Member Questions to Administrators, Matters related to the Forum Options

[Astro0]

If you have a question about Unmanned Spaceflight.com, this is the place to ask it.

[Greg Hullender]

Was there a change to the rules? I read through them, but I couldn't tell what (if anything) changed. Or are they just posted in a new location?

--Greg

[nprev]

I would characterize them as tweaks rather than sweeping changes; there are no major additions or removals.

The overaching objective of this effort is to ensure that newcomers to UMSF have an appropriate introduction to the forum. You might have noticed that the admins & mods are also listed for easy refererence.

EDIT: Greg, the biggest changes are in 1.10, 2.8 and adding sections 4, 5 and 6 which compiles more general text from the old guidelines plus other discussions/circumstances had with members over recent years into a more formal format.

[Explorer1]

These changes are really nice; it's good to see that the previously unwritten rules are now written out. This will especially benefit folks who haven't had the benefit of lurking for years to see what's okay and what isn't.

[bergadder]

Folks,
Just an observation, as a project of the Planetary Society .. I would expect these ideas to be kept in mind.. especially in times of need.. and right now support is critical.. based on press attendance at the MSL conferences.
to quote "The Planetary Society, founded in 1980 by Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and Louis Friedman, to inspire and involve the world's public in space exploration through advocacy, projects, and education."
$2.5 billion came from the public.. involve and inspire them
Avron.

ADMIN: How is this a question to the forum administrators??? Please keep the topic on subject.

[Redstone]

Would a post discussing Alan Stern's Uwingu project be a violation of Rule 1.10?

[nprev]

Yes, as well as 1.2...please read the description of the project on the link.

[Explorer1]

I've got a quick question about membership statistics: has there been a significant bump in registration and traffic since MSL landed and especially after getting namedropped on NASA TV?
Or is there some place we can see the site statistics? Alexa doesn't show very much.

[ElkGroveDan]

Yes on both counts. The number of new members is about triple what it would normally be in this period.

If you want exact numbers on views and page loads helvick should be able to answer that better than I can.

[Explorer1]

Great, I sent a PM.

[helvick]

Some highlights:

As Dan has said the rate at which we are authorizing number of new members is about triple the normal level. We don't have a massive userbase, the current number of registered users is 2830.

I don't have anything in place to track the ip-board statistics over time, that's something I'm looking at but right now I'm not aware of an easy way to get them. That said we do have some data points about the most important macro indicators of server load which is the number of concurrent users. This normally ranges between 50 and 100, with the ratio of registered users to visitors typically being around 5:1.

On the morning of the MSL launch this rose to around 350 concurrent users at 6:52AM (BST), this rose a little over the next 30 minutes but we were obviously having performance issues around 07:30AM BST, and users started to see timeouts. We made some performance tweaks to address that around 7:45 and by 7:56 we had 490 concurrent users and briefly passed 1000 concurrent users at around 8:00AM BST on August 6th. I didn't keep a record of the number of users to visitors at that time but at the peak I think we had about 300 concurrent registered users and 700 or so visitors.

As a comparison the largest previous spike that we have numbers for was at around 270 users for the Phoenix landing.

Peak Bandwidth spiked from a typical average of 300kb/sec to something north of 6Mb/sec. This is averaged over an hour by our server stats package, and the instantaneous peaks were a lot higher.

I'll update this with charts later but in terms of hits\page views\visits we peaked at 1.6 million hits, 230k page views and 40K actual visits over the course of August 6th. The data load associated with an average visit rose too, to about 5x the normal 100-200K/visit since we carried about 22GB of traffic on the 6th. Overall those numbers are about 10x our normal volume.

Things have now calmed down a lot, but we're still running slightly higher than average across the board.

[Explorer1]

That's amazing; I knew the site was put under stress at crunch time, but that's a more complete picture. Thanks so much Helvik; the charts should be impressive too.
I wonder what the next high-traffic spike event will be: I can't think of any missions off the top of my head for a while at least.

[climber]

Thanks helvick,

In the old days, Doug used to posts some satistics like this as well as the most popular topics, etc, and I personnaly miss them. I'd said having those details, say, once or twice a year would be great.
BTW, it stands incredible that Curiosity Landing topic reached 50% of Eduardo's Oppy route in no time.

[helvick]

Climber,

I'll take a stab at that too. And just to show the long term trend of total posts per month since we started back in 2004:



Offhand I can see the New Horizon's Launch peak ( Jan 2006 ), NH Jupiter flyby, Phoenix Launch ( Aug 07) and Landing ( May 2008 ) in there. General trend has been down but that is understandable given the nature of this site and the type of outreach data flow it requires to keep large numbers of people engaged. MSL should drive a lot of traffic for an extended period of time.

