Rebirth of New Mars; Establishment of New Mars Editorial Board

James Burk · 2011-11-19 16:44:14

Hello all,

We are pleased to announce that the New Mars Forums have been re-opened, following the work of several volunteers to restore the previous discussions and set up a new forums system. The Mars Society extends its thanks to the following individuals for their assistance in this effort:

James Burk
Josh Cryer
Lucinda Land
Susan Martin
Richard Offer

After the crippling server crash that occurred in early 2011, we are still working to restore the discussions from the period June 2008 until the crash. We hope to integrate those discussions as soon as possible. We are also restoring and building out the rest of the New Mars Journal blog & website, and eventually hope to re-publish all previous content that was available on NewMars.com so it can become part of the Mars Society's historical record.

As part of the forums relaunch, we are establishing an Editorial Board for the New Mars Journal. Initially the editorial board will be comprised of a few key individuals (including some of the folks above, and some of our past volunteers and forum moderators.) Every active member of the Mars Society will be invited to apply to become a moderator in the New Mars Forums and to join our Editorial Board. We will be publishing more details on this soon.

If you have any questions, comments, or feedback on the new Forums system, please feel free to send us an email using the address feedback@newmars.com

Thanks,

The Mars Society Staff
feedback@newmars.com

Rxke · 2011-11-20 02:29:40

Yessss! Yessss! Yesssss!!!

Thanks for all the hard work, girls and boys!

Great to see it's back! 8)

Terraformer · 2011-11-20 08:59:54

Wooh, back online after... nearly a year? Great stuff. How are things going to change (I liked the setup we had just prior to the crash)?

Terraformer · 2011-11-20 09:01:31

Also, how are the forums going to slot together - will General Terraforming be retained?

James Burk · 2011-11-20 09:14:40

Josh Cryer (longtime New Mars Forum admin and member of our new Editorial Board) is working on a reshuffling of the forums to better match the hierarchy just prior to the server crash. If you have any other suggestions, let us know or post them here
-James

JoshNH4H · 2011-11-20 11:11:47

Well, firstly, I'm very glad to see that the forums are back up. I've missed them very much; to my knowledge there was no venue anywhere else on the Internet that was nearly as welcoming while at the same time being filled with intelligent and knowledgeable people.

With regards to the organization of the forums, I do believe that it went:

Newmars: Meta Newmars (Other subfora removed and merged elsewhere)
Earth (Which was moved up; personally I think it's better to leave the Acheron section higher given that it gets many more posts): Same as now, except Space Politics was moved.
Acheron: Same as now
Underhill: (Not So) Free Chat, given the politics rule*, Science and Technology, Space Politics
The First Hundred: Same

*By the way, if we're going to re-institute the "No Politics" rule, we need to make it more clear as to what type of political discussion is allowed and what isn't. I've spoken to a few users, and they didn't seem to be exactly clear on the distinction. The heuristic that I usually used was that if the post was ultimately about Mars, and the politics mentioned were relevant to the topic of the post, then it was very much valid.

I know I said this to Josh, but I would be very interested in becoming a member of the Editorial Board (Even though I'm not entirely clear on what it is, haha). I was (still am?) a moderator at Newmars before the crash.

Edit: First post in the new Newmars!

Last edited by JoshNH4H (2011-11-20 11:12:18)

Terraformer · 2011-11-20 11:50:35

Well, I'm still hoping we get General Terraforming back (the one I was a local moderator of, as a consequence of being the only one willing to spend the time sorting out all the threads there). However, I'm not an "Active Member of the Mars Society"...

James Burk · 2011-11-20 12:42:20

The Editorial Board of New Mars Journal has been chartered to maintain the website and its forums system. It will be comprised of the New Mars Forum moderators and key contributors to the New Mars website (as we will continue to host Articles and special features outside of the Forums on newmars.com.) It will be empowered to make decisions and set policies that effect the site & forums. The Editorial Board will be expanded soon and we will be accepting applications from any interested Mars Society member in good standing (ie. membership dues paid). We will finalize the details of this in the next week or so.

Josh Cryer · 2011-11-20 18:24:35

Just so you guys know, I'm going to work on the reorganization Monday, I spent Saturday getting the thing back, and needed a break. You know how I am with that. But it'll be soon (so yes, Terraformer, it'll be back to similarly to how it was before, though we do not have nested forums and we likely will not have that as a full feature until it is part of this forum system instead of a mod; the mod is very intensive and can break easily, bad idea).

