Hi people,

There are some things that, I think, have to be changed. In special, organization stuff.

For those days I have seen several topics speaking about so long future things like "our position as asgardians regarding Artificial Intelligence", pseudo-science and so on. This is great, it allows us to speak and to create ties between ourselves, but I think it is no productive. Furthermore, the open policy of the forum block the ideas exchange, because a lot of people have worked hard on them and they don't want it to have less than creative commons rights.

The following things, I think, have to change:

• Open policy of the Forum. With a closed policy it will be easier to work on really projects with a bigger exchange of knowledge without fear of ideas "thieves".

• Private messages. Without them, conversations always can be seen by others. Sometimes it is not comfortable.

• Formulas System. As in other web sites, it's horrible to write things like: E = m*c^2 (and it's not professional).

• Guarantee of qualification. You cannot deal with problems in technical forum where people without any idea of science can say what he wants to (even pseudo-science). Don't think I'm talking about to restrict people without degree done to participate, I only say that they would be able to see some of those sub-forums and to write in them at least they show they know really about what they are talking about.

• More information about your skills and professional formation in personal profile.

How do you about what I say? More ideas?

Pd. I don't really know where I have to write those things, so if I'm wrong, Admin, please, redirect it where it belongs.

Guess what... Spot on!!!

I completely agree with you sir. Thing is, now you know because this is the first reply but how can I let you know that after a thousand people have replied?

Specially how can we fix, create and collaborate when the first 50 replies will be on how we should build AI to make it better.

I don't mind the sci-fi , I'm just concerned on where it should go.

If I can't contact you or even share private information with you and another fellow Asgardian on a private area, how can we protect an unborn idea?

Last but not least, people should have the possibility to be endorsed or liked in order to grow their credibility and position. People should have ranks and be awarded for their contributions.

I'm seen all this

1) We can't rate comments. 2) We can't reply a specific comment. 3) We can't send private messages. 4) We can't display images. 5) We can't display formulas. 6) We can't make private posts. 7) We can't make private teams. 8) We can't properly be notified. 9) We can't properly format a post.

agreed... all those points are extremely valid and i would tend to hope that these challenges are being worked on by the volunteer IT staff for this forum. this is fine in my opinion but also remember that this is 100% volunteer.

so i propose we start using another media to exchange private conversations and sensitive information. i see no restrictions in our terms of use to reference another platform in which to utilize for this purpose. at least until this forum has the capabilities we desire, but remember also that the assumption of privacy is not a guarantee. when we signed up for this from FB, the Asgardia team said to feel free to still use FB as our previous "official" media, and to consider migrating here (paraphrased obviously)... well i deleted my FB account because "this" is all i needed it for.

i think "Skype" has everything we need to supplement this forum and has a very strong global presence while being a "standard" for most internet connected people in the world.

i will propose this to any Asgardia Staff that have an opinion.

Hi Juan,

On the topic of PM's in the forums, this request has been escalated to the Asgardia IT team and they are aware that this is a feature in high demand.

They are currently working on a number of enhancements for the forums. Stay tuned!

Hi Habermacher,

Well, I know that all those things are made by volunteers and they do a great work (I'm concious I couldn't do their work and I'm grateful for it), so I just want to help making this topic in a few minutes, compiling some ideas for a better organization.

About what you say of using third part nets, well; it's good while we are waiting for a better system, but I'm talking about a really good co-working system. You have to think that the most of us live each one so far of each other and, possibly, we are not going to work together in the same place. Because of it, we have to find a good method to create, develop and build projects with distant authors.

As long as we have not platform, I think projects will not work. But it is only a constructive critique eh ! I'm positive on the things we can get of this.

Thanks Alan, I wait anxious!

And Carlitos, by the way, I agree with you at all. I'm glad there are more people thinking this way.

Regards to all !

Hi Juan.

I'm completely agree with you and if you see some of the topics in "Ministry of Science" you will observe that some people try to organize real work. I think that will be very good to create a list of real scientists in Asgardia, I try to do such list for biophysics (that's my specialization), but got only few responses and that is very sad.

We should find some way to do real work right now, otherwise we can wait for all forum features, that we need, really long time. Maybe it will be good to propose admins create a new forum in Ministry of Science that may be named, for example, "Scientist of Asgardia" where people with real scientific degree can introduce themselves and cooperate for future projects? What you think about such idea?

Hi Artem,

Yes, it possibly would be a good idea, but it do not solve the problem of guaranteeing degrees or restricting the comment capability of people without really knowledge on science, important to develop advanced projects without interruptions. More than that, it still isn't a good platform for writing formulas or adjunct archives, and even less to protect de privacy of the projects. I think that something like that, a sub-forum for scientists would be great for a little view of the potential of the people here but it's difficult to convince people to participate in. I participated in the Mechatronic sub-forum (I'm almost Systems and Mechatronics Engineer) to introduce myself and only ten or twelve people did the same... It's not too effective method but it would be good for beginning though, no?

