Author Topic: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)  (Read 99674 times)

Offline the_other_Doug

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #20 on: 08/08/2016 06:23 pm »
I like the idea of a members-only chat room for live events.  It wouldn't replace the regular forum posts, but would let us respond with all the "oohs" and "ahhs" and "what the heck was that" kind of stuff that currently tends to clutter the threads during live events.

I don't think the chat rooms would need to be L2-only, but you would obviously need to be an NSF member to enter the room.  You could maybe engineer a room with a window that was, say, a live feed of the event built into the chat room page.  More like a thumbnail than the full-resolution feed, but big enough to follow what's happening if you happen to have the chat room page open on top of a full-screen HD page display of the YouTube feed, for example.

I'd be good with regular chat rooms, no live feeds, but hey, it's the 21st century, I figure a guy can at least ask for a cool futuristic page design that pulls in multimedia elements... :)

Oh, one more thing -- I know the forum is partially supported financially by the ad bar that runs along the side of the page.  But the flashing animated ads are annoying, and can actually bother people with a variety of physical and mental illnesses.  For example, such flashing can have a very bad effect on people with PTSD, as well as various elements of autism spectrum disorders, epilepsy, etc.  They are designed to make you look at them, I understand that.  But if there is any way to make it such that they are not constantly on the screen while you are reading articles and forum posts, we would feel more like a cool, respectable site and less like a... well, I won't say it, but we all know the kinds of sites that go way overboard on garish, flashing ads.  I don't think it makes the feel of the site attain the level of excellence that the site achieves, if you get my meaning.

Just my $0.2...
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Offline mfck

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #21 on: 08/08/2016 09:46 pm »
I know it is a farfetched idea, but this place is so awesome, it could actually work.

NSF Sci-Fi would be a collaborative story telling effort, where the narrative Universe, it's physical rules and restrictions are created wiki-style and provide a realistic and consistent setting for story-telling. 

The characters, and the story could also be created via collaborative process, where you have the opening post in a thread to present your character, then people would challenge the presented charcter, and the autor, with a setting and a conundrum. The readership could rate the character and/or the author on several parameters. Characters rated high enough can have story thread spin-offs

Now, if this gets traction, it seems to have a mild capitalization opportunity, apart from the obvious fun that it would be.

Just a mind bubble
« Last Edit: 08/08/2016 09:47 pm by mfck »

Offline mike robel

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #22 on: 08/09/2016 01:24 am »
A library.  There are tons and tons of valuable documents that are attached to threads.  While one can search for them, it would be great to have a indexed portion of the site that is organized to allow a person to quickly get to a specific topic.  If not a library, a link to the post/message where it is posted.

+Manned Spacecraft
   +US
      +Pre-Mercury
      +Mercury
      +Gemini
      +Apollo
      +Shuttle
+Russian
+Chines
+Unmanned Spacecraft
+Boosters
   +US
   +Russian
   +ESA
   +Japan

And so on.

Do away with the likes.  I don't really think it serves a purpose, except in this instance when you are using it as a poll.

I like the idea of a chat room(s)




Offline craigcocca

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #23 on: 08/09/2016 02:06 am »
The top 5 requests for me are:

1) Responsive site design - The site should automatically format itself for the width of the device it's being viewed on.
 
2) Rebuild the live threads in a live blog format - Only the updates get pushed down to the user, lightening the load on the server farm during live events (especially the SpX ones). It's not a badge of honor to push gigs of traffic per hour during a live event when you can instead be pushing < 1kb updates out via a well designed live blog that implements WebRTC.

3) Temporarily ban users during live events who reload the live blog repeatedly - Those who don't follow the instructions to "not reload the live blog because it will update itself" should get banned for the remainder of the live event.

4) Integrate the live video feeds of launches, EVAs, etc into the live blog / live threads where legally possible (I think we could probably do this for all NASA and SpaceX events).

5) Once a live launch is done, go back and attach the T-0 to the thread so that all of the posts show the UTC time stamp as well as the number of seconds before or after launch in which the post was added to the site. 
« Last Edit: 08/09/2016 02:06 am by craigcocca »
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Offline Space Pete

Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #24 on: 08/09/2016 02:32 am »
So this might be a good time to float an idea I've been toying with of late.

How about an NSF YouTube channel, to essentially allow us to branch out into video coverage?

Having been inspired by the likes of "Jenny On Console", I myself have for a while been thinking about making some videos about the ISS, explaining all I know about certain systems.

So, for instance, one "episode" could be all about ISS docking systems, another could be about the electrical power generation system, etc. Think of it as a series: "How the ISS Works, with Space Pete". :)

The videos would include visual graphics and animations to aid in understanding of the systems I was describing, as I find that text isn't always the best way to describe complex systems, it can be far easier if you can visually show people.

And therein lies the problem - generating the graphics that I would need, which would likely involve animated 3D renderings of the ISS and its components. I don't have the know-how to do that myself, and I imagine it would be quite an involved and time consuming process.