Note this is also just total post counts, a significant part of the reduction in volume has resulted from long term efforts to keep S/N ratio high, and since we have no post rating system in place it is not possible to tell whether the volume of _good_ posts is trending down in the longer term.

[elakdawalla]

BTW, it stands incredible that Curiosity Landing topic reached 50% of Eduardo's Oppy route in no time.

To be fair, that's because we are militant about keeping chatter out of the Oppy route thread, and were lenient in the landing thread. Most threads should be somewhere between those extremes

[climber]

Emily & Helvick, thanks... And I've got the point.

[helvick]

Some long term info for those interested in the volume of traffic over time.



If you want to dig into the data a bit more you can play with the chart a bit and see the details, including the most popular topic for each month since UMSF began by following this link:
UMSF Monthly Stats Posts, Topics, Registrations and Views

I'm trying to find an easy way to show traffic by day for those interested in specific events but for the record the top 3 busiest days ever in terms of posts have been:

Aug 6th 2012 - 569 ( MSL Landing )
May 26th 2008 - 499 ( Phoenix Landing)
Jan 19th 2006 - 369 ( New Horizons Launch )

MSL has caused an enormous spike in traffic. We had more topic views on MSL on the 6th of August than we had on the entire board between April 1st and August 5th.

For a more general snapshot of how MSL has affected traffic here are some comparisons of our August traffic vs cumulative traffic over the past year or two as reflected in the number of views per topic, sorted by popularity for the given period. I'm still trying to figure out how to present these in a sustainable way but if you are just interested in the trending stuff this will give you some answers.



Two final bits of info.

The all time top 3 Topics in terms of views are:
Opportunity: 8,198,261
Spirit: 4,917,572
Cometary and Asteroid Missions: 2,559,320

MSL is currently #13 at 1,246,743 ., age clearly counts for something.

I'm using the term "Topic" here the way the IP-Board admin panel's stats page does because that is giving me the numbers. We usually call them Forums or sub-forums and refer to individual threaded discussions as Topics but I'm not using the term that way here. Just in case anyone is confused.

[Explorer1]

And that's pretty much exactly what I was asking for. I wonder how much bigger the current spike will get over time.
Thanks again helvick!

[3d_mars]

Would discussion of this relatively recently published paper be banned here due to potential astrobiology content?

[elakdawalla]

Yes. Try NASASpaceflight.com, the BAUT forums, or the Yellow Forum.

[stevelu]

I noted the reminder about rule 1.3, so I reread it.

I'm pretty sure that it used to say astrobiology *could* be discussed ONLY within the strict context of specific, related mission goals.

Am I misremembering? And if I'm not, can someone say something about the problems that caused the tightening up?

Lastly, I appreciate the acknowledgement that a future change might be appropriate. I do understand the tsunami you are keeping at bay, but the idea that the very concept of "organics" cannot be discussed in a forum devoted to a mission looking for them is...quite remarkable, whatever the provocations that spurred it.

Cheers.

[mcaplinger]

I noted the reminder about rule 1.3, so I reread it.

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...ic=7514&hl=

[stevelu]

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...ic=7514&hl=

Thank you for the pointer. I looked for that context but was unable to find it.

A personal message highlights that I was unclear above. When I said "forum devoted to" I was referring to the rule applying to the MSL forum, devoted to Curiosity. Sorry about that. Though I'm not very active, I have been around here for years, following Oppy & Spirit -- and sometimes even non-Mars missions! 8^)

I would be very interested in a reply to Floyd's question, which he asked in response to the rule-modification notice you kindly linked to above:
My only question is about organics. I can see not trying to link detection of organic compounds to astrobiology, but does this remove all discussion of compounds containing Carbon? Are we not to discuss minerals containing carbonate? Does this mean that Juramike's fantastic lessons on atmospheric chemistry are unwelcome. Maybe you could clarify this a bit...

Edit: maybe make a distinction between organic compounds as in organic chemistry and biological compounds as in biochemistry... No need to kill carbon, it is a perfectly good element.

[djellison]

but the idea that the very concept of "organics" cannot be discussed in a forum devoted to a mission looking for them is...quite remarkable, whatever the provocations that spurred it.

This place was founded long before MSL even left the drawing board - it's certainly not 'devoted' to MSL. It was started as a place for people to share/compare/discuss the processing of imagery from Spirit, Opportunity and then Cassini. Yes - it has well grown outside that remit - but that remains the core purpose of UMSF. It was never nor is it 'devoted to' MSL.

In many respects - what you are saying is that it's remarkable that there's no soccer game being played in the middle of a cricket pitch.

