Forum suggestion

[JonClarke]

Over the past few years participation in these forums is steadily dropping. Except in the ever noxious open forum, which seems to be as hard to eliminate and as a cane toad and just as undesirable).

On the other hand there is an extraordinarily large amount of traffic in the SDC story comments sec tion. There is even a degree ofr community of people there as well. Almost none of these contribute to the main forum. While some of the attitudes and knowledge levels illustrated there are appalling, they are at least a cut above the Youtube level. So it is frustrating that these discussions are carried out in such an undesirable fashion - no links, images, archiving, ability to quote, and minimal moderation.

I suggest it would be good to have these people brought into the forums, good for the forums, good for the discussion, and good for the people concerned. Is it possible for comments of SDC stories, rather than being put into a comments box soon to be lost for ever, be linked to a thread created for that story in the appropriate forum. So people would click on a comment box and immediately transferred to the thread. This way a proper discussion would be creatrede - quotes, linkis, images, moderation, archiving.

Jon

 

[earth_bound_misfit]

Sounds like a good idea to me.

 

[kelvinzero]

I was thinking the same thing, but that perhaps they would go into a subforum specifically for current space.com stories.

This forum would allow anonymous posts (like I think the story comments are?). This can be an advantage for getting more responses but the type and tone might be intrusive in other forums.

Also at least we would still be able to converse on this story forum the next time all our logins get screwed up again

 

[MeteorWayne]

I repeatedly suggest participation in the forums, but I fear you overestimate the level of discussion that would result. The woo woo index is far higher in the comments, but at least here we would have an opportinity at education.

 

[JonClarke]

I was thinking the same thing, but that perhaps they would go into a subforum specifically for current space.com stories.

This forum would allow anonymous posts (like I think the story comments are?). This can be an advantage for getting more responses but the type and tone might be intrusive in other forums.

Also at least we would still be able to converse on this story forum the next time all our logins get screwed up again

You still have to login to make comments, and the user names are identified.

But a subforum specically for SDC stories seems a good idea. BAUT run a universe today story discussion page with a thread for teach story (not all are used). However they still have comments on the story page too, which are about as literate as ours. I suggest we eliminate the later entirely.

 

[JonClarke]

I repeatedly suggest participation in the forums, but I fear you overestimate the level of discussion that would result. The woo woo index is far higher in the comments, but at least here we would have an opportinity at education.

So have I, evenm created threads to discuss specific issues (e.g. Phoenix problems) It does not seem to work though.

The relatively low quality of discussion reflects 1) a low proportion of informed input and 2) low levels of moderation. Both would be fixed my having them in the general forum. I am not sure how much genuine woo there is, it is mostly knee jerk pub talk. Which would again be remedied by having it here. And like you saty,. for those who are genuinely interested and need education, it would be a great opportunity.

Besides, as the Hoagland Wars showed, we can handle woo here.