But maybe we could create an NSF YouTube channel and, in the same style of the forums, allow knowledgeable users on particular aspects/systems to create their own content and share it via the channel? Or maybe Podcasts would be a better format, as that wouldn't require the creation of graphics/animations.

Anyway, something to ponder...
« Last Edit: 08/09/2016 02:41 am by Space Pete »
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Offline Lar

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #25 on: 08/09/2016 02:51 am »
Random comments


- Don't change the logo (or the name, but we're good there)
- Semantic tagging is a great idea
- Push for live events is good idea if it can be made to work, I fear that push takes more resources even than a bazilion refreshes a second but don't know for sure
- Wikilike area for collaborative editing might be useful. If it had better assistance for creating tables and formatted text/lists even  better, We are seeing more data collection/collation efforts  like the scrubs thread, etc. and this might help.
- I agree about finding a way to handle long links, and also about resizing also reformatting the text.
- The search needs vast improvement. Has a custom Google search been considered?
- Keep likes. I think they're working great
- Give mods the ability  to like more than once every 120 seconds (no I wasn't kidding about that)
« Last Edit: 08/09/2016 02:55 am by Lar »
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Offline TinkerLaspeyrs

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #26 on: 08/09/2016 09:21 am »
A feature to convert times into local time for the readers location. Heavens above it can't be difficult - Heavens Above does it. We're not all Florida or Hawthorn centric.

Some standardisation of Units of measurement or a conversion feature. Metric would be preferable, makes it much better for comparison of performance, size, weight etc and might help ensure some hardware doesn't miss Mars again. The only countries in the world remaining nonmetric are Liberia, Myanmar and some place I watched Endeavour launch in 2007 on STS-118 with lots of fabulous people speaking Spanish.

Has anyone thought about attempting to create a price index for launch services or collections of rocket hardware and consumables. Is there enough fine grained data to meaningfully do this? If the data is available it is not difficult to do, just a bit time consuming. Then there would be an idea of the price change over time of different services and hardware etc. Might be the best way to see if the promise of making space more affordable is a happening thing. I think all derived indexes should be measuring change in $/kilo to somewhere.
Could get a bit messy with utilisation of capacity arguments (might need to specify a fixed weight, ha, Price index practitioners might see a pun in that) and the value of reusable stages. Which makes me wonder if a reusable stage could be treated as Capital, 'Spose it depends on whether it you're producing an input or an output index. This 'NSF' would be a good forum for Delphi Method polls for quality or utility changes in hardware or its use.

for a moment there I thought I'd done that without an acronym - but looky-see STS - drat.
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Offline Chris Bergin

Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #27 on: 08/09/2016 10:10 am »
A reminder this is for suggestions. They will be discussed by other members if we take them forwards into their own threads, but for now this is just the suggestions (so hold your additional thoughts on other people's ideas until that point to keep this as a list of suggestions). However:

A feature to convert times into local time for the readers location. Heavens above it can't be difficult - Heavens Above does it. We're not all Florida or Hawthorn centric.

This is something we already have. Go to "Profile, Look and Layout" and you'll see it.
« Last Edit: 08/09/2016 10:38 am by Chris Bergin »
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Offline yg1968

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #28 on: 08/09/2016 02:17 pm »
A Youtube channel where we could upload full launch webcasts and other NASA/space related events.

P.S. Edited in response to Chris' post below.
« Last Edit: 08/09/2016 02:50 pm by yg1968 »

Offline Chris Bergin

Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #29 on: 08/09/2016 02:27 pm »
A reminder this is for suggestions. They will be discussed by other members if we take them forwards into their own threads, but for now this is just the suggestions (so hold your additional thoughts on other people's ideas until that point to keep this as a list of suggestions).

And the next two posts didn't read this. ;D

Keep the channel clear for suggestions please chaps. I'll tidy it up later. We're talking about improving the site, not "to use metric or not".
« Last Edit: 08/09/2016 02:28 pm by Chris Bergin »
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Offline RonM

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #30 on: 08/09/2016 02:56 pm »
Simple improvements to live coverage would help. Sort of like how the BBC handles it would be good (a page with links and windows for video and new posts).

Is there some way to have alerts for upcoming live events? Something like the way My Messages works (shows number of new messages on the forum tool bar).

Youtube channel is a good idea. We have a lot of creative forum members that would have fun making informative videos. Probably should have videos reviewed before being posted to the official NSF Youtube channel to maintain editorial standards. Get enough views and it can be a revenue source for NSF (got to pay for those severs).

A wiki is also a good idea. Put moderators in charge of maintaining the quality of the information posted and it will be a more reliable resource than Wikipedia. It would be a great place to put historical data or links to threads with historical content.