The astrobio rule (and latterly the manned spaceflight rule) were put in place and maintained to maintain UMSF as a home for the discussions for which it was intended - without the flame wars, arguments and other digital blights one can see on any number of other internet venues when the question of astrobiology arises. That is the provocation that spurred it - to defend the core founding purpose of UMSF from the fringe theories and craziness that often blights places that invite those conversation. It was never intended to be all forums for all people. That's how and why I founded the place and currently, how the admin team are running the place.

Will rules have to be tweaked and adjusted to accommodate sensible discussion - no doubt. But history tells us that people will abuse that opportunity and generate unnecessary work for the admin/mod team.

Remember - this is not the only forum on the web. Many other forums exist for the discussions of spaceflight, MSL, astrobiology and so on. If anyone feels a compunction to discuss things outside the remit of UMSF - they are, of course, free to have that discussion elsewhere.

[mcaplinger]

does this remove all discussion of compounds containing Carbon?

I'm not a moderator, but not all carbon compounds are considered organic. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_compound, "a few types of carbon-containing compounds such as carbides, carbonates, simple oxides of carbon (such as CO and CO2), and cyanides, as well as the allotropes of carbon such as diamond and graphite, are considered inorganic."

That said, rule 1.3 says no organics, and modern chemistry gives an adequate definition of what "organic" means IMHO.

[JRehling]

Two of MSL's four science goals are strictly astrobiological, so clearly they run outside the rules here.

http://msl-scicorner.jpl.nasa.gov/ScienceGoals/

However, whatever the goals are, that doesn't translate into a proportional breakdown of mission activity or relevance to the day-by-day activities. I think it's clear that MSL's intended activity will generate enough data to write a few books purely on the geological aspects of Mars. The single greatest focus of its activity will be to characterize what is expected to be a past era that was warmer and wetter and Ph neutral. Assuming it operates successfully, that will leave a vast amount to say within the context of this board. Not to mention all of the other eras it may give us a peek into as it climbs higher: The history book of Mars's early geology and the corresponding climate. That's quite a broad set of topics.

[elakdawalla]

You're right; that's a major contrast between MSL and Viking. When I was interviewing Matt Golombek for my articles on MSL, I asked him if MSL was "Viking on wheels," since they're similar-size spacecraft with similar-sized payloads, and he said sort of, but mostly not; Viking "swung for the fences" in life discovery, while MSL has different science goals, and an instrument suite to back them up, that will produce major scientific results no matter what it discovers.

[nprev]

What Emily said.

And my cheap two cents worth:

We aren't touching astrobiology. We're just not. Not indirectly, not obliquely, not for love, and not for money.

I hope by now that is abundantly clear.

If it's not...please feel free to PM me for clarification, and esp. before posting anything related to the subject...but please be sure to read rule 1.3 first.

[iMPREPREX]

Hello. I'm having a problem viewing the last posts in a thread (any thread). Here is a screenshot of what I see. Please let me know what's up. I have sent a message to a mod with no response, yet. Thanks.

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Astro0]

Looks like your viewing options have been changed to Outline mode.
Look under the 'Options' button upper right and change the Display Mode to 'Standard'.
That'll fix it.

[iMPREPREX]

Thanks, Astro. I never knew I could do that (change the type of view) in a forum. Awesome!

[stevesliva]

Thanks, Astro. I never knew I could do that (change the type of view) in a forum. Awesome!

Often it's clicking through search engine results that seems to do it. For whatever reason, Google spiders that view sometimes.

[belleraphon1]

Ok Admins…

I need to throw this at ya…..

There was a conference earlier this month at UCLA on Mars Habitability: link below

http://planets.ucla.edu/meetings/mars-habi...y-2013/program/

A lot of fascinating talks on possibility of transient liquid water near the surface. Alfred McEwen gives a 30 min update on Mars RSL (Recurring Slope Lineae). They are now identifying sites at Vallis Marineris that track the sun. Also updates on Phoenix results are presented. Chemistry of perchlorates. A 60 min talk by Aswhin Vasavada on early MSL results from Gale (this is as of 02/04/2013) which I have not had time to watch yet.

Those are in the early sessions.

I have thought of posting the link in the discussion thread on 'List of Evidence of Water on Mars'. But the later talks concentrate on the possibilities for current life on Mars. A taboo subject here. Hate to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Take a look and see what you think. I could just post links to the earlier sessions.

Craig

[Astro0]

Craig,

Post the links to the speific papers, that fine.
Even the conference link is OK.

If we stopped every link to a space-related conference just because there might be a reference, paper or hallway chat about 'life' then we wouldn't have any links at all.

Members are fully aware of the rules on discussion of this issue on UMSF.
Referring to a conference where it might be one of a hundred topics does not breach that rule.
One caveat would be if the conference was specific to that topic.

