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#40
by
Humuku
on 10 Aug, 2016 06:56
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Hi, things are pretty good as they are and I would caution against changing too much, because things might get out of control workload wise.
Anyways, the things I would prefer to concentrate on:
* higher resolution images with captions
(e.g.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/captionpix/)
* link to discussion added to articles
* https encryption for forum (and maybe site)
* some mouse over magic converting units and times
(e.g.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/unit-converter/)
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#41
by
mtakala24
on 10 Aug, 2016 07:18
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Automatically updated launch update feed/page that is changed/converted into a forum thread afterwards.
Please no responsive site, as usually the responsiveness is achieved by reducing features/decluttering the user interface. All features on every device is a good thing these days.
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#42
by
Chris Bergin
on 10 Aug, 2016 22:35
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Again guys, just suggestions. Those suggestions we take forward will become their own threads, then we can expand on the idea and discuss them.
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#43
by
Tea Party Space Czar
on 11 Aug, 2016 00:42
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IBTR
The idea I have is a NASA Spaceflight University - this is a disruptive idea.
I just do not want to see innovation - I want revolutionary development.
We have some of the most amazing people here with such diverse backgrounds. Imagine if this was the place where people could bring their ideas and truly vet them and crowd source the development. I had an executive from one of the BIG THREE aero firms talk about how amazed they were with the fidelity of data on L2.
Why not take it to the next level?
Why couldn't NASA Spaceflight be a repository for lessons learned and spacecraft development? We know we can go to universities around the world to study engineering. We also know many areas of study are not fully developed because ideas are shot down.
It is my opinion that this could be a place where we could do some really amazing things for spaceflight - human and robotic. I am quite certain if we mission planned this we could work on things like:
#1 Standards for inner solar system exploration with robots
#2 Discuss and write (meaningful) papers on issues that are not being addressed in a manner we (the NSF community) feels should be worked on
#3 Develop software
#4 Build Hardware
Finally, Chris, you have "linkedin" a community of very highly specialized people unlike anywhere in the world. This is like the RED FLAG of spaceflight. There are so many amazing people here who lurk and privately communicate. If we had a forum where we could really do something special - it would make NSF even bigger.
As an example - what if I could go to people who invest and say:
Look, we have a team of people who have proven track records of flying hardware in space. We would like to build and design a cubesat that takes 8k pics of the moon. Would you be willing to invest?
There are so many angels out there who just "want to believe" who are willing to help (with resources) to do amazing things. We could explore this further if you desire Chris.
...but frankly - we could do some really cool... stuff.
We have the people here - we have the ability and expertise.
Respectfully,
Andrew Gasser
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#44
by
Bubbinski
on 11 Aug, 2016 01:22
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I'd like to see push notifications on launches and breaking news for Android, iOS etc. (I use my iPad and Galaxy 7 to view NSF almost exclusively). Perhaps this could be combined with a NSF Android/iOS app
Other ideas:
- a countdown clock to the next launch or event on the NSF homepage
- a forum section or a page exclusively with launch manifests for US, Commercial, ESA, Russia, Japan, China, India, etc. also with links to mission pages & webcasts embedded in the manifest
- a dedicated page with flyby/orbit times and important events for planetary probes (Juno, Curiosity, Schiaparelli/TGO etc), perhaps in the format of a map of the solar system
- a dedicated page with links to active missions, list of known exoplanets, solar system objects, etc. (weblinks, not necessarily putting all the information on the NSF site)
- an image gallery (dedicated page) with pics or art uploaded by members
- a YouTube channel as previously mentioned
Edited to add: a live Twitter feed on the side of the homepage or the forum page with the tweets from NSF, NASA, ESA, etc. especially useful during launches
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#45
by
Galactic Penguin SST
on 11 Aug, 2016 03:18
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I have been pondering on a dedicated page here showing an airport/train station display board type timetable for every spaceflight related event. The biggest part would be the "Departures" sections for all launches - Date and time (with automatic conversion to your local time by sensing your computer settings; if a launch has a defined window, the start of window is listed), LSPs in place of airlines, payloads and rocket variant in place of flight number, planned orbit in place of destinations, launch site in place of gate number, and of course a status section (*) complete with red/yellow/green lights.
This should work with every launch, unless someone like to sneak onto the runway (you know which nation always like to do this
)
(*)
Departed 22:55/
Scrubbed/
Expected 18:50/
Delayed/
Please contact staff etc.
You may also add an "Arrivals" section for everything coming back to Earth, from ISS crews to Dragons to asteroid sample deliveries; an "Arrival to other stops" section for ISS arrivals to Mars landings; a "Hopping flights" section for sub-orbital flights; and maybe an "Events" section for everything from EVAs to Mr. Musk's next talk.
I can help with the updating when this page is up.
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#46
by
theebag
on 11 Aug, 2016 07:40
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As an example how not to redesign a forum would be Airliners.net. They went all new and the backlash was unprecedented, the last couple of months the site is step by step going back to the old format.
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#47
by
Chris Bergin
on 11 Aug, 2016 13:14
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Great stuff, keep it coming. I'll be starting the dedicated threads in this section over the weekend.
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#48
by
lamontagne
on 11 Aug, 2016 14:00
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As something of a content creator, I can say that the like button is appreciated, as I otherwise get very little feedback on what is right and what isn't.
