UMSF Changes Ahead- PLEASE READ Options

[nprev]

Hey, everybody. Members of the admin/mod team met this week with The Planetary Society (at their request), and the bottom line is that the Forum will be transforming in several ways in the near future. As those of you who are TPS members probably already know they've rolled out a new interactive interface recently and their initial thought was to incorporate us into this in some way. During our discussions we made it clear that above all else we must preserve the high quality of discourse here and accessiblity of same to both the amateur and professional spaceflight communities at large. We feel very strongly that this unique synthesis benefits both communities substantially.

That said, we are also painfully aware that our current Forum software & interface is, in the words of one member of our team, "very 00s". We badly need a more modern, functional, accessible and sustainable platform, and there was considerable discussion as to what the best options for that might be. TPS agreed to investigate a bit from their side...but more importantly, this is where you the Forum members come in.

We respectfully ask all of you to please share your thoughts and suggestions on this issue. In particular, we would like to know your ideas in the following areas:

1. What aspects/functions of the current incarnation of UMSF do you feel are the most important to preserve? By this we mean things like topic searchability, opportunity to engage with subject matter experts. etc. It is likely that the current site will be archived with reachback capability, so this is the perfect time to tell us what you like & what you don't about the way the place functions now so V2 will hopefully be a significant improvement in as many ways as we can do that.

2. What things would you like to see in a future version of the Forum? Should mention up front that years ago we decided to change the name to RoboticSpaceflight.com but for various reasons that was too difficult for us to implement in practical terms with our limited time & skill sets (stuff like link migration, etc.). However, with this new major revamp that change will finally occur. Aside from that, we'd like to know what sort of modernized interface(s) you would like to see, and especially any recommendations in that regard based on your own experiences elsewhere on the web.

And of course any other relevant ideas anybody may have would be most welcome. This is your time to shine; let's hear it!

Thanks to you all for your help, and as always for your superb contributions to our special little corner of the net.

[Antdoghalo]

Are Yahoo AOL and MSN even a thing still?
We now have stuff like Discord and X amid things called "social medias".
It would be nice to have a place to link those with icons appearing in the name plate.

I like the current layout of the site but a Dark mode would be nice. It's pretty popular these days and it reduces energy consumption by monitors!

[Hungry4info]

With the caveat that I'm old (now) and don't like change.

What aspects/functions of the current incarnation of UMSF do you feel are the most important to preserve?

Of course I agree with the staff about the importance of high-quality discourse. In resposne to Antdoghalo, this is something that will need to be kept in mind if there's efforts to transition to or incorporate some newer platform. I admin the Celestia discord server, where we also maintain a high signal-to-noise ratio (inspired by this very server), but there's still rather frequent issues where kids post nonsense. The structure of Forums lend themselves more toward thought out email style posts moreso than chatroom type setups - a factor that likely governed the decay of the popularity of Forums into the late-2010's.

The description of the forum as "very 00s" is actually, to me, one of its more endearing qualities. I can log into this site and know that it will be a quick, painless interface that is structured for function more than bandwidth-maximization or graphical effects.

One of my favourite aspects about this Forum is it's age. I can (and sometimes do) go re-read the thread for the Huygens landing on Titan and relive the excitement. The early days of MER, Hayabusa 1, and so on. And there's so many exciting missions that this forum has been there through. It sounds like we'll still be able to re-visit that on the new interface, so I take this as positive news.

What things would you like to see in a future version of the forum?

An increase in the attachment upload size limit, and a decrease in the image embed size limit. As much as I love some of the mosaics that have been uploaded in the Curiosity and Perseverance threads lately, the up-front bandwidth cost of loading the page and the formatting disaster that happens until the images have loaded have been rough at times. We still use smoke signals to transmit digital data in some parts of the rural united states.

It does seem to me that this forum has been in need of some liveliness injected into it, though. There's a few die-hards that have been in here since the early days, but we've lost some and still others do amazing work outside of this forum. Perhaps some better public outreach is needed. Twitter continues to be a major source of content (processed images, etc) related to robotic spaceflight despite it's *highly* algorithmically-driven transient nature. How do we attract more talent? Perhaps a revamp would help that.