[belleraphon1]

Thanks Astro0...

I will post ...

[fredk]

I noticed that the Oppy forum doesn't have a "fast reply" option, just the regular "add reply". Can someone include the "fast reply" option? Most other forums seem to include "fast reply".

Normally it wouldn't matter to me since I use "add reply", but I'm at a hotel and strangely the internet here doesn't allow me to use "add reply" - when I try nothing happens. "Fast reply", however, works fine. I'd like to post about Oppy!

Thanks.

[helvick]

I'm discussing this with the other admins just to be certain there is no reason why this is not standard across all of the forums. if there is no reason for this ( and I'm not aware of any at this stage ) then we'll turn it on.

I'll get back to you shortly.

[helvick]

Fred - duly discussed, agreed and I've now made the changes.

There were about 10 sub-forums that had this turned off, I've changed it throughout to be consistently enabled. If I've missed any let me know.

[Y Bar Ranch]

Rosetta subforum Por favor? Should be a high volume topic here shortly (fingers crossed).

[elakdawalla]

Done!

[infocat13]

Done!

I would like to do a new post, normally its in the conferences section but I was hoping you folks would consider allowing it to live in the future mars projects section instead,
it would be a post about the mars 2020 lander landing site committee meeting of some weeks ago,
I spent most of last weekend spending at least 12 hours reading through every PDF file that was presented at the mars 2020 landing site conference and I think I make a decently good post on the conference proceedings and perhaps in future there could be sub threads or a poll on each landing site candidate?

years ago I spent alot of time reading up on landing site conferences of present missions and I see some new candidates not mentioned years ago, why?
MRO and mars express and other new data informs us of new possibility for landing sites


http://marsnext.jpl.nasa.gov/workshops/index.cfm


first thread has been covered here already but not in great detail,

http://marsnext.jpl.nasa.gov/workshops/201...n%205-13-14.pdf

so my first proposed thread would include, new proposed sites will subject to orbital imaging camping

http://marsnext.jpl.nasa.gov/workshops/201...straints_v6.pdf

The atmosphere will be thicker at mars 2020 EDL so many more landing sites are possible, and possibly a smaller landing ellipse do to some EDl software changes and mars 2020 will be able to land at higher elevations.

http://marsnext.jpl.nasa.gov/workshops/201...5_14_14_SCM.pdf

this is a "nontraditional" candidate landing site seems to meet the decadel survey and MEPAG requirements, would you vote for it? and why?

I propose to make a new thread with perhaps 3 or 4 of these candidate sites with a poll after seeing if the main post gathers any viewers

lastly I am going to post the first post here with administrators, to see if you like the content, if so can such a post be migrated to the right spot?

[Astro0]

Good thought infocat13.
Give the team a day to think about the appropriate set up.

Cheers
Astro0

[infocat13]

Good thought infocat13.
Give the team a day to think about the appropriate set up.

Cheers
Astro0

ok thanks!


more thoughts,
at what point does a approved mission move from future mission to mars missions?
remember the record traffic this sight had on curiosity landing day? an exciting 4 year talk on landing site committee proceedings and polls here on sets of landing sites could be an enabling in powering discussion to point to on mars 2020 landing day
curiosity landing site committee was full of proposed traverses such as phil does

indeed the landing site committee really does not have such a public input, and this is what the planetary society does right? UNC could be that citizen landing site committee!
if we built it would they come?
perhaps not................
not at first.
does the planetary society ever refer readers here?

landing site committee conferences has to be the most exciting idea for citizen participation I can think of even if its low key here..................
and you never know the folks who post here have an eye for orbital imagery and perhaps if we did this we could make a contribution to the landing site committee in the next 4 years?


mars missions forum
mars 2020
in future missions (existing thread)
they discuss technology
transfer to mars missions thread or leave there for now
make thread header
add subthreads......................
mars landing committees goals and engineering
proposed landing committee presentations
does it meet MEPAG and decadle survey goals?
vote on landing targets!
not sure how to order them for a vote,how does the landing committee vote?
our ums could set our poll to reflect what they do, or not
ooops I am repeating myself sorry

so we need a sandbox here

it would have new thread in mods section to write a complex post for review before ............................

posting

[Astro0]

The Forum has a major aversity to running polls, so I dont think we'll be doing that.

Like any section on the Forum, discussion topics will evolve over time.
The Admin/Mod Team are trying to keep some logical structure in each section and in the future to avoid us having to do major restructring (eg: the recent rebuild of the New Horizons section) we want to keep a tighter reign on the larger covering sub-forums. Topics need to follow a structure that allows future readers to get a clear picture of how the mission evolved and progressed.

