Good day Asgardians!

Here is the Asgardia Community Affairs Newsline report for April 2, 2017! These will be posted on a bi-weekly basis to ensure that the community can keep up with all things Asgardia!

For the time period of March 1 - 31, 2017

March 3, 2017

Chronicles article posted entitled Asgardia is Raising Awareness of the Threat from Asteroids.

https://asgardia.space/en/page/chronicles/Asteroid-Attack-Awareness

March 6, 2017

Asgardian community member proposals to be submitted to Asgardia Official posted for review on the official forums.

https://asgardia.space/en/forum/forum/civic-asgardia-public-sector-145/topic/civicasgardia-submissions-2017a-update-3059/

March 7, 2017

New CAPTCHA system implemented on the official Asgardia forums.

https://www.facebook.com/asgardia.space/posts/1862431824035382

March 8, 2017

Decree N2 by Asgardia Head of Nation posted proposing new Asgardia calendar system.

https://asgardia.space/en/page/decrees/Decree002

March 13, 2017

Chronicles article entitled The International Astronautical Congress heads to Australia and proposed Asgardia chapter gathering posted.

https://asgardia.space/en/page/chronicles/international-astronautical-congress-2017-03-12

March 14, 2017

Chronicles article posted entitled Mars Exploration Is Just A Decade Away.

https://asgardia.space/en/page/chronicles/Mars-Exploration-Is-Just-A-Decade-Away

March 17, 2017

Decree N3 by Asgardia Head of Nation posted announcing Unity Day and voting system.

https://asgardia.space/en/page/decrees/Decree003

March 20, 2017

Asgardia Official Facebook page creates Facebook event for Unity Day.

https://www.facebook.com/asgardia.space/posts/1869292110016020

March 21, 2017

Asgardia website updated with new look and map feature. Asgardia Spirit Facebook contest announced.

https://www.facebook.com/asgardia.space/posts/1869742843304280

March 22, 2017

Asgardia Gender Equality: Now and Beyond article and poll posted.

https://asgardia.space/en/page/chronicles/gender-equity-now-and-beyond

March 24, 2017

Asgardia short fiction video contest announced.

https://asgardia.space/en/contest/video

March 27, 2017

Decree N4 by Asgardia Head of Nation posted proposing a draft of the Declaration of Unity for Asgardia community review.

https://asgardia.space/en/page/decrees/Decree004

March 29, 2017

Asgardia’s Lead Community Administrator puts out a call for volunteers to help compile community suggestions and feedback on the Declaration of Unity.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/asgardia.space/posts/1874185866193311

Forums: https://asgardia.space/en/forum/forum/constitution-132/topic/call-for-volunteers-compilation-of-community-suggestions-for-the-declaration-of-unity-4596/

March 30, 2017

Decree N5 by Asgardia Head of Nation posted proposing the Table of Contents for the Constitution of Asgardia.

https://asgardia.space/en/page/decrees/Decree005

Here's hoping that April is just as busy! 

Regards,

Rebekah Berg

Lead Community Administrator

Asgardia

Hey petrv!

Thanks for the suggestions. I did include the announced Australia gathering and as soon as there's more information about planned events announced I will certainly include it in the Newsline.

I'll touch base with Ryan Zohar in regards to ANN and see if we can get an official update out for everyone. :)

Regards,

Rebekah

This is great, thank you.

Hey guys,

So part of the problem with setting the ANN up has been manpower. As of currently, I'm putting in between 3-8 hours a day coordinating between Voices of Asgardia and my role in Civic Asgardia. Thankfully our staff writer volunteer did the majority of the paperwork on the communications department, and I'm really grateful to be working with such a strong and supportive team..

Since the Asgardian team is very busy with technical development of their plans, and simply do not have the resources to accomplish a financially established news network, I've decided to build instead an article pool that volunteers can contribute to, but what I need more than anything are writers. The issue is finding things to write about - our writers are going to have to be web-crawling forum readers, who can accurately assess community conversation and draft articles to raise awareness about the various projects and discussions that are happening within our community.

