Starship Asterisk*

by **owlice** » Fri Dec 03, 2010 9:41 pm

JeanTate wrote:Aesthetics and Astronomy: Studying the public's perception and understanding of non-traditional imagery from space is a report on research into, well, the public's perception and understanding of non-traditional imagery from space!

JeanTate, thanks for providing this; I've (finally!) had an oppportunity to read it. An interesting study, and I hope more along the same lines will be forthcoming.

by **bystander** » Mon Nov 22, 2010 7:14 pm

tekic545 wrote:Oh, and some of us who are unfamiliar with BBCode may find its presence slightly intimidating. Of course, I suppose we could learn...

http://asterisk.apod.com/faq.php?mode=bbcode
http://asterisk.apod.com/vie ... 28&t=20507

neufer wrote:Practice, practice, practice...

by **tekic545** » Mon Nov 22, 2010 6:21 pm

To be clearer, some of the most interesting people I know qualify as informed crazies. But maybe that's a function of my journalism background.

Bob

by **neufer** » Mon Nov 22, 2010 5:25 pm

tekic545 wrote:
Starship Asterisk is a great site. Just needs, IMHO, a little more marketing.

(But not too much, lest you attract the crazies. That is, the uninformed crazies.)

Thanks for clarifying that, Bob. (I think.

)

tekic545 wrote:
Oh, and some of us who are unfamiliar with BBCode may find its presence slightly intimidating.

Of course, I suppose we could learn...

Practice, practice, practice...

by **tekic545** » Mon Nov 22, 2010 4:27 pm

Starship Asterisk looks fairly popular to me, but here are a couple thoughts on why it's not even more popular.

One is the "Discuss" header on APOD. That implies discussion only of APODs, a very limited prospect. I signed up a couple years ago to discuss a particular APOD, and failed to notice the subsequent, much more user-friendly redesign of the site -- and its breadth.

Maybe at least substitute "Forums" in the header, to indicate the greater breadth of discussion available. Or better yet, "Starship Forums" to pique curiosity.

The other reason, I fear, is beyond the control of the Starship crew. I suspect that the most obsessive astronuts are astro-imagers (like myself.) But collectively, astroimagers seem mainly drawn by the technical challenge of an extreme form of nature photography, and less by the nature of the objects they're imaging. Kind of like big game hunters seeking trophies, with relatively little interest in, say, the evolution of exotic ungulates.

For evidence, witness huge traffic flow on CloudyNights, which is (almost) all about equipment and technique, not astronomy.

That said, Starship Asterisk is a great site. Just needs, IMHO, a little more marketing. (But not too much, lest you attract the crazies. That is, the uninformed crazies.)

Oh, and some of us who are unfamiliar with BBCode may find its presence slightly intimidating. Of course, I suppose we could learn...

Bob

by **JeanTate** » Tue Oct 12, 2010 5:01 pm

Aesthetics and Astronomy: Studying the public's perception and understanding of non-traditional imagery from space is a report on research into, well, the public's perception and understanding of non-traditional imagery from space!

Here's the abstract:

Some 400 years after Galileo, modern telescopes have enabled humanity to "see" what the natural eye cannot. Astronomical images today contain information about incredibly large objects located across vast distances and reveal information found in "invisible" radiation ranging from radio waves to X-rays. The current generation of telescopes has created an explosion of images available for the public to explore. This has, importantly, coincided with the maturation of the Internet. Every major telescope has a web site, often with an extensive gallery of images. New and free downloadable tools exist for members of the public to explore astronomical data and even create their own images. In short, a new era of an accessible universe has been entered, in which the public can participate and explore like never before. But there is a severe lack of scholarly and robust studies to probe how people - especially non-experts - perceive these images and the information they attempt to convey. Most astronomical images for the public have been processed (e.g., color choices, artifact removal, smoothing, cropping/field-of-view shown) to strike a balance between the science being highlighted and the aesthetics designed to engage the public. However, the extent to which these choices affect perception and comprehension is, at best, poorly understood. The goal of the studies presented here was to begin a program of research to better understand how people perceive astronomical images, and how such images, and the explanatory material that accompanies them, can best be presented to the public in terms of understanding, appreciation, and enjoyment of the images and the science that underlies them.