The most important thing to keep in mind is to make decisions that break with the status quo of the slowing of technological and socio-cultural progress, 20 years ago with the immense boom of brain volunteering, the free software explosion (BSD, GNU, Redhat , Etc), strengthening free culture (wikipedia, Creativecommons, Gutemberg project, Colouris, etc.), and in recent years with the incorporation of free technology-science (CERN openhardware, raspberry pi, ARM procesors, Arduino motherboards, openpattents, open source hardware, fairphone, crowdfounding, crowdsourcing ...) shows that the traditional investment system for technology creation is in decline, and Each workforce needs every idea and every inspiration to improve tools, cultural works, and software. Giant projects like those of Elon Musk are based on non-patents (not restricting innovation on contributions from third parties, not necessarily pay, or at least not in the traditional way), like the rights of authors, commercial measures on works Are stopping the capacity for transformation and improvement of culture. Asgardia should propose from the outset a total opening to the use, transformation and collaborative work of third parties without incurring a request for permission on the works and ideas. Clear thus make clear who and who contributed, but not limit access to use and sharing ideas

I agree, open source everything. It conforms to the founding principle: "a demilitarized and free scientific base of knowledge in space".

I think there should be private areas - places only Asgardians can get to. But the ultimate end product of that should be open sourced. It's how things move forwards for everyone. Everything we can should leverage open source technologies - mostly to save time and needless effort. It's right that everything we do be freely given, in the spirit of what we took to build it and furtherment of the next who takes it. Standing on the shoulders of giants...

I'm to understand eventually we are to have collaborational tools - things we can use to work with multiple people editing the same document at the same time. This should lend abilities for formula, diagram, etc. -=- Somewhere to work on things -=- I don't think pictures in the forum to be too clever, I can see that being abused.

There's complaint of privacy, but skype is suggested as a solution? A service that absorbs all rights to data input, provides third party on-demand transparent forwarding of the desktop, keyboard, mouse movements and gestures, filingsystem, has an impresive range of exploits serverside ready for easy transport.... That sounds like just what you'd be after to make sure there's assuredly thrid party copies. It's only a "standard" to people who really don't know how to use a computer, anybody else rightly classifies it as a threat.

Regarding the rating of comments - there's not really coments, as such, and rating them does no-one any good, really, apart from the people selling the metrics. I'm sure you can go to other places and find a picture of a dog in a hat that's highly rated - it doesn't mean the content is of any value. Look how many people use facebook - that doesn't make it clever... The credibility to a user is their words themselves, being popular doesn't make you right. Consider Colombus. He set up a post on reddit before he set off for india - Instantly many would downvote his plot and possibly offer ridicule as it goes against the popular theory of the time. You judge it by what you think of the content, not what someone else thinks of the content, anyway. Replying to specific posts within the thread is a good idea, a nested tree-based collapsable way to allow tangents to spew without "disrupting" the main thread. Restricting the ability to post isn't good - if they don't know "real knowledge on science" then you can help educate them, or at least where they can find the knowlege they are lacking. Science isn't about having bits of paper - it's about asking questions and finding answers. And sometimes someone's quaint, but wholly inaccurate, misconception of a principle can give rise to another otherwise un-noticed principle - much of science is accident. Besides, just because someone shares it that doesn't mean you have to entertain the ideas.

The "scientists of Asgardia" is worth a shot - I don't see how you'll keep that as some sort of exclusive club, however. I don't know about guarantee of degree, or other technical qualifications a lot of this relies on trusting user input - as does so much else - But I have started laying plans to build an extension for this site to database then provide for search of Asgardians via various facets. So I can find all the Itallian plumbers in Japan or w/e is required for the project. I set up posts in every ministry inviting input as to what sort of "features" they would like to be able to search for - knowing this makes it a lot easier to build something that will be useful. Most places deleted it. It's still in a few but has had dissapointing amount of input, currently going on educational qualifications, skills or experience gained thorough hobbies or interests, other qualifications - ie: swimming) age, sex, height, weight(I question these), loose geographical location, user preferred contact details(I feel we should impliment our own comms system, PM isn't enough). I feel that's a good start, but the list is lacking - so if you can think of anything clever chirp in, due to lack of feedback I've tired of waiting so was going to start doing something about this soon. When it comes to getting something done, finding all the people that can do it easilyl make the entire project easy, and we can effectively crowdsource solutions.

Well, I agree too with the open Source. Actually, I didn't realize that way of work, but I like it. There are many sites (like Instructables, HackaDay and so on) we could collaborate with, making bigger the community. It's great.

The skype matter, well, I agree with you EyeR too. I don't like to use that tools. It would mean to get into other big companies with its interests... It would be better to do some simple platform of communication with software engineers for asgardians. I don't think it would be easy, but maybe something with distributed server could work. Is there any plan about it in the forum?