[stevesliva]

Mostly I reiterate what was just said by Hungry4Info. The web2.0 look and feel isn't really broken, though yeah the 20yr-old limitations and social media links are past their sell by date.

wrt the forum software, a few years back airliners.net upgraded from something yet more 90s and proprietary than this forum, to... something that still uses BBcode. So they're creaking along with something that looks much the same. Users there cried bloody murder but there were some unforced errors like "oh we're going to do the technically hard stuff like migrating user accounts and ignore the UX until we go live." Users give no credit for the backend pain.

wrt vitality -- I have never been a big twitter user, but it seemed like a lot of the community went there, and is there. (At least until twitter potentially self-immolates). I have always hated twitter's threads. As soon as they're multiperson, they're short and frayed. Honestly I'd maybe post a few "hey I saw this on twitter" things for discussion here but OTOH I assumed that was more NSF's bag. (Where they can then try to top each other with discursion on minutia.) This site now serves a few niches that I'm not all that active in. But in its way that's vital enough. All that to say I'd be fine with having more Twitter topics in old-fashioned forum format but I'm completely aware that might flag me as being too stogy to use twitter the right way. So the questions are: do you want more stuff back from twitter to here? do you do that in a twitter-aware or twitter-averse manner? does twitter's active efforts to dilute its value factor into what you decide?

(a history note: I thought: Am I crazy? is twitter *new?* It launched in 2006... so solidly younger even if now also middle-aged. But also airliners.net and nasaspaceflight ... those old forums continue, too)

Oh, one more comment. The 'Q&A for noob' thing seems to have gone hard into stackoverflow or reddit/disqus sorts of places: https://space.stackexchange.com/?tab=month ... ironically that site also seems fairly moribund. But it's web3.0 umsf++ at least. As soon as the user base can help moderate with upvotes. But only if you want to have some sort of those functions (twitter's breadth, SO's Q&A) do you incorporate them into wherever you go from here.

[volcanopele]

A forum to look as a potential option in terms of software is https://arachnoboards.com. This is a tarantula hobbyist community that is based on XenForo. This would allow us to preserve the structure we have today of forums, sub-forums, and threads, the ability to host images (potentially, we may still prefer off-site image hosting to keep costs down) in a gallery, mobile responsiveness (the very 2010s idea that the format of a website should shift based on the size of the screen), and the ability to 'like' or react to a post, which can provide feedback without adding to the noise.

Discord did come up and it is growing on me as an option, but as an addition, rather than a substitute. It has the "ever present now" problem that most social media sites have, BUT having an actual functional chat room would be nice actually.

[mcaplinger]

We badly need a more modern, functional, accessible and sustainable platform...[/color]

I could imagine that behind-the-scenes administration of the software is a hassle, but I personally don't think it's missing any particular feature.

If "accessible" is code for increasing the number of participants, I question if that should even be a goal. One has only to look at nasaspaceflight dot com for an example of what happens when the commenting community is large; SNR suffers and knowledgeable participants leave as they are drowned out by nonsense.

[ngunn]

The forum does everything I want it to and always works without fuss. For this I am eternally grateful to the admin team. From where I sit there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. I paricularly appreciate when members with specialised knowledge take the trouble to share it in everyday language for the benefit of interested lay persons like myself. Perhaps there has been rather less of that recently, but the reason could simply be that everyone's busier now and there is a greater proliferation of places for online communication. I don't see it as evidence that a revamp here is needed. So to the question 'What kind of hole would you like in your head?' my reply is 'None at all, thank you.'

[Decepticon]

Dark Mode.

[scalbers]

Hi - yes more outreach sounds good, as well as larger image attachments.

Otherwise I like the deep history of this forum and the simple interface.

Ideally a new site (if needed at all) would integrate the previous history of posts in a seamless manner.

[nogal]

After reading through the replies, I fully agree with the need to "preserve the high quality of discourse here and accessibility of same to both the amateur and professional spaceflight communities at large" and the ability to access the old data. I also mostly agree with what has been said regarding current format and simplicity of use. I spent my professional life in IT and I believe in simple interfaces (but not in dumb functionality). However, the ability to access and use the forum on mobile or other devices should not be disregarded.
What kind of users is this forum aiming for? I do not want to disparage social platforms but I never had a personal use for them. Now that I'm retired they're an extremely small part of my way of life. Will the new environment require an increased moderation effort?