The study used some APODs, and also quotes Dr Nemiroff on its traffic.

I think there may be some valuable pointers to how we might make Starship Asterisk* more attractive to newbies.

by **JeanTate** » Sat Oct 09, 2010 9:41 pm

RJN wrote:
By having thousands of newbies 'drop in', dozens or hundreds will stay, and become regular members of this community.
Frequently, the main NASA APOD page will point directly into the Asterisk, causing thousands of viewers to drop in. This is known by the number of "views" that some posts get. But very few of them will stay to post comments. With an "APOD hook" link, the Asterisk may even have hundreds of people voting in one of our polls. But very few of them will stay to post comments. So the Asterisk is indeed trying to leverage the popularity of APOD, but this is not resulting in scores of people staying to post comments.

What has developed on the Asterisk is a dedicated group of intelligent "officers" that discuss astronomy and help APOD in several ways. And this now includes you! Thanks for joining.

- RJN

I see, and thanks for the welcome to the officers' club!

Let me try another tack then: what is it that the officers think makes Starship Asterisk* different, say from BAUT or the Space.com forum?

What is it about this forum that we'd *like* to be different, even if perhaps it isn't yet?

by **RJN** » Tue Sep 28, 2010 5:01 pm

By having thousands of newbies 'drop in', dozens or hundreds will stay, and become regular members of this community.

Frequently, the main NASA APOD page will point directly into the Asterisk, causing thousands of viewers to drop in. This is known by the number of "views" that some posts get. But very few of them will stay to post comments. With an "APOD hook" link, the Asterisk may even have hundreds of people voting in one of our polls. But very few of them will stay to post comments. So the Asterisk is indeed trying to leverage the popularity of APOD, but this is not resulting in scores of people staying to post comments.

What has developed on the Asterisk is a dedicated group of intelligent "officers" that discuss astronomy and help APOD in several ways. And this now includes you! Thanks for joining.

- RJN

by **neufer** » Mon Sep 27, 2010 9:42 pm

JeanTate wrote:
Having been here for some time now, I think the main challenge is to considerably increase the number of people who make at least a visit.

In other words, we are small for the same reason that, many decades ago, coal-miners didn't have telephones: because coal-miners didn't have telephones (if you were a coal-miner, you lived in a very tightly-knit community, and if you had a phone, who would you call?).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimi_Heselden wrote:
<<James William "Jimi" Heselden OBE (1948 – September 27, 2010) was a British entrepreneur. A former coal miner, Heselden made his fortune manufacturing the Hesco bastion barrier system. In 2010 he bought Segway Inc., maker of the Segway personal transport system. Heselden was killed in 2010 from injuries apparently sustained while riding a Segway. His fortune was estimated at £166 million and he was ranked 395th in the Sunday Times Rich List.

Heselden grew up in the Halton Moor district of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. Aged 15, Heselden left school to work at collieries in Temple Newsam and Lofthouse. He lost his job in the wave of redundancies that followed the 1984-5 miners' strike and spent his redundancy money developing and patenting a concertina wire mesh and fabric container to be used for building flood management and to limit erosion. Heselden founded Hesco Bastion Ltd. to manufacture these; filled with sand or earth they quickly found favour with the armies of several countries, as they allowed effective blast walls, barriers, and revetments to be quickly constructed. Made in Hesco's factory in Leeds, these where shipped (flat-packed) in great numbers to conflict zones including Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

In 2008 Heselden donated £1.5 million to the Help For Heroes fund through a charity auction bid for nine people to fly with the Red Arrows. and in the same year set up the Leeds Community Foundation in his home city with a £10 million donation. A further £3 million was added to the foundation in 2009 and an additional £10 million in 2010.