[infocat13]

Cool I look foreword to your thoughts on the restructuring of the mars 2020 thread and the next 4 years of MEPAg mars lander committee reports....................

[infocat13]

Cool I look foreword to your thoughts on the restructuring of the mars 2020 thread and the next 4 years of MEPAg mars lander committee reports....................

possibly in future the members here with your great skills could create our own landing sight candidate and submit to the landing site committee, that would be a fantatsist citizen science contribution...................


so i am working on a post for the conference site here but i will wait for mods to guide me or or some day the conference site post I may make could be migrated to an active mission?

I am working on a general mars landing site post

and three other posts

one is a landing site in the 4 original mars 2012 lander sites

the other is paleo river and lake sites
the third is

Landing Sites in and Near the Chasmata

posts beyond these are UMS created new landing sites ?
or you folks are so creative with imagining of future MRO imaging of the landing site committee candidates?

I sleep now and dream of mars 2020 as seen through the eyes thereof MEPAG decadel survey landing site committee........... its 5 years from now but join me

[geckzilla]

Starship Asterisk is mentioned in the rules as a place to go to discuss the topics banned at this forum. While it may be true for some things like astrobiology or some casual talk about Pluto's planethood, it's not a good place to send people regarding pseudoscience, aliens, politics, religion, etc. I'm one of the three admins there and while we want to be very open to anyone who is curious about astronomy and science in general, we've tried very hard to turn the forum around in the past few years. It's still not a place where serious discussions happen often but it is slowly changing. We aggressively moderate crackpots and anti-science and try to keep it informative and stick to mainstream science.

I think Asterisk was added to that list when there were no rules and the crackpots were running rampant. I don't know if it is even necessary to change the wording of the rules, but I do want to say that I don't want the garbage flowing over to my forum any more than it already does!

Anyway, from one admin to another, I admire the work and passion you guys put into your forum.

[elakdawalla]

Noted, Judy! But I think the same is true of some other forums mentioned there as well (notably NASASpaceflight). I think Starship Asterisk and NASASpaceflight both represent good locations to discuss human spaceflight and astrobiology, both of which are banned topics here, for instance. How about we add the following sentence to that list: "Each of these forums has its own unique rules of conduct and allowable content."

[geckzilla]

Nod. I'm sure the other forums don't want people ignoring their rules, either. It's hard to keep up with them but I would guess that a lot of them have gone through similar processes restructuring to cut the chaff out. There's probably not a lot of legitimate places to go have an argument about aliens these days. Asterisk was one of the last.

[t_oner]

Is it possible to change my username?

[Astro0]

I don't believe that the Change Display Name option is enabled on the Forum.
If you can send me a PM with the change you'd like to make, I will get the backroom team to amend it.

[belleraphon1]

Ok admins...

Feel stupid bringing this up this way... but then... here goes.



This detail of vents on 67P/C-G was displayed and discussed during todays ROSETTA PHILAE Landing site briefing at around 17:10 into the briefing.
No one on this forum has brought this up.

I find it fascinating and jaw dropping. Thanks to the OSIRIS image team for showing this...

Should we stay mum because we do not want to dry up any golden nuggets like this from being released given ROSETTA mission image policy?

Or am I being paranoid?

Craig

[nprev]

Maybe nobody else noticed it; good eye!

There's an ESA logo on that slide, so my assumption would be that it was intentionally released by them. Don't see any reason not to discuss it.

(Disclaimer: I'm just a mod, not an admin.)

[centsworth_II]

Why would the Rosetta team not want images it presents at a press briefing discussed, and published? They pointed out that in landing at site J, the chosen landing site, Philae would be within sight of those vents and hopefully see them in action. Hopefully there will be no "hole in one" as with Opportunity!

[belleraphon1]

Was just surprised I did not see these among the released images published in the ROSETTA blog. Do not want to rock a boat and have them clamp down even more.

Images really are cool.....

Not a people person and sometimes I do not have much sense!

Will still wait for am admin to reply here...

[belleraphon1]

Well BBC News release has imbedded video where Imaging Lead Holger Sierks outlines these vent zones.. so will post to our ROSETTA

[Astro0]

If ESA has released it then it's open for discussion.

[Tom Tamlyn]

Is there a way to send PMs to multiple recipients, or do you have to create a separate PM for each one?

[nprev]

Not an admin, but I know this one. If you go to the 'compose message' option you'll see a box where you can CC up to six other members, Tom.

[Tom Tamlyn]

Thanks Nick, but I don't see a cc field when I click on "compose new message."

There's a field for "recipient," and next to it is a drop-down menu that says "other," with one item in the menu. Choosing "other" doesn't do anything, and the one item in the menu is the name of a user who has posted 4 times (I might have a dim recollection of sending him a PM about something 8 or 9 years ago).