Functionality I've missed most: a secure (https) connection; the ability to attach files to personal messages.
I think it is very important to maintain a well defined degree of independence, from TPS or whomever. I was a member of TPS for 30+ years. No more, as I fundamentally disagree with some of the actions taken in recent years. I understand that running UMSF has costs, at least site hosting, domain names, storage, and some administration. That is also in the equation. If a patron can't be found, will contribution from forum members be an option?

Thank you for starting this discussion.

[nprev]

Thanks to all for the comments thus far. Forgot to mention that better mobile accessiblity is a primary goal as well, and ideas along those lines would also be very helpful.

Re exposure: TPS definitely wants UMSF content (especially imagery) in front of the general public more, and in fact they mentioned a sort of how-to for aspiring image processors as a possibility. We balked at this a bit since of course everyone--and I do mean everyone--on here is on their own time and generally for their own recreational purposes.

We also repeatedly stated that TPS membership should not be a prerequisite for Forum membership. We'll stick to that.

As far as going our own way without TPS...well...we would need around US $10K/yr to do that plus some real live no-kidding qualified IT people to maintain the backend functions, which may well cost a whole lot more. TPS is paying all the bills right now via their own donations. We've asked for IT volunteers in the past but that hasn't received any support. It could be done, of course, but a whole lotta things would have to fall into place in very short order.

Back to the discussion!

[djellison]

UMSF was born in a time before Twitter, Reddit, Discord, Mastodon, Slack, because back in '04....dedicated forums to a specific subject were the only place discussions of reasonable quality happened.

The manifold options for discourse today have inevitably fragmented communities of this kind. That can't be undone. People aren't going to come flooding back ( nor would that be a good thing ).

I handed the keys to TPS ~13 years ago after moving to the USA to take a job at JPL so as to eliminate any possible perceived conflict of interest. Back then - Emily was still at TPS, I was a member of TPS, it felt the right place for it to call home. But it's never been clear to me what TPS's intent was regarding UMSF specifically - or their online presence more generally. I let my TPS membership expire long ago for that (and other) reasons.

I question how realistic it is to expect TPS to invest any meaningful technical effort into a new platform when they failed to do the very basic things that would reasonably expected over the past 13 years like....leveraging the modern features of IP Board.....keeping on top of things regarding server maintenance....moving the URL to the new one proposed over a decade ago etc etc. I have it on reasonable authority that one competent SA with a day of work could complete the migration to the new URL with ease. If TPS couldn't even find a way to make that happen, expecting something far more significant seems, at best, ambitious.

FWIW - I find the interface to be snappy and sufficient as it is. The vast majority of modern Web UI just ends up being clunky, slow and gets in the way of the content. NASA is AWFUL at this, TPS has been heading down the same path to the detriment of their own website.

If TPS is happy to keep paying the bills with the help of donations they should just keep IP Board updated, look at some of the more modern UI options, expand attachment limits if the server capacity allows and leave well alone. This place is 6 months shy of turning 20 years old. Is it a massively popular website? Nope. But it still just about does today what it was started for in 2004. There's still nowhere else like it. It ain't broke. I don't think TPS should try and fix it. If they're insistent - then UMSF should simply move out from the TPS family, find more affordable hosting options and be a place of its own once again. To be frank - I simply don't trust TPS to do the right thing based on the choices they've made regarding their own online presence.

Finally - a massive thank you to nprev. That UMSF is still around at all right now is thanks to his dedication to this place and I can not begin to thank him enough.

[Paddy]

I visit the site twice a day and must have read every post and looked at every picture for something like fifteen years, so I guess I must like things just as they are. Change rarely seems to deliver on its promises whilst unintended consequences are pretty much guaranteed. I rather miss the whip-rounds. They gave lurkers the chance to justify their existence and to hold / express a view.

[Toma B]

I'm OK with the current iteration of this forum. I think it looks just fine.
One thing I don't like about planed changes is renaming it to Roboticspaceflight.com, I think that Unmanedspaceflight is a much more original name and is famous in some of my local community.

[Antdoghalo]

I second djellison. I used to be on a site called "Wikimapia" and it was a thriving place until against huge pushback, they decided to move on from mid 2000's web design to scroll and space wasting 2010's design more so meant for mobile. A lot of people left the site after that and it was abandoned. I would like to see UMSF remain with it's 2000's look because it was a crossroads between excessive clutter of the 90's early 2000's and the excess empty space of the 2010's. Plus I am a big fan of the era before every box had to have rounded corners. By keeping the 2000's look, it makes UMSF feel unique.