At 11:40 a.m. on 27 September 2010, West Yorkshire Police received reports of a man falling 30 feet into the River Wharfe, at the village of Thorp Arch near Boston Spa, apparently having fallen from the cliffs above. A Segway vehicle was recovered and Heselden was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics. Investigators said "at this time we do not believe the death to be suspicious" and were investigating as to "whether there was a fault with his particular machine or it was driver error".>>

by **JeanTate** » Mon Sep 27, 2010 2:46 pm

Having been here for some time now, I think the main challenge is to considerably increase the number of people who make at least a visit.

In other words, we are small for the same reason that, many decades ago, coal-miners didn't have telephones: because coal-miners didn't have telephones (if you were a coal-miner, you lived in a very tightly-knit community, and if you had a phone, who would you call?). Today it's called the network effect - large networks tend to grow extremely fast, but small ones often remain very small.

By having thousands of newbies 'drop in', dozens or hundreds will stay, and become regular members of this community.

Now APOD is one of the highest traffic sites on the internet, wrt astronomy (it's #1), and even science in general. So there are a very large number of potential community members; why don't they drop in here?

by **neufer** » Sat Sep 18, 2010 3:20 pm

rstevenson wrote:
I hadn't known about BAUT before it was mentioned here, so I just spent an hour having a look around. I'll definitely be going back, mostly because of the specific different sub-forums but also because of the general level of discussion. (There's much less of the I'm really funny so I'm going to make a joke in every thread attitude that is unfortunately rife here on the good ship Asterisk.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2010/09/17/ST2010091702545.html wrote:
Secretary of stand-up: Corny Washington jokes? Robert Gates has a million of 'em.
By Greg Jaffe Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 17, 2010; 11:45 PM

<<Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates often tells people that if they really want to know what he thinks, they should read his speeches "very carefully." Yet even a cursory reading of his collected oratory reveals this undeniable truth: Gates loves Washington jokes - very, very bad Washington jokes.

Last month, Gates, clad in a dark suit, white shirt and navy tie - the unofficial uniform of the Washington bureaucrat - stood before a capacity crowd at the Marines' Memorial Club & Hotel in San Francisco. He gripped the lectern with both hands and peered into the sold-out auditorium. "It's a pleasure to be with you in San Francisco," Gates said in a deadpan reminiscent of W.C. Fields. "But then, I have to confess, it's a pleasure to be anywhere but Washington, D.C. - a place where so many people are lost in thought because it is such unfamiliar territory." The audience laughed and clapped. Gates, buoyed by the reaction, pressed ahead: "Where people say, 'I'll double-cross that bridge when I get to it.' "

Gates's anti-Washington jokes, which sound as though they were cribbed from an old issue of Reader's Digest, are a staple of just about every speech the defense secretary gives outside Washington. His ordinarily loyal staffers roll their eyes at his one-liners. The press corps groans. Gates's speechwriters have refused to include the jokes in his speeches. Gates puts them in.

One might argue that Gates's lowbrow, anti-Washington humor reflects a deeply sophisticated understanding of the inner workings of the nation's capital. To excel in Washington, it's sometimes better not to be seen as too eager to be part of Washington. The Pentagon's top spokesman rejects this theory. "The jokes do not disguise some secret fondness for Washington," said Geoff Morrell, a native Washingtonian. Still, he conceded that the jokes offer some insight into the way Gates operates. "There are actually a lot of layers to these jokes," he said.

In Gates's most personal and passionate speeches to the military's service academies, he has lavished praise on the department's heretics who risked their careers to force change. "At some point in your career, each of you will surely work for a jackass; we all have," Gates told midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy this spring. "But that doesn't make taking a stand any less necessary for the sake of our country."