BTW, we chose FluxBB because it's very fast and very secure, we did a test install of phpBB and it was noticeably slower, so it's worth the switch. I know everyone was used to the old forum, but you'll get used to this one. Bare with me as we work on styles and I'll take any suggestions of course that people want as feature requests.

It's so great to see our old members still remember us. If anyone didn't pick it up, JoshNH4H is jumpboy, at his request I changed his nickname.

Rxke · 2011-11-21 00:59:04

Josh Cryer wrote:

Bare with me as we work

Josh!

There are minors reading this forum!

Terraformer · 2011-11-21 08:05:26

I'm willing to be the local moderator for the terraforming forum(s?), given that it will likely need a lot of sorting out when we get the posts back.

Josh Cryer · 2011-11-21 08:34:18

We'll see, Terraformer, I didn't forget that you moderated the base terraforming forum. Not sure if it'd give you editorial board status, though, if we did it. I know you're a huge fan of terraforming and you did good stuff on general terraforming in the past.

Rxke, ha, I'd "stealth edit" that, but I suppose I'll leave it.

JoshNH4H · 2011-11-21 16:37:09

What's with the "atom live topics feed" at the bottom right of the forums? It doesn't seem to be working properly, seeing as it just displays a bunch of code when you click on it. (Also, what is it supposed to do?)

James Burk · 2011-11-21 17:16:20

JoshNH4H wrote:

What's with the "atom live topics feed" at the bottom right of the forums? It doesn't seem to be working properly, seeing as it just displays a bunch of code when you click on it. (Also, what is it supposed to do?)

Atom is a feed format much like RSS. The code you are seeing allows you to "subscribe" to the current forum discussion using your web browser (try clicking the link with Firefox) or an RSS feed reader. Here is an explanation of what RSS and Atom can do: http://www.whatisrss.com/

SpaceNut · 2011-11-23 08:09:56

Many thanks to all that supported the rebirth of NewMars as it was very deeply missed and the efforts of the few are greatly appreciated.
I am happy to serve in any capacity....

Grypd · 2011-11-23 12:01:45

First of all my hearty congratulations and thanks on getting the forum back up and saving as much as you have.

The next thing is just a suggestion. Politics especially with the way the Spacerace is at the moment is a fundamental part. Just talking about international cooperation is politics and of course politics controls the purse strings. And No Bucks no Buck Rogers. It needs to be seriously moderated but we cannot get rid of it completely.

James Burk · 2011-11-23 13:04:02

Grypd wrote:

The next thing is just a suggestion. Politics especially with the way the Spacerace is at the moment is a fundamental part. Just talking about international cooperation is politics and of course politics controls the purse strings. And No Bucks no Buck Rogers. It needs to be seriously moderated but we cannot get rid of it completely.

Hi Grypd, what is your suggestion please? That we continue to moderate our forums?

Rxke · 2011-11-23 13:10:48

Being lenient about political discussions, I guess. Some boards have an 100% moratorium on it, but it's sometimes very very hard to discuss something w/o mentioning it.

+edit+ I tend to agree with Grypd, but we know some people start foaming at the mouth the moment you mention the 'wrong' political party or country

... And that leads to quarrels. So moderating is mandatory.

Last edited by Rxke (2011-11-23 13:13:09)

JoshNH4H · 2011-11-23 13:16:22

Grypd- I think that the biggest problem with the "No-Politics" rule was that we seem to have done an awful job at explaining how the rule was intended to work to the users of newmars. The rule said "No-Politics," but that was specifically intended to refer to general political discussion with no bearing on space. For example, discussing the relative merits of Obama vs. Romney and their positions on Same-Sex Marriage would not be allowed. On the other hand, talking about how the current argument over the US missile shield between the US and Russia will affect cooperation on the ISS would absolutely be allowed. My heuristic for evaluating whether a post violated the "No-Politics" rule was that you were absolutely safe if your post mentioned Space or space travel in some way (In one of the more science-related forums, whatever specific science is the topic of the thread is generally an acceptable substitute for space), and if the politics mentioned in your post has a clear relation to that topic. If the relation is less than obvious, you would be advised to mention it, but that's just a simple matter of good post composition.

I tended to be relatively lenient on enforcement, even if it wasn't within these bounds, so long as the discussion was not heated and the argument was collegiate and not heading towards a simple "Republican/Democrat" or "Liberal/Conservative" debate.

clark · 2011-11-23 14:09:22

Start over and re-evaluate the position on moderation of a free forum. Clearly define expectations and let the community self-police.
If this approach doesn't work, you can always reinstitute a ban or apply stricter guidelines, closer moderation, etc.

