I'm sure where to put this or whether this is even appropriate for a thread. However, I'm interested in feedback from people who might browse the Space and Astronomy forum, something I wouldn't get with just a PM to the moderator.

Space and astronomy are areas particularly interesting to me and, I think, most people. Lots of questions to be answered, new developments on all fronts almost daily, and so on. I've been concerned that the level of discussion in that forum is lower than it ought to be because of what you might call clutter. A new thread can be expected to stay on the first page for perhaps a day before updates to the older space exploration threads push it on its way. The vast majority of threads (and perhaps even posts) have been contributed by the moderator and generally lead to little actual input or discussion by anyone else. Maybe this is for the best and without those threads the forum would be practically dead (though given the state of the other forums, particularly the other science forums, I don't see how that could be the case).

But my concern is that the barrage of space agency press releases pushes off (and stifles) threads with actual discussions going on or threads with a focus other than space exploration (threads on cosmology, theoretical concepts, whatever). That's not to say the space exploration news isn't interesting (in moderation) but it seems to have consumed that forum at the expense of other topics.

The reason I bring this up in a thread is that I'm curious as whether I'm the only one who thinks this and whether most browsers of that forum enjoy the large mega-news threads (and they certainly get plenty of reads)?

LOL I have a little site on mysteries and I did add a section on that, though its by rss feed and there is alot of stuff out there, much more then I thought! its not as active as ghosts but again my site is very small vs U.M. great idea though.

This is something I've been considering for a while, I'm glad you brought it up.

I regularly check through several of the large threads in the forum, they're very informative and serve as a great archive for doing research. So I'm extremely thankful for the work that Waspie has put in to them. Although it's fairly clear that they're there at the expense of any discussion that could otherwise be going on.

We've come up with a potential solution to this, all of the news story threads have now been moved to a new section under the news & media category: Space News.

The Space and Astronomy forum will now only be used for discussions, comments and queries on space related topics.

Excellent, thanks very much.

I think this solution is the best option. Those that wish to carry on reading the news articles, which are mostly posted by me, are still free to do so. They will no longer overwhelm the other discussions in the Space and Astronomy forum.

If the Space and Astronomy forum effectively dies (a worry expressed by Startraveler) then the action taken is not irreversible and so no harm will be done.

Umm...cool. I like the idea. I just saw the new section. ^^;; Cool solution.

Well we're on the subject, I think this is a good idea, but Waspie I'm an avid reader of your news, and I'd hate to see that stop - so I think on behalf of us silent readers out there, we all say thank you for the effort you put into them