Defenders of Gates's jokes maintain that the defense secretary knows his audience. "Real live people like hearing what they think is a good joke over and over again, no matter how corny," said one senior military official who worked for Gates and, like many in Washington, was reluctant to admit publicly he doesn't always laugh at his boss's jokes. "Furthermore, what may seem corny here may not be so corny in Peoria." Morrell agreed. "To some, the jokes may seem old and stale. They may fall flat in Washington. But without fail, they work on the road," he said, while emphasizing that Washingtonians shouldn't take offense.

Earlier this spring Gates traveled to Kansas, where he spoke before a crowd of about 500 people at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. A middle school band warmed up the crowd with jazz standards from the 1950s. A Boy Scout honor guard held down his right flank. "It's always a treat to be someplace other than Washington, D.C.," Gates said. "The only place where, as I like to say, you can see a prominent person walking down Lover's Lane holding his own hand." The audience hooted with laughter.

The defense secretary's jokes have even won over some fans inside the Beltway. A few weeks ago, Tim Farley, the host of Sirius-XM radio's public affairs channel, patched together audio of Gates's anti-Washington shtick with an announcer's booming voice and the sounds of a boisterous comedy club audience. "He's on a farewell tour," the announcer intones. "And he's taking heavily armed comedy to your town!" Farley said he was tickled at the thought of the white-haired, sober-minded Gates fishing for laughs in a smoky club. "It's kind of like Yoda going on a comedy tour," said Farley. He calls the segment "SecDef Comedy Jam 2010," a play on the military's shorthand name for the secretary of defense.

In the latter days of his tenure, Gates has even begun experimenting with some new material. On his way to Iraq and Afghanistan last month, the Pentagon chief stopped in Milwaukee to deliver a speech at the American Legion National Convention. "It's my pleasure to be with the American Legion," Gates told the crowd of aging veterans. "Of course, I would have to tell you it's a pleasure to be away from Washington. D.C. - a town all too clearly built on a swamp and in so many ways still a swamp."

The press corps groaned. Gates's staffers rolled their eyes. The crowd roared with approval.>>

by **owlice** » Fri Sep 17, 2010 10:10 pm

Sensibly dealing with the "inevitable postings of such ideas" can, I think, reasonably include not permitting the posts and deleting them when they occur. Asterisk gets spam posts, too, and those are as inevitable as alternative theory posts, yet no one would suggest setting up a forum for such posts here. One need not provide such posts with a home; there are plenty of other places, such as ATM on BAUT, which exist for discussion of alternative theories, and people who want to discuss such theories have other outlets. Asterisk need not be one of them.

by **JeanTate** » Fri Sep 17, 2010 8:39 pm

'Alternatives' is an interesting topic.

In general fora, like BAUT or Space.com, threads on UFOs, anti-relativity ideas, 'Big Bang woz rong', etc are common. To keep them from messing up the whole forum, the admins and moderators of general fora have introduced rules to limit free-for-alls, such as confining them to specific sections, or declaring them beyond scope - and our rules to some extent reflect those of BAUT in this regard.

Curiously, narrowly focussed fora - such as Galaxy Zoo or Einstein@Home - don't seem to attract many threads, or even posts, on 'alternatives'. And when they do happen, the community seems to take very little notice of them, so there's no special section for them in such fora. Even more curious, perhaps, is that at least one 'alternative' website has its own 'not our alternative' section!

Now we - or our predecessor - have certainly had our share of 'alternative' posts and threads, and there's a clear policy on them. However, if we grow as a community, and if our scope remains general, then it may be worth considering having a section exclusively for such posts (and threads), if only to sensibly deal with the inevitable posting of such ideas.

by **owlice** » Thu Sep 16, 2010 7:36 pm

JeanTate, so many good observations! Thanks for posting them!

Interestingly, most discussion fora, even highly focussed ones, have 'Just Chat'/'Shoot the Breeze'/etc sections, which may end up with more posts & views than the 'serious' part of the forum!

