[Skywise]

I'd like to float out some ideas (and solicit others) that may help attract more visitors to Earthwaves. I've had a few in the back of my mind for a while now.

Search Engines

Canie touched on this in her recent post elsewhere. This entire website (not just the forums) is hidden from the search engines via the "robots.txt" file. It was this way under Canie's administration and I have continued it as such.

In case you don't know what a robots.txt file is, it's a file the search engines look for on a website which contains instructions on how the search engine is allowed to access and index the website. It's an entirely voluntary system as there is no way to enforce the robots.txt rules and keep the search-bots out of anything, except to password protect the page at the server level. But even so, pages may show up anyway in the search engine if they were linked to from a third party website, regardless of the access rules. All the major search engines honor the rules, with individual interpretation.

As it stands now, only a few scant parts of Earthwaves.org show up in Google. I understand that, at least in the past, there were many posters who did not want their posts to be accessible via the search engines. I'm not going to judge their reasoning. However, times are changing, and as I've alluded to in previous discussions in similar subjects, the forums are and have always been open to the public and anyone can view any postings, if they know they exist.

And, that may be part of the problem. The world doesn't really know Earthwaves even exists because it's blocked from the search engines. If we allow the search engines to crawl and index the web site, it's possible that more people doing web searches may come across our little tiny corner of the internet and stop by to say hi. This could be especially true, as Chris mentioned, when the next major quake strikes. Folks will be looking for information and answers and I think the folks here are a good source for that.

I'm not looking for Earthwaves to become the facebook (ugh!) of the earth sciences world, but I think it would be nice to have a larger user base.

So, question 1 - shall we open Earthwaves.org up to the search engines?


Registrations

As long as I've been a member of Earthwaves, posting has required a registered account. This eliminates spam, anonymous trolling, and the like. New users have always had to request and be approved by the moderator in order to gain posting privileges. On the old software, there were only two levels of access - either you had it, or you didn't. All or nothing.

The new forum software permits more freedom in managing users and accounts. There are many levels of access built in to the system and others can be created as necessary. This gives the ability to give different users different levels of access and control what they are allowed to do or not do on the forum. For instance, it's possible to block users from posting images, or too many links (perhaps because it's just spam), or to hold their messages for moderator approval before they show up at all.

I'm thinking we could take advantage of these tools by making registration more automatic, yet use the access levels to control and vet new users until they have proven themselves not to be scammers and spammers. (as an aside, I get 1-2 new registrations per day, and they're always coming from known spammers - I check DNS addresses against blacklists of known spamming accounts and bots)

Question 2 - I propose making registration automatic via valid email verification. However, new users would be placed into a probationary access level that limits their posting privileges to no pictures or links (as these are often used by spammers) and a few other restrictions, and their messages are embargoed until I examine them for appropriateness. At the same time I can still check their accounts against blacklists and weed out the spammers. It's a little more work for me, but I'm willing to do it.


Topics of Discussion

The primary topic of discussion on Earthwaves has always been (as far as I know), earthquake prediction.

Right up front I want to stress that personally I have no objection to quake predictions or attempts by anyone to predict quakes. My personal opinion is that it is *possible* to predict or at least forecast usefully when quakes are going to occur. My opinion is that mankind simply has yet to gather the knowledge necessary and/or the technology to successfully do so. But let's keep trying!!!! Any arguments or objections I express against a prediction or predictor are based solely on the statistics, methodology, reasoning, and logic behind the prediction, not the predictor themselves (even if I do have an opinion of the predictor, too.)

Anyway, prediction will ALWAYS be on topic here and that's why there are now specific forums for that subject.

With the new software, I have already added a few new forums for other specific or general topics, but I have attempted to keep the subjects relevant to the original mission of this website or to the user base (such as the programming section).

Question 3 - although the current level of posting may not merit additional forums, I would like to solicit ideas of directions in when we could expand discussion, now, soon, or down the road. Where can Earthwaves go in the future?



Rest of Website

The forum is not the only part of the Earthwaves.org website, although it is by far the most visited. Personally, I've rarely looked at the rest of the website although I did have the chance to examine it in greater detail when I was transferring its contents from Canie's server when I was taking over. I have left the rest of the website intact as it was.

However, it seems much of the website is very old. There are references to people and the original owner whom I have no knowledge of. I don't want to get rid of it as I appreciate it's potential historical value.

But, perhaps the 'old' website could be set aside for safe keeping and new content generated that is relevant to current events and knowledge.

One idea I had in the past and tried to do on my own was an "Earthquake FAQ", a document of frequently asked questions about earthquakes, seismology, and prediction. I had hope that I could get contributions from others to add to the FAQ, but I wasn't very good at drawing any attention to it and therefore it stagnated and hasn't been updated in many years.

Maybe it could be revived, but turned into a wiki so that anyone (or with an account) could add relevant content. The goal I had was to provide a single resource that the general public and amateur quake enthusiasts could go to get solid reliable information. It could become popular when California eventually falls off into the Pacific .

But it's also possible we could add other content as well, but I'm a little short on the idea department.

Question 4a - Would folks like a wiki and be willing to contribute to it on occassion?
Question 4b - Any other ideas for the rest of Earthwaves.org in general?


Your Input

Question 5 - Do you have any ideas that I'm simply not seeing?

Brian