New Mars Forums

Just wanted to post a note that we'd like to hear from any interested forum members on how to improve these forums.  You can reply to this thread or send me a private email to 'webmaster@marssociety.org'.  That will open a ticket using our new ticketing system so somebody will be sure to get back to you on your suggestion.

Thanks,
-James

I recently attended the 15th Annual International Mars Society Convention in Pasadena, CA.  It culminated with the landing on Mars of the Curiosity Rover.  I discussed the fact that NewMars.com was back online with several of the people there, including Susan Martin, who is now the Executive Director of the Mars Society.  I also mentioned that we are still trying to recover the data from the 2007-2010 time period for these forums, with not much luck.  We probably will just go on with what is here now -- with the users/discussions/groups hierarchy in its current state, and moderators that are currently designated.

We are going to proceed with establishing an editorial board for the New Mars Journal and these discussion forums.  The editorial board will ensure that there are active moderators for each of the Discussion areas, and will reestablish the New Mars Journal with new content and articles.  We will implement the Editorial Board as a restricted-access Google Group under @marssociety.org.  The exact address is TBD.  This is done not only to speed communication among the board but also to create an audit trail and ease in posting any meeting minutes here.

If you are interested in serving on the New Mars editorial board, please email me - jburk@marssociety.org -- I plan to invite Adrian Hon and Richard Wagner, who both were previous editors in chief of the New Mars Journal.

We are open to suggestions on how to best improve these discussion forums.  Use the main Suggestion Box -- You can open a support ticket with our IT staff as well by emailing webmaster@marssociety.org -- that will open a ticket in our new support system and somebody will be sure to get back to you in response to your suggestion.

Thanks,

I've been telling this story so much, I figured I would post it here.

New Mars Journal (newmars.com) started as the official "field journal" of the mars society way back when the society was founded in 1998. It was edited by Richard Wagner and had submissions from Robert Zubrin and several other Mars scientists, researchers, and updates on the Mars Society itself. 

You can see the original site and a couple additional snapshots via the internet service Archive.org here:

http://web.archive.org/web/199812021934 … wmars.com/
and
http://web.archive.org/web/199812120313 … wmars.com/
and
http://web.archive.org/web/199901251016 … wmars.com/

In late 2001, Adrian Hon took over the reins from Wagner.  He redesigned the site and set up the Forums for the first time.  You can browse this iteration of newmars here:

http://web.archive.org/web/200201181134 … wmars.com/
and
http://web.archive.org/web/200209291953 … wmars.com/
and
http://web.archive.org/web/200710121814 … wmars.com/

I went to the '99 conference and met (among others) Richard Wagner.  I later met & cooresponded with Adrian Hon.  I found them both to be of excellent character and nothing has made me change my mind since then   I hope both of them will be on our editorial board; I know Adrian has already been invited.

As the years went on, Adrian apparently got busy with other stuff and turned the Forum reins over to the moderators, including Josh Cryer and some of the other folks that have just returned.  There was another redesign in 2008, but it was pretty bare-bones.  In our discussions at the Mars Society HQ, we all favored restoring the main page of the site back to the design that Adrian Hon created, since it would be most recognizable to our returning user base.

Unforunately, a major server for the Mars Society crashed in January 2011... as a result of that, newmars.com was offline for most of 2011.

Here is newmars just before the crash.  We are working to restore this current iteration of the site to as close to this as possible ATM
http://web.archive.org/web/201004191632 … om/forums/

In 2011, I was appointed as Webmaster by the HQ staff (including Dr. Zubrin) and one of my first work-items was to recover any data from the failed server, and use it to restore our archival websites (such as for FMARS and MDRS) but also to restore the New Mars site & forums.  As Dr. Zubrin stated (in a private email to me), Newmars.com "once hosted the forums system for the Mars Society, and can do so again..."

Hi Marsman, and welcome [back] to the New Mars Forums!!!  Certainly, I have personally been a fan of MarsDrive since it started.  Thanks for all your comments, and I completely agree that the more Mars-related sites & discussion forums that are out there, the better.

I think what the Mars Society can bring to the table in sponsoring these forums is the engagement of our thousands of members, and (what I'm excited about) all the very active members of the Mars Society, some of which are science-based folks, or folks that are helping with MDRS and FMARS; folks that have lots of experience with cross-team and cross-group collaboration.  As we all (together) get the Editorial Board established for these forums, it will be able to set policies that foster open discussions about all the aspects of Humans to Mars, as well as the overall picture of space exploration our fledgling 21st century.  There have been some interesting thoughts here on how to handle political discussions and I know that we all benefit from these discussions, and the ultimate policies and environment in these forums will benefit from all these perspectives now.

Best and happy thanksgiving to all   1:07am where I am and it's been a LONG day
-James

Hi guys,

Rxke, I am sorry to hear about your membership renewal issue.  Please send me a screenshot of the error if you can. I can also confirm that your membership was credited for the 3 years.  Soon we will have a members area where you will be able to see that yourself.

I can speak for whether the Mars Society is healthy or not, it definitely is.  Membership is already up from last year.  We are working towards the new field season of MDRS and will have some announcements soon on the 2012 convention activities.

When I joined as Webmaster in July, there was a huge backlog of work which we are still getting through.  Restoring the New Mars Forums was one of those items that I am happy to be able to check off the list.

Thanks,
-James

Right but IMHO it is not a very good initial experience for the reportee, and also does not do everything we ultimately need it to.
-James

Yes please, at least for now   I am working on adding some plugins also, so we will have some type of "report spam" link on each post/user.
-James

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.

Our tentative plans are to recover the content from wiki.newmars.com and post it into marspedia.org, which is another project of the Mars Society.