With the comments rating, I disappoint a little with you, sir. Possibly you're only thinking it the way facebook and others do it, but I think it could be great if we have multiple options to classify the comments by, for example, usefulness, difficulty or kind of comment. I don't see it as a way to be more popular, but a way to make easier read or find information in a project.

It seems you have misunderstood my words about "real knowledge on science". Please, consider this situation: You are working on a difficult project via online. You are commenting hard things, not easy to understand by people that are not on the matter and, you try to do a professional work with you colleges but there are some asking all the time about what are you saying. It is not easy to work that way. Of course, if someone doesn't know about your matter, you can teach him and both will learn sure. I advocate for the people learning on stem matters because it's necessary. But I think we have to separate a little both things. Maybe the way is to create something like hidden commentaries of each commentary hard to understand or, buf, I don't know. But to make a comfortable platform to work sir, no to exclude not-science people.

And of course man, you are only talking the same as us. It's possible that "scientists of Asgardia" doesn't sound politically correct, but sir, don't stop before the details. We were talking about to create something to register people with knowledge here. And it isn't bad. Yes, it's better to create a database, I like that idea, it seems to be more efficient and useful, but it's needed some official movement though for asking that kind information to all asgardians and get a really useful database. Have you said something about to admins?

Regards!

With regards to a comms infrastructure, it's actually remarkably easy. The currently confirmed plans extend to PM functionality in the forum, I personally feel this is lacking and yearn for more. There's multiple methods, ofc, but I lean towards XMPP. It's open source, and clients already exist on most platforms. It's well tested and industrially reliable. Mine survived most assaults launched by a well funded organisation, over a long operating window. Eventually they just gave up. The native TLS that wraps this website's use can be lent to the raw connection and additional techniques to ensure privacy and authenticity of the remote user can be applied via common technologies such as GPG/PGP and OTR. It's been used in the backend of things like gtalk and completely neutered of functionality and security and used in things like facebook chat and whatsapp. It's possible for any user to run a server on their home machine and connect to that, and then connect to another user on another server - so could serve as distributed network. It supports text, voice, vid, files - anything you can work out how to cram into an XML stanza. Connect it to SIP/VOIP server (say, Kamailio) and it can become a telephone, too. Does 1:1, 1:many, many:many type comms.

The existing infrastructure could cope with the load, it's quite lightweight. Heavy vid/voice use might pose bandwidth issues, however, but as a text only majority, and a negotiator in file transfers, it should cope admirably. Ideally, yes, this should require it's own machine - possibly several geographically distributed to spread the load, this is also trivial to achieve once the hardware is in place.

With the comments, even with subsections to the ratings, it's still basically popular opinion. What other people think shouldn't be ½ as much of a concern as much as what you think. That might sound a little arrogant, maybe even conceited - But the only measure you truely have in life is yourself. You might like marmite. You might think that's a good thing to put on toast - doesn't mean everyone else does. That level of information is only really suitable to folks who like marmite, to anyone else - no matter how much you like marmite - it's useless... How many that like it is irrelevant, what matters to them is they can stick it on toast...

I understand the "distraction", I truely do, but you have no actual requirement to acknowledge/respond. With better user interface and a few tools such work can progress - but I would not to think it to be any way exclusive. Another feature I've seen several times mentioned, and I feel is an excellent addition to the forum structure itself, is to be able to nest replies to individial posts within a thread presented to the user in a collapsable tree - so tangents can spawn and ratify without disrupting the flow of main discussions. This education of which I speak could take place there. Someone has a question about a principle, they go to reply to the post - see someone else has had the same question, and there's already a 30-page discussion... they might learn without having to even post... Maybe I'm just over-optimistic. There's no need to hide this - just give the user options not to see it, the critical difference being the optional component - something I feel essential wherever it's possible to sensibly place something. Such a structure worked well for newsgroups (NNTP) from the early 80's up until the web and forums appeared in the mid to late 90's. Some forums adopted this nested structure.

As to database... I'd describe as "admin aware" - with evidence of other problems in an effort to reduce their workload I was just going to give it to 'em fully working - just add data. The database itself should be nice and simple and some PHP form to search should be equally so, and integrating this should be dolly dimple. There's a couple shown interest in that topic so between us something, somehow, is assured to happen. Actually implimenting it, ofc, is entirely up to them - but I see no reason why that shouldn't happen.

PS:

I don't think there's anything "politically incorrect" about "scientists of Asgardia" - but do predict issues with retaining it to just "qualified scientist". I understand the arguments you make regarding, but am unable to resovle issues concerning "exclusivity". On this loose subject, someone somewhere else suggested an area where scientists/reserchers can submit papers/studies/data for peer review. Submissions to which I'm sure should entertain "scientists of Asgardia" - and could serve to set/support our position as a base of scientific understanding - and lend credible worth to our educational system once we actually have one.