Forum house keeping

[Marcel de Bont]

Hello folks,

We have been doing a bit of forum house keeping today to keep the SpaceWeatherLive forums your go to place to discuss everything space weather related.

1. The Insightful reading forum has been removed and all the topics that used to be in that forum have been moved to the Other forum. A new sticky will be made later which will be updated by the staff. This sticky will contain links to interesting reading material. Topics covering articles and other interesting reading material to discuss are of course still more than welcome to be posted in the Other forum.

2. The Unproven theories forum has been removed and all the topics that used to be in that forum have been locked and moved to the Other forum. A new sticky has been made in the Other forum named Unproven theories. New topics about unproved theories/alternative science will no longer be allowed. Use the sticky if you have questions regarding unproven theories. Details on how this will be handled can be found in the sticky itself.

While we do not want to outright ban the discussions about Unproven theories we do have concerns about how threads covering these topics evolve. We want to keep these forums a friendly place and topics about unproved theories can stir up a lot of emotions. SpaceWeatherLive is about having live space weather data at your finger tips. Facts that can easily be accessed trough our website and app. About learning what space weather is all about. We want people to learn space weather facts that are accepted by mainstream science and learn how to use the live data provided. Unproven theories do not always fit those criteria. This among with the positive response regarding certain actions we have taken against topics that derailed covering unproven theories has made us decide to input these new restrictions on topics covering unproved theories. We really do not want to outright ban questions or discussions but we do see the need to more tightly monitor and police it hence the actions we are taking. No more forum and just one topic. We will continue to monitor the situation and run a tight ship in the newly created sticky.

If you have any questions/concerns or just fan mail for me feel free to send me a private message or reply to this post. We thank you for your understanding and believe this is the best course to set sail on as SpaceWeatherLive continues to grow.

[Christopher S.]

I am an unbiased user of the forum, and have visited SWL for half a decade now as my primary entry-point into the goings-on of Space Weather. It is a enthusiast-angled platform where the primary driver of interest has always been Auroral activity - otherwise, it's just data. Because this phenomenon can scarcely be understood without a scientific basis, it is necessary to include a variety of scientific products on the home page which will indicate the likelihood of Auroral activity for a given period.

This is wonderful and all, but it also attracts folks with adjacent interests as well. I was intrigued to see a HAM Radio community nestled in here, later learning of "parallels of enthusiasm" which exist between HR users and Aurora watchers. It doesn't end, as SWL continues to attract folks of a wide variety of backgrounds. Not everyone is welcome.

I am delighted to have seen proactive moderation and a firm stance against misinformation/disinformation from Marcel and Vancanneyt since discovering the site in 2016. They've been here for much longer than that doing their thing. I am 100% behind this move as they understand the day-to-day of these forums better than I could. Only recently has there been a big increase in traffic from users who may not be as focused in their scientific interests as others, instead using the platform provided by SWL to engage in posting behavior which belongs on a much more casual forum or platform than this one.

Marcel and Vancanneyt have nurtured a community/attitude here which I am 100% behind and will continue to support their decisions moving forward. Not to exclude Sam Warfel, who joined up relatively recently by comparison. These people are far more mature than the average forum user, and they would like there to be standards for that on this website. I do too. So, thank you Marcel for the update. I continue to appreciate SWL on a daily basis, and see this as a step in the right direction.