creation and texture making are two sides of the same coin, might as well merge Textures into Add-ons.

Purgatory is obviously irrelevant and might as well be deleted.

So in short, let's move to a situation in which we have:

• Celestia Users
• Celestia Add-ons
• Celestia Scripting

Since these are evidently the only forums this board needs.

Requiescat in pace, the Celestia community.

[Fightspit]

No... (I like to read good info in P&A even if there is less nowadays)

Me too.

[BlindedByTheLight]

Call me crazy...but what's the problem with simply having a 2 or 3 tiered P&A forum?

P&A - Level I - beginners
P&A - Level II - more intermediate level questions
P&A - Level III - high level stuff

Or just two levels - beginner and advanced. We leave it up to us to self-regulate...and I think we can handle that. Or am I missing something?