How this site came about

[SimonShuttle]

Hey Chris, per the "where are all the geeks" nonsense thread, I thought I'd start a new one to see if you could give some history on how the site started, as I was here from the start, and how it's grown?

[Space Pete]

I too would love to hear the full story behind NSF.

[mtakala24]

"The NSF Decision".

[Chris Bergin]

Soooooooooooo....and in the context of that thread:

I started this site to be very specific, technical but without being nerdy (you know, a bunch of people discussing the size of their telescope ). The sort of place I'd like to visit - as someone who's interested in the hardware side, but without getting a headache due to the need to learn about the hardware before daring to comment (still learning, always will be).

Always got space mags, but got to see the internet side by rushing out of school to get into an internet cafe to view the X-33 Venturestar webcams (one was of the Skunkworks, one was of the launch site at Edwards) as my nearest real-time news. NASA had some good X vehicle sites. Would print them out to read properly later (still have a bunch of large folders).

As that progressed to home internet, always found Sci.Space to be a bit heavy for my level and seemed to suffer from spam a lot (nature of their format), along with some armwavers (although we're not immune from a few of those on here). SDC (the old Space.com messageboard, which is now defunct - it seems - after they were bought out by an advertising network company) had Shuttle Guy, who was their Jim (total expert, helpful, but didn't suffer fools lightly ) but they didn't moderate food fights, and most of the activity was on their off topic subforum, where people fell out over politics and sports - that's why there isn't one here.

Already knew a few USA and NASA guys and on their advice/encouragement, I worked on a format that didn't copy other sites out there, but was built to be very hardware/vehicle specific, and nothing else. However, only starting a forum would be hit and miss, because - as some have mentioned - a lot of people don't actually like to post. You need people posting otherwise a forum will soon die.

So - given I was a journalist anyway (sports, however) - I thought it would be best focusing on a news site, the timing was right (lead into RTF after Columbia), attach a forum on to it and see if the news site would drive the forum and visa versa.

Maxed out a credit card to have a custom designed site created by a guy I know in Dallas (probably should have started with a free, ready made format, but hey ho), which had a custom CMS and format that could be revamped on demand (the bare bones of the original NSF is still live), bought into a shared server at $25 a month, tested it and and put this on the front:

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2005/02/sts-114-return-to-flight-specific-media-site/

So the aim was to cover Discovery and RTF onwards, with potential VSE coverage.

I think we only had a general forum section and one each for the orbiters. Some of the SDC people turned up in the opening days and a few more found us on google. We had about 10 people online at the same time after a few days (which was surprisingly good for a new site with no real 'advertising exposure' and we had some JSC and KSC guys join and actively post.

Grew nicely in the run up to STS-114, including space industry people, but by then we had already had to double the server bandwidth (a sign of things to come), then we ran our first big story with the PAL Ramp liberation from STS-114's ET, due to exclusive photos of the tank repair at MAF - causing our first spike and we seemed to pick up exponentially from that point onwards.

We've been very strong with the moderation, mainly via lesson's learned from other sites. It's no fun to moderate, but we have to keep the community away from the sort of thing which has killed other forums.

We continued to expand - both in visitations (and space industry) and content field, and soon had to move to a dedicated server, still under a self-funded arrangement, which had me in a panic as there was no way I could continue to do that for long (like most people, I balance an overdraft) and it did get to the point where the next server invoice wasn't going to get paid. The site was days away from being shutdown and I posted asking for suggestions to save the site.

Donations were suggested, but I hated the idea of some "tip jar", but it was suggested that we could both mitigate the server loads/costs by splitting the site to two areas, one which ring-fenced a good level of bandwidth and database size for large videos and such, with loyal members paying a small subscription to have access to that area and in turn keeping the entire site online. We started that as L2.

That was well supported and - in addition to the ring-fenced nature of L2 - we gained a lot of "donated" content (initially huge unreleased video) to increase the value of L2 membership in a kind of "you're supporting the site, here's some goodies" fashion. L2's grown into what it is now, which is massive (5500+gbs), be it video, presentations, photos, graphics, memos, breaking internal news, etc. It's also pretty much "alive" - by way of new content - as we have so many space industry people in there, answering questions, discussing L2 content, providing content, etc.)

L2 now drives our unique news content (benefit to all), unique because unlike a lot of other sites, we have our source content published, as opposed to only seeing a news article and seeing "documentation seen by this site" (but never seeing that documentation), which has seen us trusted by mass media and accredited by a number of the mainstreams - such as USA Today, MSNBC, New York Times etc.

Because L2 is so good, as much as it's "being" is for people to support the site, it has a 90+ percent renewal rate, so the ENTIRE site is stable and healthy, allowing us to add more servers/capability/functionality/security/stability for the ENTIRE site. So unlike other sub areas on other sites, the subscription IS "support" for the site, not something going into a company or paying for me to go on trips to launch sites (I wish!) It's all for the site, the entire site, while such supporters get rewarded in return.