As far as what's going on in the official side - a lot of the developments are kept internal. I approached Lena De Winne about this, and she said that there just isn't much to talk about, and they're trying to conserve information to make their announcements a bit beefier in context. It stands to reason I suppose, but it presents a pretty unique challenge to media in regards to community - we literally have to drum up our own news.

The other challenge we've been facing are the number of conspiracy theorists who in the recent past decided to plague our community with overbearing and aggressive attacks on the administration, and in turn threatened the psychological safety of our constituents. To put it into layman's terms, the amount of garbage drummed up by a few seemingly disgruntled individuals made other community members uncomfortable enough that they chose not to engage in conversation. I've been working directly with the moderation and administrative teams in combatting this, but it has been very challenging and trying.

Fortunately we've managed to wind down a lot of the negativity, and I'm very happy to report with confidence that things are slowly returning to normal. The administration moderating the forums have done an absolutely phenomenal job in handling tense situations with professionalism, integrity, and authority. Asgardia has chosen individuals with a strong resolve, and I've never seen a more dedicated group of volunteers. A lot of the accusations against them are based on ideologies that take advantage of context, twisting it and wringing into a nearly unrecognizable theology of self-serving egotism. From the inside I will tell you, it was very disheartening to see but we have overcome the majority of it and new developments in the community are promising and inspiring. We learned a few lessons along the way as well, and the Civic Asgardia team is working on training segments to review lessons learned to educate newer members.

As far as the ANN goes, I will explore opening a new forum topic under the Newsmedia subforum titled ANN Collector. There, I encourage the community to contribute their own writings, which we will add to the pool of articles available for media publications. This pool will not be available to the general public, but rather to those entities who step forward that wish to establish themselves as a media entity for the Asgardian community. Now this was designed very specifically and with an exact purpose: I have to ensure first of all that any articles contributed are not able to be commented on. The reason for this is because I want our community to share the articles through their own mediums - whatever criticism or trolling that occurs will not happen within our domain and therefore we will not have to control it.

Secondly, articles that... well, don't get shared can't accuse us of censoring. I want the community to share what interests them - what inspires them - what gives them the motivation to be Asgardians, in their own words. I don't want to have to argue with contributors that their article needs to be circulated in the mainstream because their idea is the law of the land. We will let the community decide for themselves what topics they want to engage, and the ones of no interest to the community will not be circulated.

I need to do a bit of research with Asgardia's IT team before this is implemented to ensure that this endeavor can even be achieved by our current technological standards. If some development has to go into it, then we will take those steps.

In the meantime, if you want to write an article, please let me know. The best way is to reach me on Facebook, it's the one place I'm able to coordinate between VOA and Civic Asgardia. I will get you access to the current collector we have in place so you can begin contributing your articles. 

I usually get a hold of Ryan on Discord. He is usually pretty good about responding eventually. Just don't be in a hurry. ;)

FUL

It is true, I am available on Discord as well. Yes, this does present an interesting issue. I will see what we can do to get the ball rolling on the Forum ANN Collector.

LOL @ Phicksur, I'm getting better about it. I check it several times a day now. 

@Ryan.zohar I am very interested in contributing articles.  Now, I can surely commit to one submission a month for sure because I go to university and that takes quite a lot of my time.  However, I do have some downtime outside of major projects and exams and I could probably squeeze a few more here and there.

Are you the editor as well?  

Hi Yovy,

At this point I'm unsure. I didn't want a journalism job but it would appear this is what the community requires of me. With this new volunteer drive we hope to get a couple of volunteers to do grammar checks, but I'm hesitant to suggest that our editors will edit content. That in my opinion is not in the best interest to the community, if we intend to foster a free press similar to those in other democratic nations. 

@Ryan.zohar OK. I take this to mean we are going to be editing our own pieces.  I'm OK with that.  I'll get in touch through Facebook so that you know who I am and so that we can work out the details.  Thanks.