This is the case on every forum I've been on (which have not been astronomy/science forums)... except Asterisk. EVERY forum I've been on has had more posts in the yak-about-anything areas than on the subject board(s)!

In general, it is not easy to get a discussion going on the Open Space board. The community here is friendly, knowledgeable, smart, and interesting, and yet, we talk very little about books, music, weather (well, we talk some about weather, but really, not all that much!), art (well, we talk some about Art, but that's mainly self-defense!

), other sciences, big ideas, (non-political) news, articles, and so on.

This is not a criticism of Asterisk; I'm just pointing out that Asterisk is different in this regard from the (many) other forums I have been on over the years.

As you observed, I think the ATM section of BAUT is responsible for part of BAUT's popularity, both with people who subscribed to alternate theories and some subset of those who don't. Controversy can both build, and if allowed to, kill a board.

by **JeanTate** » Thu Sep 16, 2010 7:11 pm

Let's start with the big picture.

If you're keen on astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, etc and if you like to keep up to date with developments, and if you like astronomical images, of galaxies, stars, planets, etc ... then you have rather a lot of websites to choose from!

There are blogs, like Bad Astronomy and Cosmic Variance, both on Discover. Now a blog is someone's (or someones') post, followed by lots of comments. And there are rather a lot of physics blogs, most of which have some blog entries that are interesting to space fans (one of my faves is BackReaction).

There are news sites, like Universe Today, which allow comments on each story.

There are discussion fora (forums), like BAUT, which is very general, and GalaxyZoo forum and Einstein@Home Message Boards, which are mainly project oriented.

Some sites, like APOD/Spaceship Asterisk* and Space.com, combine "news" with "discussion".

It seems that every one of these develops a community after a while, with a smallish number of high post-count members, a smallish number of respected/trusted members, a lot of irregulars (low post-count, but they don't leave), many butterflies (come for just a while, then flit off elsewhere), and many, many lurkers.

Interestingly, most discussion fora, even highly focussed ones, have 'Just Chat'/'Shoot the Breeze'/etc sections, which may end up with more posts & views than the 'serious' part of the forum! Forum members are, it seems, very social creatures.

In terms of hits, I think APOD is by far the leader, as can been seen by the dominance of APOD pages in 'popularity' sites like Digg.

In terms of community, I think BAUT is probably the leader; however, once you break it down at bit, the picture is less clear; for example, Physics Forum's Astronomy & Cosmology section is really the only place to go for high school/undergrad (and some postgrad) level technical discussions (it's fascinating how badly technical threads flop in sites like BAUT).

So, in terms of RJN's question, it seems it comes down to what makes for a good, biggish community?

And, more narrowly, how to 'keep' those who, somehow, drop by? (How to 'fill the funnel' - get more people to visit in the first place - is a separate discussion).

Here's one input: JREF's SMMT section attracts huge numbers of posts and views. And, in astronomy etc, by far the most popular threads are those in which some, um, 'alternative' notions are vigorously promoted (and trashed). I once thought this was a shame; since I have learned that many of these threads are sterling examples of the 'E' in JREF's name ('educational'). It seems that lurkers are legion, and that they become, in their own words, much better educated about, say, LCDM cosmological models than they would if they'd simply visited NASA's Ask An Astrophysicist, say. The same thing has happened with BAUT's ATM (Against the Mainstream) section, despite the enormous pain that section causes the moderators.

Well, that's enough from me, for now.

by **RJN** » Thu Sep 16, 2010 5:57 pm

Well it does indeed appear that the BAUT forum has dropped banner and google-type advertising, at least for non-registered people just browsing. Interesting. This appears to be a change from about a year ago when I last did some significant browsing around the site. The upper banner does link back to the commercial Bad Astronomy blog and the Universe Today web sites, though.