And this is a site which needs such support from our loyal members on L2, which is a tiny percentage of the total amount of people who visit - and I assume enjoy - this site. Because we've grown year on year since 2005, as have its costs.

Posted elsewhere, but this is JUST the forum stats for last year - which will show why this site costs four figures a month to keep online (click to enlarge). I'll get a load of stats for both sites generated soon.

[Martin FL]

Great post, thanks for sharing and thanks for the site!

[Jeff Lerner]

Wow..what a history....all I can say is, thanks for getting this started....without NSF, where would I be spending all my Internet time...

BTW Chris, since your bringing us up to speed on your history, I've always wondered, if you ever made it to see a live Shuttle launch..??

[Beemer]

Fantastic story. I'm so glad I found this place and when my finances allow I will definitely subscribe to L2- right now I'm paying off Christmas 

Something tells me it is a great bargain 

[mtakala24]

I was surprised that there was significant risk involved. I'm very glad its a success!!!

[AndrewSTS]

Great story Chris! And wow, nearly a million people came to the forum last year!

[Lee Jay]

Something tells me it is a great bargain 

Less than $0.25 a day - and you could easily spend 24 hours a day reading, at least for a while.  What else can you do that's so interesting for a penny an hour?

I wish movies cost 2 cents, and were at least half as interesting as L2.

[Seattle Dave]

Some very nice background info there Chris. It really is amazing how the site has matured and established, and I'm glad to be a L2 member, not just because I know it helped improve the site, but because it's so amazingly cool in there!

Is there enough L2 support coming in? Not that I can imagine it, but if there's a drop off, what would be the plan?

[Chris Bergin]

Thanks guys. I think I'll move this to the site Q&A area soon.

Is there enough L2 support coming in?

It's stable, but it's still a TINY minority of the people that visit the site (to the point I know we're not advertising it right). The main focus is for the L2 members to be happy with it, and I've only had one complaint over the years, and that was because his browser was messing up on download links.

Second point worth mentioning is that those not on L2 (cause I know there's a lot of people who'd want to be on L2 but simply don't/can't spend money on the internet past their ISP) think the site is great even without L2. That's really important, as opposed to restricting functionality or content (remember a lot of L2 content I'd never be able to post on a wide open forum anyway) and then demanding subscription to return it.

Not that I can imagine it, but if there's a drop off, what would be the plan?

As the site is right now (with a massive public forum - which is a major bandwidth/database element etc.), the back up plans we have would be to run it as a public news site only for everyone (www.nasaspaceflight.com), whereas L2 members would have everything as you see it now with the forum (on top of L2 obviously). That'd dramatically reduce costs in the event of a tail off over a long period, but not quality so much as we have all the space industry as L2 members, for example. Such a plan would be refined, but it's not under discussion.

[Space Pete]

Great story Chris, thanks!

I can honestly say that L2 is THE best place to get up-to-the-minute, in-depth space news anywhere on the internet. I can't count the number of times that space news has been "broken" by other sites, but yet I read it on L2 a week or more prior. And an awful lot of L2 content, such as technical updates on projects, etc. never even gets picked up by other sites, since it wouldn't "fit" into an article. But that's what makes L2 a real gem for those of us who wish to follow nitty-gritty, technical, in-depth developments on all kinds of projects/vehicles, from Shuttle, to ISS, to Orion/SLS, to Commercial, and much more.

Indeed, Chris' skills as a journalist are evident when he turns a page of technical, bullet-point notes from L2 into an article to be published on site. From writing ISS articles, I can personally attest that turning a few bullet-point updates into a three-page story is a lot harder than you might think.

I don't take any money from Chris for writing articles, since A) all NSF's L2 money goes toward covering server costs, and B) even if Chris had the money (which he doesn't as it all goes toward the site) I wouldn't take it, since I write both because I love this site and love supporting it, and also because I "believe" in what I write about - which is also what makes this site great, because you can tell when you read articles on here that they have been written by people with a passion for the subject, as opposed to a passion for a paycheck.

[Naito]

Great story Chris, I don't know how I'd spend half my day if I didn't have NSF to read!  This place is absolutely unrivaled!

[ChrisC]

I just wanted to spotlight the importance of moderation.  As ChrisB said, it's no fun moderating, as you have to be the bad guy.  It's also no fun having one of your posts moderated into oblivion, which has happened to me quite a few times (often because one of Jim's or rdale's sharp responses has gotten my ire up).

But it is absolutely crucial to the health of an internet forum.

MetaFilter is a site that famously keeps an extremely intelligent and cordial conversation going, simply by two things:  1) requiring a one-time $5 membership fee to register and post, and 2) having a few moderators who will quickly delete posts as needed.

Thanks for the history, ChrisB.

- ChrisC

P.S.  Could you edit your history above to define "SDC"?

