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Posted by: deglr6328 May 15 2005, 05:43 PM

I am posting this message in order to gauge how much interest there might be here in forming and organizing a sort of collaboration between users. Specifically, I am thinking of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. Many here must already be aware of the existence of Wikipedia and what it's all about but for those who haven't heard of it; Wikipedia is a huge collaborative project to build the world's largest online FREE encyclopedia. It already contains a vast amount of information (especially on science and technology) and is freely editable by anyone. Every time I come to Unmannedspaceflight to see what the latest news is and maybe make a couple posts I am genuinely shocked at the incredible breadth and depth of knowledge possessed by the users here. IMHO there is really an exceptionally high level enthusiast expertise here and I think it would be great if we could pool this unusual resource to contribute to a permanent public repository of that knowledge. So, here is what I propose (nothing super-formal obviously): we form a new subject (under EVA perhaps) just for talk on wikipedia collaborations, we will choose one wiki article per week (based on suggestions and a quick vote of the collaborators) for us to focus on and then we can all add our information on that particular subject while using either the talk page on wiki or the subforum here to discuss edit related issues. Anyway, if there is not sufficient interest here to form a real group collaboration, perhaps we can use this thread to say who we are on Wikipedia. I am Deglr6328 there as well (I know there must be others here! ), I've contributed a lot to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_spacecraft Probe article but I have very little on the actual mission science itself, I was hoping that perhaps this might be our first collaboration. So....what do we all think.....?

Posted by: djellison May 15 2005, 05:59 PM

It's a good idea. MER is certainly done to death on Wiki ( and fairly well I might add ) - but there's certainly scope for missions past, present and future to be documented more verbosely.

Doug

Posted by: Bob Shaw May 16 2005, 01:04 PM

If it's verbose you want, count me in! Also include me, sign me up, and assign me a membership. Not to mention...

Seriously, though, sounds like a good idea!

Posted by: djellison May 16 2005, 01:26 PM

Perhaps we should colaborate here - then add the whole article as a combined effort under one username?

Doug

Posted by: dvandorn May 16 2005, 07:06 PM

I'd be glad to help out... just let me know what you want me to do. (I may only be a technical writer by trade, but that *does* make me a professional writer...)

-the other Doug

Posted by: Patteroast May 31 2005, 10:48 AM

Ahh, Wikipedia's a great place, and it does seem to be lacking in information about some unmanned spacecraft. I've done some contributions to various articles about the moons of the solar system on Wikipedia, myself. The community here is obviously full of very enthusiastic and knowledgeable people, and even articles on Wikipedia that looks comprehensive could benefit from at least a proofread or fact-check from the folks over here. I think a sort of article of the week would be a great idea.

Posted by: volcanopele Jun 2 2005, 07:36 PM

I've been considering making some major changes to the Encladus article, adding some geology and interior info, based on the results of the last two flybys.

Posted by: Myran Jun 10 2005, 01:23 AM

I had a look at Titan on Wikipedia, and must agree this could be improved on:

"Trace gases" thats the part of argon or neon in a thicker atmospeher like Earth or Venus, then one could add a small hint on the atmosphere for Triton.

Well I did edit it, couldnt leave poor Titan with those tracegases.

Posted by: Myran Jun 10 2005, 01:30 AM

..

Posted by: deglr6328 Jun 10 2005, 05:45 AM

Ok, well its been a couple weeks since I posted this so I guess I should follow up!! I looks like we have about 6-7 people interested so I don't really see any reason to take a vote on what article we should collaborate on for a week, instead, I think we can just rotate suggestions proceeding in order of post here. I would like to start with article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_spacecraft, I've added lots to the article but have nothing on the actual jupiter and moons science done by the probe and thus the "Science performed by the Galileo Orbiter at Jupiter" section...well.... sucks . I think we can use this page just like the "talk" page is supposed to be used on the wiki article. Sound good?