Next, let me also say that I like both the BA Blog and the Universe Today news sites, and I also have quite a bit of respect for Phil Plait and Fraser Cain, those sites originators. I also feel that the BAUT forum is quite good.

Nevertheless, the BAUT forum appears to me to have significant differences with the Asterisk. For one, BAUT does still seem to me to have a base that is fundamentally commercial, which it might need to survive. So long as APOD is supported by NASA, the Asterisk has the luxury of providing a non-commercial environment for astronomy-oriented discussions.

Next, the Asterisk actually has a mission beyond that of providing a forum for enjoyable discussions. It supports APOD. People browsing APOD might want to comment about it, correct a mistake on it, or ask a question about it. Some people want to have their images considered by APOD. News stories possibly relevant to once or future APODs can be linked to. Content that can be linked to from APOD can be housed on the Asterisk -- either in the form of discussions or image conglomerations or course lectures or announcements. In this vein, I have been increasingly thinking of the Asterisk really as a Star Trek-like starship, almost as advertised, with the regular posters as part of the crew! (And I apologize for that. Nobody is a Romulan.)

Next, the Asterisk has developed a sense of community. People know each other's online personalities, and possibly stay partly because of this sense of community. In particular, those that feel they fit in, like the repartee, and feel they have something to contribute, are more likely to stay.

Next, I have now begun to believe that there is something like Dunbar's number operating on the Asterisk which would prevent the number of regular posters from increasing beyond some socially and interactively awkward number. Possibly, one way around this would be to open other "starships" that could develop their own communities (who wants to captain their own starship?). I don't know, though, if APOD itself would really need more starships, since the Asterisk is helping out APOD pretty well just now by itself.

Last, it turns out that the Asterisk readership is actually growing! So contrary to the title of this thread, Starship Asterisk really is becoming more popular. I would guess that the average number of people browsing has gone up by at least 100% since the starship reformatting last year, and much of that even since the start of this thread in 2010 February. The credit goes mostly to the crew members working hard on keeping the Asterisk running well, scientifically accurate, and up to date.

- RJN

by **neufer** » Thu Sep 16, 2010 4:12 pm

rstevenson wrote:
RJN wrote:
... You might be interested to hear that years ago there was talk of combining the Asterisk into BAUT. Unfortunately, a major stumbling block on my end was that the BAUT forum is commercial (they run advertisements), and I was reluctant to have APOD's main discussion board be commercial. ...
I failed to notice any advertising.
There may have been some but it just wasn't intrusive enough to come to my attention.
Perhaps they dropped the ads?

BAUT is a combined blog for two excellent commercial sites:

Bad Astronomy & Universe Today

http://www.badastronomy.com/index.html
http://www.universetoday.com/
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/

BAUT: Imperative plural of bauen.(German)

1. to build (a building)
2. to roll a joint

by **neufer** » Thu Sep 16, 2010 3:14 pm

rstevenson wrote:
I hadn't known about BAUT before it was mentioned here, so I just spent an hour having a look around. I'll definitely be going back, mostly because of the specific different sub-forums but also because of the general level of discussion. (There's much less of the I'm really funny so I'm going to make a joke in every thread attitude that is unfortunately rife here on the good ship Asterisk.)

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/bosch/fools/ wrote:
_The Ship of Fools_ by Hieronymus Bosch
c. 1490-1500; Oil on wood, 58 x 33 cm;
Musee du Louvre, Paris Illustrated allegories
In The Ship of Fools Bosch is imagining that the whole of mankind is voyaging through the seas of time on a ship, a small ship, that is representative of humanity. Sadly, every one of the representatives is a fool. This is how we live, says Bosch--we eat, drink, flirt, cheat, play silly games, pursue unattainable objectives. Meanwhile our ship drifts aimlessly and we never reach the harbour. The fools are not the irreligious, since promiment among them are a monk and a nun, but they are all those who live "in stupidity." Bosch laughs, and it is sad laugh. Which one of us does not sail in the wretched discomfort of the ship of human folly? Eccentric and secret genius that he was, Bosch not only moved the heart but scandalized it into full awareness. The sinister and monstrous things that he brought forth are the hidden creatures of our inward self-love: he externalizes the ugliness within, and so his misshapen demons have an effect beyond curiosity. We feel a hateful kinship with them. The Ship of Fools is not about other people, it is about us.