I tried putting multiple usernames in the "recipient" field, separated by commas, but the system rejected it.

Sorry to be bringing this up on the eve of Pluto closest approach; I'll understand if there's a delay in responding.

[nprev]

Huh. No worries, but I'm confused. When I select "Compose New Message" I get this, with a field below the recipient bar for CCs:

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Tom Tamlyn]

Yeah, I've seen such a cc box on other boards, but not here. I've looked through my old PMs, including ones involving a meet-up in NYC in 2008, and don't see any with multiple recipients.

Same result with current versions of Chrome & Firefox for Mac. Although I am running an older version of Mac OS, 10.6.8.

Ugh, I hope it doesn't come down to an OS specific quirk.

[hendric]

I also don't see multiple recipients enabled as an option. Nick, perhaps being a moderator grants you super powers?

[nprev]

Yeah, I thought about that--I don't know. Hopefully a more knowledgable admin or mod will chime in here.

[ElkGroveDan]

I also don't see multiple recipients enabled as an option. Nick, perhaps being a moderator grants you super powers?

Something like that. We'll discuss it in the backroom after the Pluto encounter and get back to y'all.

[stevesliva]

It's likely a spam-limiting option.

[Michal]

Hi,

I am a new member of the forum and joined to be able to share with the members an open-source software that was created by AMNH in collaboration with NASA JPL and Linkoping University.
The capabilities of our open-source software really ties in with what is discussed and created in this thread (and more):

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...7986&st=645

As it is an open-source software that is 100% free to use I wasn't sure whether or not it violates 6.1 of Rules and Guidelines - "Blatant advertising on the Forum is not permitted..."

We really want to share what we have with the members here as we have been frequently been visiting many of the threads in hope of broadening our visualization, but, I want to make sure we follow the rules of the forum before we put up any links.
Mainly, the idea is to make our software available to as many people as possible and by doing so - to spread the science of unmanned missions and promote the engineering effort that goes in to that - and as one of the developers I really hope to get some feedback from the members of this forum.

So the question is: can I respond in that thread or do I create a new one? If it is opensource and related to mapping of pluto / charon - is it a violation of rule 6.1 still?

[nprev]

Hi, Michal. Thanks for asking in accordance with our rules for this sort of thing. Feel free to create a topic for your software in our Books And Products section.

[Guest_ferranglez_*]

Hello,

Could I have my account completely deleted?


Thank you for everything!

[centsworth_II]

Welcome to UMSF. Great first post!

[pandaneko]

I am right now translating JAXA's November 2015 report on Akatsuki.

Usually, I do not have problems with saying which bits and pieces I am translating on a particular
page. However, there are occasionally times when I find it difficult to verbally explain where I am
translating, because contents are complex in layout.

In translating I normally copy the whole page using "Skitch" and copy it on to a fresh WORD page and start
translation.

However, sometimes it may be convenient for me and readers alike, if I place arrows with numbers
on the skitched page and do translation agains these numbers.

However, the size of pasted page may be viewd by you as too heavy. For instance, page-8 of the said report
with a skitch C&P is approx. 3.3 MB, while without it is only 4KB.

My question is therefore, are we allowed to send up (not constantly, of course) heavy pages like that?

Of course, the pasted content may disappear on the way up, I do not know, as I have not tried it before.

Grateful for comments.

Thak you. Pandaneko

[pandaneko]

I am right now translating JAXA's November 2015 report on Akatsuki.

Usually, I do not have problems with saying which bits and pieces I am translating on a particular
page. However, there are occasionally times when I find it difficult to verbally explain where I am
translating, because contents are complex in layout.

In translating I normally copy the whole page using "Skitch" and copy it on to a fresh WORD page and start
translation.

However, sometimes it may be convenient for me and readers alike, if I place arrows with numbers
on the skitched page and do translation agains these numbers.

However, the size of pasted page may be viewd by you as too heavy. For instance, page-8 of the said report
with a skitch C&P is approx. 3.3 MB, while without it is only 4KB.

My question is therefore, are we allowed to send up (not constantly, of course) heavy pages like that?

Of course, the pasted content may disappear on the way up, I do not know, as I have not tried it before.

Grateful for comments.

Thak you. Pandaneko

Dear admin

I am withdrwaing this question for three reasons.

1. It is too large.
2. There mus be automatic rejection.
3. Software imcompatibility is likely to lead to, in any event, rejection of pased components.

Apologies for the noise!

P

[elakdawalla]

Pandaneko, you might try taking a screen capture; or printing it to a PDF; but if these do not work, you can email them to me (blog at planetary dot org) and I can reduce their file size so they will not be heavy for people. Thanks for your work.

