[X] My Assistant

[CosmicRocker]

This isn't nuts...this is super nuts. We are on a supposed bee-line drive back to Duck Bay, and they stop for a long time at a bunch of curious and unusually colored rocks. No one is posting wild speculations, no one is posting insider information...nothing...

Why have the MER topics been so quiet lately?

[djellison]

Thought I should start a thread on this - Analyst sent me a PM a few weeks ago criticising my decision to limit political debate here and making the same comment he makes here - that without MER, UMSF would be dead. I thought it appropriate to share some statistics and explain that UMSF is not just MER, comment on the current level of activity and the decisions that possibly mould this activity.

In April there were 1966 posts. A small number maybe. Certainly smaller than the average of Nov 05 to Nov 06 (3-5,000). I've spoken to some other forum admins and they share the same pattern - long time period variation. We had a big peak after MRO arrived and Opportunity arrived at Victoria Crater. There will be one when Phoenix arrives.

Is UMSF getting quieter. Yes. Is that a bad thing? Well - from the admin perspective, no. Easier to mange! Trying to keep up with a forum of >4000 posts a month was too much. I've also seen a downturn in MER discussions in other places. The missions themselves have got quieter. We're not rushing to Victoria or climbing Husband hill. Personally, I'm not keeping up with MER as much or as well as I did a year ago - I just can't.

Does this mean I should have allowed political debate as Analyst tells me I should? No. I will not allow that to infect this place as it does others. You can see the damage it does there and even the overly heated debates that happened here. Want to discuss politics there are PLENTY of other places to do that. This is a small subject area, a small group of people, cliquey even. I'm not going to prostitute the focus and standards of UMSF just to make it busier. I've made some very difficult decisions regarding some members at UMSF in the past - and the only regret I've had with ANY of them, is that I didn't take the action more quickly (and yes - that includes Bruce).

Will UMSF be dead and burried once MER is gone? No. Not even slightly.

Comet Missions 458,000 topic views
Titan 337,000 topic views
Icy Moons 328,000 topic views
Past and Future 270,000 topic views
New Horizons 266,000 topic views

Cumulatively - those subjects have attracted 500,000 more views than Spirit. Add the tech-general and imagery section you're at the same level as Opportunity.

Of the 7.7 million topic views that have happened in the history of UMSF - less than half are within the scope of MER. Suggesting that UMSF would be dead if MER vanished tomorrow is simply not true. But if the admin team vanished tomorrow and a free-for-all followed, the political debate that Analyst wants in this place - UMSF would be dead within a month. Of the 1000+ members here, only 10 have any idea what it takes to run this place. Checking registrations, checking for spam, editing posts with bad quoting, taking big images out of posts and making them links, taking backups of the 400 MB SQL DB and the 2.5 gig of attachments.

Someone once asked here how much time I spent running this place, and jokingly - I said "Oh thousands" to which they replied that that was impossible. I've just done the maths. Since Jan 04 - I would say that I have spent about 3000 hours doing all the things I mentioned - and others ( such as getting ad's that mean UMSF is just about paying for itself ). And you know what - even with people telling me I'm doing it all wrong (and thankfully I get a lot more people telling me I'm doing it right as well) I do not begrudge a single second of it - not a single second. I don't think the admin team do either.

Doug