by **rstevenson** » Thu Sep 16, 2010 2:42 pm

RJN wrote:... You might be interested to hear that years ago there was talk of combining the Asterisk into BAUT. Unfortunately, a major stumbling block on my end was that the BAUT forum is commercial (they run advertisements), and I was reluctant to have APOD's main discussion board be commercial. ...

Hope you don't mind me butting in here. I hadn't known about BAUT before it was mentioned here, so I just spent an hour having a look around. I'll definitely be going back, mostly because of the specific different sub-forums but also because of the general level of discussion. (There's much less of the I'm really funny so I'm going to make a joke in every thread attitude that is unfortunately rife here on the good ship Asterisk.) But while I was there I failed to notice any advertising. There may have been some but it just wasn't intrusive enough to come to my attention. Perhaps they dropped the ads?

Rob

by **RJN** » Thu Sep 16, 2010 1:50 am

Hi JeanTate,

Thanks for your quite perceptive comments! You mentioned the BAUT board and so I hope you could field a few questions comparing the two boards. In particular, I am curious to understand why the BAUT board is more popular than the Asterisk. Did BAUT have a large "first mover advantage"? Is it more friendly over at BAUT? Is the wider variety of discussion forums key? Is APOD considered light weight fluff, and by association the people who post on the "APOD board" all fluffy and touchy-feely? Or perhaps does the Asterisk seem more like an exclusive club to an outsider than BAUT? Does BAUT have more popular lead-in links pointing to it? Any thoughts you might have would be appreciated.

You might be interested to hear that years ago there was talk of combining the Asterisk into BAUT. Unfortunately, a major stumbling block on my end was that the BAUT forum is commercial (they run advertisements), and I was reluctant to have APOD's main discussion board be commercial. It now seems unlikely that this impasse will ever be resolved.

- RJN

by **JeanTate** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 6:59 pm

RJN wrote:Although biased, I find myself really liking the redesign of the Asterisk. For one thing, it just makes the forum more fun to browse -- for me, anyway. For another, I think it is a better voluntary support mechanism for APOD. Next, another plus in my book is that the Asterisk is now more geared toward discussing current space events and images, and less geared toward discussing people's own speculative theories. Perhaps the Asterisk now leads the web in "rapid topicality" in space items, being much faster and broader, for example, than APOD can be.

Perhaps such thoughts are egoistical, but I do wonder why the newly redesigned Asterisk has not become more popular than it is. The main "trunk" link from the APOD front page is creating at a trickle of prospective new members to browse the greater board every day, but very few of them are staying past their initial foray. Why not?

Tuesday's APOD (2010 February 23) mentioned and pointed right at the Asterisk which gave me another angle to see how "the public" might view the new Asterisk. The main discussion link was popular (over 5000 views) and did lead to a very interesting discussion of those strange air ripples, the deepest scientific discussion of the ripples of which I am aware. Still, given the Asterisk attendance numbers today, few have stuck around to contribute images or social bookmarks, or even browse those posted by bystander and others. Why not?

Are people today already committed to their own social networking sites? Are those who follow the BAUT forum, the space.com forum, Facebook discussions, or leave comments on Bad Astronomy, etc., already committed there and have little want for "yet another astronomy forum?" Or is our discussion too technical so that the average browser feels too intimidated to post? Or is it that the Asterisk doesn't carry the "NASA brand" that APOD does?

