Author Topic: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)  (Read 99678 times)

Offline BrianNH

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #60 on: 08/16/2016 05:28 pm »
This may be one of the 90 unworkable suggestions, but how about a top level button that dynamically builds pages listing all recent posts in all update threads.   The idea is that you would see what looks like a regular forum thread, but it would contain posts from many different update threads, sorted by time.  It would be a quick overview of "what's new" across the forums without having to click through to each section.

Offline Chris Bergin

Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #61 on: 08/16/2016 10:52 pm »
One thing we're already implementing is an improved mission update and discussion thread lead post. Check out the first one, which we're going to use as a template. All credit to Daniel for the creation of that format.

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=40373.0
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Offline rocketguy101

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #62 on: 08/17/2016 02:22 pm »
This may be one of the 90 unworkable suggestions, but how about a top level button that dynamically builds pages listing all recent posts in all update threads.   The idea is that you would see what looks like a regular forum thread, but it would contain posts from many different update threads, sorted by time.  It would be a quick overview of "what's new" across the forums without having to click through to each section.
You mean like the "Unread Topics" button except it is filtered for "update threads" only?
David

Offline rayleighscatter

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #63 on: 08/17/2016 11:48 pm »
This one might be a bridge too far but...

What about NSF arranging events off forum? NASA and contractors have done social network gatherings and open houses in the past and NSF has a lot of members within NASA and the various companies. Maybe every now and then a meetup could be organized to tour some sort of site, or for an expert in some field to maybe talk about a project or do a little Q&A.

Offline starhawk92

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #64 on: 08/18/2016 06:04 pm »
Is it time for a name change perhaps?


I can rule that out right away. It's like "maybe you should change your 12 year old daughter's name" to my mind. ;D

I get the point, but one has to stick with the name. Maybe we should create more splinter sites? :o

Instead of splintering, how about subnetting?  Like "spacex.nasaspaceflight.com", "spaceshuttle.nasaspaceflight.com" and the every-valuable "L2.nasaspaceflight.com".  Each could be a copy of the current forum software -- this also solves capacity depending on how the subnet sights are hosted.

I am also on board with the "new of space" website and would be willing to help with that (I've made webcrawlers and harvesters before).

Offline gongora

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #65 on: 08/19/2016 04:30 pm »
This kinda goes along with what Galactic Penguin SST was talking about above in https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=40878.msg1568004#msg1568004

It would be kinda nice to have some sort of data structure to contain the launch logs (whether it be database, xml, csv, whatever) where the people maintaining launch logs of various areas (US, SpaceX, Europe, Russia, China, etc) could all update a common set of data.  Then you could have a launch schedule feature on the site where it could automatically show an up to date list of upcoming launches, and people could filter it by country/launch provider if they wanted to.

Offline francesco nicoli

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #66 on: 08/19/2016 05:03 pm »
This kinda goes along with what Galactic Penguin SST was talking about above in https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=40878.msg1568004#msg1568004

It would be kinda nice to have some sort of data structure to contain the launch logs (whether it be database, xml, csv, whatever) where the people maintaining launch logs of various areas (US, SpaceX, Europe, Russia, China, etc) could all update a common set of data.  Then you could have a launch schedule feature on the site where it could automatically show an up to date list of upcoming launches, and people could filter it by country/launch provider if they wanted to.

Indeed. In fact, I would go forward, saying that the website would benefit from a section called "projects" in which people working on common issues can maintain a home page with their key findings or data, and a associated discussion thread. Of course, this happens already in discussion forums, but it would be nice to heve a dedicated instrument for projects (whether it is keeping a log, collecting costs data, or presenting experimental results from DYI experiments).

Offline 1

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #67 on: 08/21/2016 08:11 am »
Two things; apologies if they've already been suggested.

 First, I'll also throw out a suggestion that may well be completely unfeasible. Any chance of getting an equation editor built into the forum a-la-LaTeX? The sup/superscript buttons can only take us so far.