[Chris Bergin]

Thanks guys And to note Pete's response, we've been so fortunate to have such a good pool of writers. Couldn't of imagined doing any better if someone gave me a million to set the site up back in the day.

Goes to show if you love the subject, you'll do well getting the content across. Pete's Mr ISS - I can't think of a better ISS technical and general writer on the planet, seriously. Chris G is like a younger, far cleverer, me - brilliant writer, and with an identical mindset. I hope we can hold on to him as he should be working for NASA. You've all seen him at the pressers, he's full of awesome.

Then William Graham - as with the aforementioned - happened to be on the site, turns around and stuns us with his epic launch previews/overviews. Then Philip Sloss runs around the country, interviews top end people and provides news and content in one package. Even Rob Dale hit us with some epic technical content, and I'm subediting this content thinking "I'm hardly touching this!"

We've also got Rui who's dominated Chinese launch news, always first with a launch article (first English lanuage, sometimes even faster than Chinese official media)...and you know how many launches they conducted last year. We'll only add to the pool over time, and via the same approach...such as Ron's showing promise already.

That's where the whole "site and forum" has worked out so well, as I can't imagine finding these people if it was just a news site. And it also means a lot to have all these writers on the forum, approachable and willing to give feedback, because so many news sites don't do that. Makes us more accountable, we can explain content and you get to see we're fans too.

[PahTo]

I'll throw in my compliments for this thread, and the NSF site.  While I wish I had more time to peruse L2, as Space Pete notes, Chris (Bergin) has a way of turning highly technical L2 content into easily understandable and well written articles (others write well too).
It has been a pleasure meeting some of the contributors, and I/we hope to meet others at upcoming big events (EFT-1 launch, Endeavour's arrival at LAX and transport to final resting place in LA, etc).
Thanks!

[MP99]

Is there enough L2 support coming in?

It's stable, but it's still a TINY minority of the people that visit the site (to the point I know we're not advertising it right). The main focus is for the L2 members to be happy with it, and I've only had one complaint over the years, and that was because his browser was messing up on download links.

Second point worth mentioning is that those not on L2 (cause I know there's a lot of people who'd want to be on L2 but simply don't/can't spend money on the internet past their ISP) think the site is great even without L2. That's really important, as opposed to restricting functionality or content (remember a lot of L2 content I'd never be able to post on a wide open forum anyway) and then demanding subscription to return it.

Obviously, the site banner presents a rolling list of L2 highlights.

I wonder whether there's scope for a more detailed "what's been added to L2 this month" open thread? Obviously it couldn't list everything, but it might be able to list the titles of some of the threads-with-attachments.

After news has broken, it might also be possible to list the associated L2 threads, and the dates that info was posted.

This couldn't be automated, would need someone who knows the contents. But it's the only way I can think of to allow the L2 content to speak for itself.

cheers, Martin

[pippin]

Chris,

don't know whether I'm supposed to ask this but it keeps nagging me
Can you actually _live_ off this site? I mean: even enthusiasts have to live off _something_ and this certainly has to take all your time, doesn't it?

[Chris Bergin]

Nice thinking Martin. I'll have a think

Chris,

don't know whether I'm supposed to ask this but it keeps nagging me
Can you actually _live_ off this site? I mean: even enthusiasts have to live off _something_ and this certainly has to take all your time, doesn't it?

Nope. Blimey, we'd get a ton of stuff written if I could do this as a day job. I've got two "day jobs". One of which I can do whilst I'm hanging around on here, so you probably only notice that I'm missing off site a lot of the GMT morning, and that I mainly write articles around this time (past midnight), get to bed 2-3am ish, get up at 8am, back in for about 1pm. Never been a big sleeper

I've never taken anything off the site, not a flight to a spacey thing, not a computer (I really need a new PC, this one's sounding like it's in pain, lol), all goes into a account which is ringfenced to pay where the site is hosted in Dallas, Texas (as opposed to say my personal account). So the site pays the site. I top it up if I have to (had to do that a lot in previous years, but recent years L2 and some ad revenue has kept the situation solvent).

We're pushing the advertising side of the site this year, as we've got solid and impressive visitation numbers to show, and we're making the cost of advertising really cheap, so hopefully that pushes on.

Some sites make money via syndication (like when you see space.com articles on Fox News or MSNBC), but that probably wouldn't work for us as we're not mainstream type content.

We're investor-ready by way of we have revenue streams (investment would allow a bulk server buy - which would save a ton of cash - and then a rev split with an investor), but any such situation would only be if I kept editorial and managerial control of the site's content...to the point a reader or L2 member wouldn't see any impact.

So long as I can pay the rent and keep myself in food via my day jobs and this site doesn't break the bank by needing subsidy, I'm cool. Got to remember, I get to report about spaceships, and people actually read the reports! So providing my fingers don't drop off and people like the site, I couldn't be happier about putting the hours in!