Now as I said before, I enjoy the Asterisk just as it is and do not need to see it change at all (beyond minor updates, topical updates, and continued spam removal). Since becoming more active again, I see better and feel closer to the established board members who have been here for many years. Nevertheless, a forum with perhaps twice the current active members might make the Asterisk even more vibrant and interesting for everyone. Any thoughts on how to get there?

- RJN

It's certainly true that BAUT etc have a lot of dedicated followers, few of whom would 'jump ship', so to speak. Too, few of those followers have enough spare time to become regulars here also.

If there's no significant problem with getting newbies to visit this site, from APOD, and that the challenge is to get them to stay (and get involved), here are some quick suggestions:

* have a stickied thread called New Members, Introduce Yourself! (or similar). Few will, perhaps, but it's a welcoming feature that creates a sense of community

* for every first post, perhaps a regular could respond, ASAP, with a "Welcome to the Asterisk!" post, with a short sentence that's personal. Again, this creates the impression of an open, welcoming community

* if possible, contact a random selection of those who've recently come, and left, and ask them about their experience

* perhaps do some marketing or outreach to sites which have a strong astronomy focus, such as Galaxy Zoo and Einstein@Home (everyone knows of APOD; few of the Asterisk). Building a community needs to leverage networks, which is, principally, a numbers game.

by **StarstruckKid** » Fri Aug 13, 2010 7:12 pm

StarstruckKid wrote:...I might have stuck around had I found that straight answer I was looking for, but someone would have had to take the time, and assume some newbie would appreciate it, for that to happen.

Why risk quoting a fool, when I can quote myself and be certain of it? <== On re-reading: that's aimed at me, not anybody else

Here 'tis: http://asterisk.apod.com/vie ... 09#p129609

As if them horses didn't leave enough of that stuff behind when they charged through here... deep ain't the half of it!

by **StarstruckKid** » Fri Aug 13, 2010 6:58 pm

beyond wrote:Starstruckkid; would the guy holding a pair of six-guns on a couple of scruffy out laws be Gene Autry?...

You got it! Now everybody else knows what we were doing in the back of that boring sixth-grade classroom.

Whooooooo, me worry?

Michael

by **Beyond** » Thu Aug 12, 2010 6:03 am

Starstruckkid; would the guy holding a pair of six-guns on a couple of scruffy out laws be Gene Autry? I hope them six shooters don't go off in the Asterisk! We'd loose all our air.

by **Beyond** » Thu Aug 12, 2010 5:49 am

neufer wrote:
StarstruckKid wrote:
Ok, Mad Magazine Man, what cowboy had a still from one of his movies, holding a pair of six-guns on a pair of scruffy outlaws, with the caption "You fellas are gonna stand here while I sing my song", in the aforementioned rag?
That's too deep for me, StarstruckKid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singing_cowboy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Mw9F5zawRQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HdlYVKBUVE

I think that there are more people that search the Asterisk than many are aware of. Some for the nice pictures in Apod - some for the scientific aspects that are presented here and some for the antics that sometimes occur between those who post here.
For instance -- Starstruckkid has just given neufer, the Quotidian Quotationist aka Man on the lam, aka Sno-Ball pun Man, a new alias- -Mad Magazine Man. Starstruckkid did not realize when he did that that he also created another alias for neufer -- The M&M&M man. M&M&M's are so weird and hard to make, that the makers of M&M's gave up trying to mass produce them and only made a few small batches.
It is rumored that a certain laquacious Quotationist talked them out of one of their batches. If that is true, all we can do is hope that the M&M&M's do not merge with the case lot of Sno-Ball puns that he already has or we could very well end up seeing the weirdest things ever to be seen in Asterisk to this very day. However that may attract more visitors to Asterisk. I suppose the key here is "risk". It very well could be that we are about to see a man go out of posting bounds farther than any man has gone before.

Starship Asterisk*

Why isn't the Asterisk more popular?

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"There are actually a lot of layers to these jokes"

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APBAUT BAUT

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