Secondly, when a thread gets large page numbers are listed like "1 2 3 ... 100".  Clicking those three dots always seems to expand the smaller end of that number line. Which is great if I want to jump to page 6, but somewhat less than great if I want to read page 96; the latter of which occurs more often when I'm trying to catch up on recent posts. Can we get a few trailing numbers for the last few pages of a thread? (Or even better, something like "1 2 ... 50 ... 99 100" )

Appreciate all of the work that's gone into the site!

Offline Chris Bergin

Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #68 on: 08/21/2016 12:31 pm »
This one might be a bridge too far but...

What about NSF arranging events off forum? NASA and contractors have done social network gatherings and open houses in the past and NSF has a lot of members within NASA and the various companies. Maybe every now and then a meetup could be organized to tour some sort of site, or for an expert in some field to maybe talk about a project or do a little Q&A.

Yep, really like that idea. That'll be a thread ;D (PS I'm still going to do threads for main ideas, just didn't want to overload it and this is a long process. This has helped the logo thread as it's focused people on it).
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Offline Chris Bergin

Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #69 on: 08/21/2016 12:32 pm »
Is it time for a name change perhaps?


I can rule that out right away. It's like "maybe you should change your 12 year old daughter's name" to my mind. ;D

I get the point, but one has to stick with the name. Maybe we should create more splinter sites? :o

Instead of splintering, how about subnetting?  Like "spacex.nasaspaceflight.com", "spaceshuttle.nasaspaceflight.com" and the every-valuable "L2.nasaspaceflight.com".  Each could be a copy of the current forum software -- this also solves capacity depending on how the subnet sights are hosted.

I am also on board with the "new of space" website and would be willing to help with that (I've made webcrawlers and harvesters before).

You're into my thinking about NSF as a central site, but - like some other sites - they have splinter sites, still part of the parent, but specific to a major area. Absolutely would like to look into that as it's a natural way for a site to expand.
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Offline Chris Bergin

Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #70 on: 08/21/2016 12:33 pm »
This kinda goes along with what Galactic Penguin SST was talking about above in https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=40878.msg1568004#msg1568004

It would be kinda nice to have some sort of data structure to contain the launch logs (whether it be database, xml, csv, whatever) where the people maintaining launch logs of various areas (US, SpaceX, Europe, Russia, China, etc) could all update a common set of data.  Then you could have a launch schedule feature on the site where it could automatically show an up to date list of upcoming launches, and people could filter it by country/launch provider if they wanted to.

Launch logs - launch manifests - launch central. Yeah, want to do more with that and be innovative with it.
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Offline Chris Bergin

Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #71 on: 08/21/2016 12:35 pm »
Two things; apologies if they've already been suggested.

 First, I'll also throw out a suggestion that may well be completely unfeasible. Any chance of getting an equation editor built into the forum a-la-LaTeX? The sup/superscript buttons can only take us so far.

Secondly, when a thread gets large page numbers are listed like "1 2 3 ... 100".  Clicking those three dots always seems to expand the smaller end of that number line. Which is great if I want to jump to page 6, but somewhat less than great if I want to read page 96; the latter of which occurs more often when I'm trying to catch up on recent posts. Can we get a few trailing numbers for the last few pages of a thread? (Or even better, something like "1 2 ... 50 ... 99 100" )

Appreciate all of the work that's gone into the site!

Things like the first one might be like the acronym expander. We had that, but it put a lot of load on the database (but that might be solved by now, so we have this thread and Mark can pick out things that are viable). I remember "likes" was a problem, but that has since been solved (per load).

Second one really sounds like something we could and should do. I know what you mean about that with long threads....and I've got 2300 pages of PMs (seriously ;D) which really shows the issue when you're looking back for a message from a few months ago.
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Offline 1

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #72 on: 08/22/2016 08:17 pm »
Things like the first one might be like the acronym expander. We had that, but it put a lot of load on the database (but that might be solved by now, so we have this thread and Mark can pick out things that are viable). I remember "likes" was a problem, but that has since been solved (per load).

It's certainly not a trivial thing to request, but one can always hope. And since I'm not a fan of bringing up problems without also suggesting possible solutions, I'll throw out the MathJax tool https://www.mathjax.org/ as something that might help. It's actually built for client-side operation, although server-side implementations exist. Anyway, I'll cross my fingers and leave it at that.