It would be nice if the function that provides a list of all attachments by a contributor could show the images and not just the titles. That way we could scan quickly through images for references.
Please do not make drastic changes. I've seen two discussion sites die as the administrators embarked on overly ambitious improvement plans, just to see the readership move to other sites as they couldn't get their 'information fix' from the sites under reconstruction.
It might be interesting to create some kind of Facebook add-in, for more public access and some revenue, if possible? But only if it doesn't add to the noise level on the forums.
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#49
by
fthomassy
on 11 Aug, 2016 14:08
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I'd like to see some enhancements to searching. Features to search within specific thread, section, sub-section. Then the ability to sort results on user selected metadata. Perhaps even relevance ranking can be created as a sort category.
For example, search for "wrong", only in "SpaceX Missions". Then sort by thread name then username so I can review Jim's zingers.
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#50
by
gongora
on 11 Aug, 2016 14:59
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#51
by
the_other_Doug
on 11 Aug, 2016 18:09
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I like the idea of making the thread indexing a
little more straightforward, but I'm not all that thrilled with doing too much combining of things. I hang out on other fora than this one, and some get into sub-thread structures to the extent where you have to click through four or five sub-levels of organization just to get to where you can actually see posts.
I like the rather large and extensive main forum index page more than I would like making the main index shorter, at the expense of being able to easily get to the various topics you might be interested in. So, I would vote for making very few, if any, changes to the main index page. Some re-arrangement may be good, but I'd want to see how y'all would re-organize the index page before I could chime in on how I liked it (obviously).
I would also toss my hat into the ring of those who want the search function to work better. You don't need to rework the index pages so much if you make the search function more usable in finding various topics and threads, especially when you're trying to look through old discussions for nuggets of info that apply to a current discussion...
So, to summarize what I would suggest or support, from my earlier post and this one:
- Have multi-media-supporting chat rooms where we can watch live streaming coverage of events and comment on them at the same time. Being able to archive these rooms and watch/read/live through the whole experience again later would also be really, really kewl.
- Make the ads more sedate, maybe changing images once every 10 seconds instead of every three seconds.
- Leave the main index at about the same level of detail, don't merge a lot of topics and sub-fora into layers and layers of nested categories that you need to click through down three or four levels to get to posts -- leave it such that any topic selected from the main index gets you to a list of posts, please.
- Make the search function more robust, context-aware and thread-aware, might also try supporting Boolean search functions.
That's my input for now. I hope it's helpful to gather it together and summarize it...
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#52
by
scienceguy
on 12 Aug, 2016 00:08
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Over on
www.boardgamegeek.com they have a video section on the main page that only plays a video occasionally, like if there is a board game convention. We could have that here, playing a live stream video for every launch.
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#53
by
NaN
on 12 Aug, 2016 00:44
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Is there a potential search for improved forum software for migration? There are a lot of tweaks that could be made to forum functionality that I would suggest, but they would generally come as part of a package during a migration to new software.
For example: Cross-quoting from other threads could be a lot easier, having links for related threads (update and discussion threads would be related, a CRX mission thread would suggest links to the Dragon and Falcon and CRS discussion threads... would make finding related topics much easier), usable search, formatting improvements...
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#54
by
Robotbeat
on 14 Aug, 2016 02:21
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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.
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#55
by
Chris Bergin
on 14 Aug, 2016 14:00
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Right then, let's start some projects from the suggestions (well the ones I didn't stick my nose up to, like changing the URL!)
First one will be the articles, images and presentation of articles. I'll start that today. That's something we can do within the framework on the current site.
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#56
by
GWH
on 15 Aug, 2016 20:20
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On the main page there are tabs for the various recurring topics. Didn't there used to be one specific to SpaceX? Seems odd that a subject that is 1/3 of the articles doesn't get it's own tab.
I think a reorganization of the contents of the tabs would be nice. In navigating through the ISS articles having a hierarchy to separate launch event articles from ISS op articles would make it a lot easier if one were looking for a specific article. Or for "commercial" some separation on the various companies/vehicles. Building in a countdown to events in these areas would be great if a "next event" countdown is added on the main page - one could click on the ISS section and see when the next crew launch is or EVA etc.
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#57
by
fthomassy
on 15 Aug, 2016 23:25
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On the "help create it" front ...
What about establishing a development environment? GitHub is how I'm thinking of it and I see the Simple Machines Forums develops through GitHub as well. Folks could fix bugs, as well as develop and test site improvements themselves without disrupting the 'real' site.
I code a lot but I am not a professional s/w developer. While I'd probably be incompetent in setting up on GitHub, I found it remarkably easy to participate in an open source Python project.
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#58
by
Chris Bergin
on 15 Aug, 2016 23:29
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We do have a dev site....I remember this current forum was built and tested in the dev site before it went live, so that's something we can go into when we start implementing things.
Going to be a long process. Starting with the obvious stuff first and going through the coming months with the aim of being sorted for the new year.
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#59
by
gin455res
on 16 Aug, 2016 04:30
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The recent posts I like, and the unread posts on each section too.
Is there already a function to see recent posts for a section, not the entire forum?
This should work with every launch, unless someone like to sneak onto the runway (you know which nation always like to do this 