Begin at the beginning, not the middle.

JoshNH4H · 2011-11-23 14:44:15

I mean, the rule was instituted on the old forum after politics got to be quite bad. Seeing as we'll probably have a very similar userbase are we really starting at the beginning?

clark · 2011-11-23 15:01:18

The forum managed for a very long time without any such rule.

JoshNH4H · 2011-11-23 15:04:43

True. I suppose we should ask the users as a whole what they think of it. I think it has been a net good but I am willing to go with majority opinion.

SpaceNut · 2011-11-23 15:52:38

clark wrote:

The forum managed for a very long time without any such rule.

With the help of many a moderator that did understand to try and keep it in check.

JoshNH4H wrote:

The rule said "No-Politics," but that was specifically intended to refer to general political discussion with no bearing on space. For example, discussing the relative merits of Obama vs. Romney and their positions on Same-Sex Marriage would not be allowed.

Great example Josh as it contains not a shread of space corelation to its content.

JoshNH4H wrote:

On the other hand, talking about how the current argument over the US missile shield between the US and Russia will affect cooperation on the ISS would absolutely be allowed.

yes borderline to space but can go off track and needs to be monitored....

JoshNH4H · 2011-11-23 16:10:39

Spacenut- I agree that the example given of an acceptable topic was one that could potentially veer off, but there is potentially a point to be made there, and if such a point is being made it is very much worth discussion as it could be quite important.

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#1 2011-11-19 16:44:14

Rebirth of New Mars; Establishment of New Mars Editorial Board

#2 2011-11-20 02:29:40

Re: Rebirth of New Mars; Establishment of New Mars Editorial Board

#3 2011-11-20 08:59:54

Re: Rebirth of New Mars; Establishment of New Mars Editorial Board

#4 2011-11-20 09:01:31

Re: Rebirth of New Mars; Establishment of New Mars Editorial Board

#5 2011-11-20 09:14:40

Re: Rebirth of New Mars; Establishment of New Mars Editorial Board

#6 2011-11-20 11:11:47

Re: Rebirth of New Mars; Establishment of New Mars Editorial Board

#7 2011-11-20 11:50:35

Re: Rebirth of New Mars; Establishment of New Mars Editorial Board

#8 2011-11-20 12:42:20

Re: Rebirth of New Mars; Establishment of New Mars Editorial Board

#9 2011-11-20 18:24:35

Re: Rebirth of New Mars; Establishment of New Mars Editorial Board

#10 2011-11-21 00:59:04

Re: Rebirth of New Mars; Establishment of New Mars Editorial Board

#11 2011-11-21 08:05:26

Re: Rebirth of New Mars; Establishment of New Mars Editorial Board

#12 2011-11-21 08:34:18

Re: Rebirth of New Mars; Establishment of New Mars Editorial Board

#13 2011-11-21 16:37:09

Re: Rebirth of New Mars; Establishment of New Mars Editorial Board

#14 2011-11-21 17:16:20

Re: Rebirth of New Mars; Establishment of New Mars Editorial Board

#15 2011-11-23 08:09:56

Re: Rebirth of New Mars; Establishment of New Mars Editorial Board

#16 2011-11-23 12:01:45

Re: Rebirth of New Mars; Establishment of New Mars Editorial Board

#17 2011-11-23 13:04:02

Re: Rebirth of New Mars; Establishment of New Mars Editorial Board

#18 2011-11-23 13:10:48

Re: Rebirth of New Mars; Establishment of New Mars Editorial Board

#19 2011-11-23 13:16:22

Re: Rebirth of New Mars; Establishment of New Mars Editorial Board

#20 2011-11-23 14:09:22

Re: Rebirth of New Mars; Establishment of New Mars Editorial Board

#21 2011-11-23 14:44:15

Re: Rebirth of New Mars; Establishment of New Mars Editorial Board

#22 2011-11-23 15:01:18

Re: Rebirth of New Mars; Establishment of New Mars Editorial Board

#23 2011-11-23 15:04:43

Re: Rebirth of New Mars; Establishment of New Mars Editorial Board

#24 2011-11-23 15:52:38

Re: Rebirth of New Mars; Establishment of New Mars Editorial Board

#25 2011-11-23 16:10:39

Re: Rebirth of New Mars; Establishment of New Mars Editorial Board

Board footer