Offline Space OurSoul

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #73 on: 08/23/2016 12:06 am »
I have a very simple request: could the orange "NEW" button at the end of thread titles (that links to <url>#new) be a little bit bigger? It's awfully hard to hit on higher-DPI touch screens.

ta!
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Offline Space OurSoul

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #74 on: 08/23/2016 12:12 am »
I had this idea of nested discussion thread, where you could post an update, a discussion comment, or a party comment in the same thread. Those who wanted to just view updates could select just the "update" option. This would allow easy discussion of updates and would avoid having updates in the discussion thread and vice versa. Mods could easily mark comments as "discussion" or "party" if they were incorrectly tagged originally. It'd also prevent a proliferation of threads.

Anyway, just an idea.
I had the same idea but Chris (THE Chris that is. Robot, I think you have to be the "other" Chris, at least in this context :-) ) wasn't a fan.

But if there is some other way to catch up on just the updates in a thread to which one hasn't returned in a few days, I'd be a fan.

Perhaps a simple alternative would be to have "reply in discussion thread" and "quote and reply in discussion thread" buttons that are peers to the existing reply/quote buttons (and of course available only in update threads). People would get it right most of the time. I do realize this requires back-end structure to link update and discussion threads, though, so perhaps it's not feasible.

Might save the poor mods a bunch of work moving out-of-place discussion replies too.
A complete OurSoul

Online Zardar

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #75 on: 08/23/2016 08:22 am »
I have a very simple request: could the orange "NEW" button at the end of thread titles (that links to <url>#new) be a little bit bigger? It's awfully hard to hit on higher-DPI touch screens.

ta!

And could the 'new' button be moved to the of the replies column (since its a new reply?), and left or right justified in that column?
When I am clicking NEWs on the threads that take my interest, I am getting RSI having to jigger my mouse all over the screen. It would be much easier and more comfortable if all the NEWs were in a vertical line.

Online FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #76 on: 08/30/2016 06:47 am »
Ok I confess, for reading the forum I mainly use tapatalk on my mobile. Why? Because it's the easiest way to see which of the myriad of threads I follow across the site have new posts since I last read them. It's also very quick to jump into the relevant point in those threads. It also helpfully lists new threads in the subforums I subscribe to and I can easily add/remove subscriptions.
I used to use email notifications but my inbox just clogged up with 100s of messages, with no clear overview and it was a pain to constantly switch between email and browser.
So in my ideal NSF 2017 there would be a way to do this within the site itself. There's no question that reading the web version is nicer. The issue for me is finding the content I want to read.

Offline moralec

Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #77 on: 08/30/2016 08:18 pm »
+1 for two ideas already mentioned above (also happy could help in turning either a reality)

1) wiki/library. Some amazing documents and information scattered over old threads and news articles. Great to see those transformed into a knowledge repository

2) live events. Would love to see something like what theguardian uses to cover events as they happen.



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Offline Joaosg

Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #78 on: 09/02/2016 01:58 pm »
Chris an important implementation would be an SSL certificate for the forum (subdomain would be cheaper than all domain and subdomains).

Google values SSL on their rank and it is a good idea for security reasons also.

Don't know what version of Wordpress we are using (hope it's updated) but there are a lot of awesome off the shelf themes that with some proper customization could really step up the news site both in terms of functionality and design, and all of them are now responsive so they can adapt to mobile devices.

Offline Chris Bergin

Re: NSF Master Plan for 2017 onwards (Help create it)
« Reply #79 on: 09/02/2016 02:06 pm »
Chris an important implementation would be an SSL certificate for the forum (subdomain would be cheaper than all domain and subdomains).

Google values SSL on their rank and it is a good idea for security reasons also.

Don't know what version of Wordpress we are using (hope it's updated) but there are a lot of awesome off the shelf themes that with some proper customization could really step up the news site both in terms of functionality and design, and all of them are now responsive so they can adapt to mobile devices.

Very interested in the Wordpress stuff. My thinking is to mirror what we use right now and play with themes etc. Rather than work in the current CMS in case I mess up current articles ;)

Per the cert, I thought we had sorted all of that out?

Talking about this? (The s in the URL)?
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