[pandaneko]

Pandaneko, you might try taking a screen capture; or printing it to a PDF; but if these do not work, you can email them to me (blog at planetary dot org) and I can reduce their file size so they will not be heavy for people. Thanks for your work.

Thank you for your offer. I am terribly bad at IT skills. I will try to be more descriptive, as
I have done with this problematic page. Thank you.

P

[titanicrivers]

Admin question?
Are meeting abstracts (published on meeting website of LPSC 2017 for example) off limits to post links to before the meeting? Just wondering why my last Titan post was taken down and sorry if it's plainly stated in the rules.

[nprev]

Hi, titanicrivers. Your thread was actually moved to the Exploration Strategy subsection since the subsequent discussion was about very early mission proposals.

LPSC abstracts are fine. In fact, there's a dedicated LPSC 2017 thread in the Conferences & Publications subsection for that.

[serpens]

What is up with the Planetary Society website? Call it up and one is confronted with the single choice of join or donate.

[Floyd]

May be a browser issue with you as there is a sub page overlay that is well behaved when I go there. I'm using the current version of Microsoft internet explorer.

[PaulH51]

What is up with the Planetary Society website? Call it up and one is confronted with the single choice of join or donate.

Getting the same options using Google Chrome....

[nogal]

No problems on my desktop (Windows 10) using Edge, Firefox 56.0, Chrome 61.0.3163.100 nor on mobile Android using Chrome 61.0.3163.98
Fernando

[nprev]

Hey, all. Yeah, I see what you mean. Although UMSF is a project of The Planetary Society, the admin/mod team doesn't have any association with or control over the TPS site or any other aspect of their operations. Suggest contacting them directly with your opinions and observations via the link at the top of that page.

FYI, the other links up there work as well, so it is possible to navigate to the news section & other resources.

[pandaneko]

Why is it that the subject tiltle of Unmanned Exploration Of Comets & Asteroids has a question mark?

I ask this question because I have been wanting to use this place to mention JAXA's perhaps next asteroid
mission to Jupitor's satellites.

P

[nprev]

That question mark is an (obsolete) indicator that the original topic was intended to gather information, Pandaneko. It's also a very old topic, and has not been active for a considerable period of time.

In any case, a proposed future mission to the Jupiter system would not belong there. A better place would be in the "Exploration Strategy" section.

[Brian Swift]

The MissionJuno web site changed their citizen science image upload licensing terms, removing Creative Commons options. Is mentioning this in the Juno forum outside the permitted use of this site?
The new license terms are:

For good and valuable consideration, the receipt and sufficiency of which is hereby acknowledged, I hereby grant to NASA, and its successors, affiliates, licensees, and assigns, the irrevocable, non-exclusive right to use and/or distribute, and to permit others to use and/or distribute, the images, files, and/or materials uploaded by me to any websites, portals, and/or webpages of the Mission Juno Website (each a “Work” and collectively, the “Work(s)”) in any manner and media, now known or hereafter devised, in perpetuity, without further obligation to me. I hereby acknowledge that I am granting these rights on a gratis-basis. I represent and warrant that, except to the extent that the Work(s) incorporate any work(s) created or owned by National Aeronautics and Space Administration, I have the right to grant all rights I am granting hereunder and use of the Work(s) will not infringe the right of any third party. I will indemnify and hold harmless NASA and any user of the Work(s) from and against any and all claims, costs and expenses resulting from a breach of the foregoing representations or warranties

Thanks.

[mcaplinger]

The MissionJuno web site changed their citizen science image upload licensing terms, removing Creative Commons options.

Huh. They did this unilaterally without telling anybody on the Junocam team, anyway. I'll inquire as to what's going on. I agree with any criticism anyone could have about this.

[Sean]

Huh. They did this unilaterally without telling anybody on the Junocam team, anyway. I'll inquire as to what's going on. I agree with any criticism anyone could have about this.

From Scott Bolton...

''Sean, i just found out that our website has something wrong with it. We did not intend to change anything on the website regarding cc. They have been having some sort of security issues and took things down for awhile and still don’t have the control to put up new announcements or material as we used to do, like our PJ 27 data went out with reference to PJ26. Other stuff had to go to the think tank. Please share with your colleagues that this change was unintentional and will be fixed as soon as possible. ''

Still odd that the wording made it in there at all.

[Brian Swift]

Thanks Mike and Seán. Your inquiries got the CC licensing back fairly quickly. Took them a bit longer to resolve an issue where uploads were being rejected due to size, but that appears fixed too now.