Offline Chris Bergin

Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #31 on: 08/09/2016 04:06 pm »
Yeah, I do love the idea of NSF TV or somesuch. That'll be a thread for us to work within.
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Offline Poole Amateur

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #32 on: 08/09/2016 07:22 pm »
Just a tiny thought  (like most of mine are.. ), would it be an idea for articles to be read by a few volunteer members, before being published, to check for any obvious mistaks?
« Last Edit: 08/09/2016 07:23 pm by Poole Amateur »

Offline okan170

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #33 on: 08/09/2016 07:32 pm »
A Youtube channel where we could upload full launch webcasts and other NASA/space related events.

P.S. Edited in response to Chris' post below.

This is pretty interesting.  Over the last few years, I've noticed a few NSF members have YouTube channels where they've uploaded things for the forums, bringing everything together in one spot would be advantageous, especially when there are many gems out there that are hard-to-find.

Edit:
Another thought regarding reformatting future articles; would this also retroactively re-format the existing articles or would there be a way to have "new-style" articles with the more updated formatting while preserving the older ones? 
« Last Edit: 08/09/2016 07:35 pm by okan170 »

Offline cebri

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #34 on: 08/09/2016 08:11 pm »
Hi guys,

First of all, thanks for this awesome site.

I think a wiki would be an amazing addition to the site where we could refresh all the latest information about launches, boosters, ships, missions, etc. It would be a good and easy way to access a lot of information instead of having to dig very deep in some threads to retrieve some great info.

About that url change name, i'm proposing www.spacexandotherstuff.com (just kidding :D )
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Offline ChrisGebhardt

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #35 on: 08/10/2016 12:53 am »
Yeah, I do love the idea of NSF TV or somesuch. That'll be a thread for us to work within.

This was the first thing that came to mind.  Maybe even allowing us to do some kind of live feed coverage where we talk about the engineering and tech aspects of the upcoming launch/mission and not just "oh cool, there's a rocketing launching".  I don't see that kind of engineering live launch coverage out there.  (And yes, I know that writing this means this is something I'll be heavily involved with.)

Offline DecoLV

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #36 on: 08/10/2016 01:09 am »
We don't have 'breaking news' around here often  but you know it IF you see it. Would be nice to be able for an editor to flag something as hot across the site...important speech, accident, approval of a  CDR,..broad interest.

Offline Andy USA

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #37 on: 08/10/2016 01:21 am »
The news site is very, very good, but aimed at quality over quantity. However, if there's any space news out there, there's no way this forum part misses it. The problem is the forum is so massive it's hard to keep up. So some people picking out breaking items from the forum and that being a feed on the news site alongside the great articles here would be awesome.

News site:

News site - NSF Articles.
News feed - picking out breaking and major other news - which people can then click through to the forum and discuss.
NSF TV.

How about that for making NSF even greater!
« Last Edit: 08/10/2016 01:22 am by Andy USA »

Offline mhlas7

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #38 on: 08/10/2016 01:58 am »
I'm spending more and more time on the site via phone and pad, less via desktop browser.  I've used tapatalk for past few years and now am back to trying the mobile-friendly browser interface from my phone.

One open issue is there's no good way to read articles / news stories on a phone.  Finding some mobile-friendly presentation really should be some sort of objective for 2017, I think.

I'm enamored by the flipit style interface WAPO and flipit app have adopted, but am certainly open to others.

Thanks

Answering some of these in reverse order, but I am reading them all. Tapatalk sucks (in the style of Rainman's Dustin Hoffman talking about Kmart)....just my personal opinion and because some people like it, that's why we have it.  I'm overruled ;)

I use google chrome on my phone for NSF....but mainly desktop. If there's alternatives, we can check into that. This will be a thread in this section too. (Will be standalone threads for major items of investigation).

I too am not a fan of the Taptalk app

How about a community developed NSF app for iOS, Android, etc? It would be a place to read articles, browse the forum's, self updating live threads, customizable push notifications, chatroom, access video streams...

If there are members of the community that wanted to do this, I would be willing to help with the development. I personally have an Android phone and I have made a few basic apps but I am by no means an expert.

Offline gin455res

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #39 on: 08/10/2016 06:19 am »
I've built a system to help people learn to read more easily. It adds a diacritic overlay to English to make it regular.


http://webpidgin.co.uk/augmented-english/lexicon/outputbox.html


If you try it, you will notice that some words have two possible pronunciations, e.g. lives in spain, the tomcat's nine lives


In this instance I provide buttons to choose the correct option.


Adding this to the site would allow non-native speakers to improve their English while using the site.




But even more useful would be a similar system that allowed contributors to post edit their entries for semantic meaning.  If you could mark between pressure (pascals) and pressure (stress); we could then have a fairly simple to implement and accurate partial-translation* system. This system would make the site more accessible to non-native users, and should also allow them to improve** their language skills.



*The system would translate a varying fraction of English back into the mother tongue (L2).  The lower frequency (harder, and less ambiguous) words would be translated to L2 based on a frequency threshold.

**Research suggests knowing 95% of the words in a text allows readers to acquire some of the remaining lexis from context.

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