[dtolman]

In light of the paper regarding phosphine gas in Venus's atmosphere, and its implications... I had a few questions on in-scope discussion, of increasing boldness:

-is discussion of phosphine gas, instruments, methods of detection, etc - without the wider implications being mentioned - OK? I presume so, but wanted to check.

-If there are instruments being designed with the assumption that the "UV absorber" in the Venusian atmosphere/the producer of the phosphine gas/the source of the albedo changes in its atmosphere are a lifeform - and wish to sample it - are the instruments allowable for discussion if wider context is scrupulously ignored? Eg - the design of a probe or instrument to do sample collection for the mid-atmosphere, or something with an on-board chemistry lab (but nothing as egregious as a PCR device)?

-would it be possible to have a rule 1.3.1 - where discussion of lifeforms in the atmosphere are allowed in the Venus sub-forum - but only on how it *directly* effects the design and creation of a *specific instrument*. eg - how to design an instrument to look for presumptive life is OK if the discussion is limited to technical points regarding its design and construction (configuration a would be better for organic matter, configuration b would be better for looking at nucleic acids, etc) - but wider discussions on possible forms that life could take, its ecosystem and lifecycle, etc would still be firmly prohibited?

[stevesliva]

Don't start arguments about whether anything is biogenic or abiogenic. And you'll probably be ok.

[nprev]

Hey, all. Good questions, and we're discussing it.

Happy to say that thus far today everything's remained in-scope, and thanks for doing that. To be clear, the main purpose of 1.3 is to not let the Forum degenerate into just another hand-wavy eye-spinning mouth-frothing gibberfest as is all too common across the web...as you all know depressingly well, else I suspect that you would not be here in the first place. We have a reputation for rational, reality-based discourse that was hard-earned after many years, and maintaining that has over time has drawn many robotic spaceflight professionals as members and most welcome regular contributors.

We will never jeopardize that. Accordingly, our decisions regarding any changes are always very deliberate...and deliberation takes time.

[Antdoghalo]

Got a question, where can I post about a very large Google Earth overlay set I made of the planets?

[nprev]

Hmm. First off, wow, and good question, thanks for asking! Sounds like it may be an extremely useful resource.

I think a new topic in "Image Processing Techniques" would be the best fit since it's obviously not planet nor mission specific, plus it sounds as if it could be used in many ways for other imaging/cartography applications by others.

[Antdoghalo]

Thanks! I added it there. Sorry if I spam posted the individual planets. I had to since the overlay was too big to post in one post and I plan to update it in the future (which would make it's size increase even more). The only workaround was to divide the overlay set and upload each individual piece with the Moon, Venus, and Mars being subdivided to allow for future updates).
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=8565
I hope you all find it useful (even if forum attachment size limits make it a bit of a chore to download the entirety of)

[climber]

Hi Nick,
I guess we’ll have a jump in connexions soon with Perseverance landing.
I was wondering if you could provide some general stats as you used to do some years ago. I can see that current topic of Curiosity hit the 200k views but I’ve no idea of general behavior.
Thanks
Climber

[Tom Tamlyn]

On the subject of forum guests, I was amused to see this just now:

There are 239 online users browsing:
1 members and 238 visitors

[nprev]

Hey!

Climber, I don't have any stats--that was something Doug did, and frankly I just ain't got them mad skillz--but the views on any given topic or thread are cumulative so they don't reflect specific spikes. One thing that DOES happen on landing days (unsurprisingly) is that the number of users on really hits the roof. I believe that we went well over 1000 on Curiosity's landing day & even a bit higher when InSight touched down. The Forum generally attracts a wave of new members afterwards as well, one reason being that we've been called out on at least two occasions that I can recall at JPL post-landing press conferences.

Tom, yeah, that's fairly normal but it also can change minute by minute. From what I've seen a large fraction of the 'guests' are apparently automated, likely web crawlers doing scans for search engines. There are of course some actual people as well, but probably not the majority. That said, members pop on and off 24/7/365 from all over the world. There really hasn't been a fixed activity nadir time that I can discern, but it does quiet down a bit during late evening hours in Europe and North America.

[Steve G]

After Perseverance's successful landing, and has the mission is to seek evidence of past life, how are we going to navigate this topic around rule 1.3?

[Explorer1]

After Perseverance's successful landing, and has the mission is to seek evidence of past life, how are we going to navigate this topic around rule 1.3?

There's a post by Bjorn in the Future Venus Missions thread that would be a good precedent, albeit about the Venusian phosphine paper and implications: http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=248107

[nprev]

Hey. This has been under discussion for quite some time and we'll make a decision soon. Obviously we have a few months (at least) until there may be a conflict.

Right now, 1.3 remains in effect.

[stevesliva]

It perseveres, you mean.