Subject: standardizing AstroWeb

From: [email-masked] (anton koekemoer)
Date: Sat, 30 Jul 94 23:51:34 EST

Dear friends,

It seems that the general community is still rather unclear about the function
of  AstroWeb as a specific database - I've noticed this particularly with the
more recent sites. AstroWeb is potentially an extremely valuable place to
advertise astronomical research and information; however this seems to be
appreciated by only a small fraction of the 'web-literate' astronomical
community (examine for example the number of personal web pages at various
research groups, which would appear to be running into the thousands). It is
clearly not feasible for us to hunt around for new resources and add them as
we find them (although this is also still one way of adding resources to the
list); by far the major input should be from the people who are creating the
new resources.

Let me suggest that one step towards a more unified approach is to have a
standard AstroWeb page at all of our sites. This should at least reduce the
current uncertainties caused in part by the various links to our different
pages, and also hopefully increase the general level of awareness of the
potential of AstroWeb.

	As a starting point, I've made up an example of such a page; it is at:

		http://meteor.anu.edu.au/anton/astronomy.html

(I've renamed my old astronomy.html to astronomy-categories.html). Please take
a look at it. I studied all of our current top-level pages and tried to produce
something which is a reasonable compromise. My suggestion is that we all
replace our current 'official' top-level AstroWeb pages with such a standard
page (but that we keep these top-level URLs the same since they are now
referenced everywhere in the world). For MSSSO, NRAO, ST-ECF and STScI this
would then involve a slight renaming of the files where we currently present
the actual resources; in the new page I've set up I assume that they would be
renamed as follows (mainly by way of example):

	MSSSO: astronomy.html --> astronomy-categories.html
	NRAO:  astronomy.html --> astronomy-categories.html
	ST-ECF: astro-resources.html --> astro-resources-categories.html

Please do not think of this page as a final version; its purpose is mainly to
attempt to stimulate some discussion and suggestions for improvements. (eg:
do we keep the van Gogh logo or advertise globally for a new one?..) For my
part, I feel that it is pretty important that we synchronise our top-level
pages. If anyone has an idea for a modification to this example page, then feel
free to just copy it, modify it and make it available for discussion.

	Looking forward to the comments..

						cheers,
						 - anton.

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From: [email-masked] (Don Wells)
Date: Sun, 31 Jul 94 20:17:01 EDT

Dear AstroWeb friends,

anton koekemoer writes:
 > .. the number of personal web pages at various
 > research groups.. appear to be running into the thousands..

I agree.  Whenever somebody in a group realizes the nature of our
database, and its public exposure, it appears that they often talk a
large number of their colleagues into registering with AstroWeb. This
makes me suspect that there must be many more sites, with many more
people, who have not yet registered. 

One of my motivations for improving our input forms is that when we
advertise availability of the 'personal' category of AstroWeb, we are
likely to be flooded with input! I want us to be ready for that. I
expect that our 'personal' category could have 1000+ records within
six months if we started advertising. At that level it would begin to
be competitive with the best Email address services on the net, and
our information content would be superior to mere lists of addresses.

Our 'personal' records are only one line (this style came from Andre's
list of personal URLs). Yesterday, when I was revising some of the
records to make them conform to our style, it occurred to me that
maybe we should permit people to have a one line description text
associated with their name. I allowed Pat Murphy's record to to
continue to have some text because I have not decided how I want to
handle his case.

-Don

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From: [email-masked] (Don Wells)
Date: Sun, 31 Jul 94 20:47:18 EDT

Dear AstroWeb friends,

 > pages, and also hopefully increase the general level of awareness of the

I agree with your general objective and agree that more
standardization would tend to help achieve that objective, but I also
believe that some of the diversity of styles is a good thing. We
should discuss the pros and cons of standardization; there is no
hurry. If the consensus favors more standardization, I will go along.

 > ... My suggestion is that we all
 > page..

One basic strategy which I have used is to minimize the number of
links which the user must click in order to find their target
category. My top-level page is a table-of-contents. I wish that the
whole table could fit into the first window that the user sees, but
that just won't work! Therefore, I make a judgement call about which
categories get the most valuable space, at the beginning. I decided
that 'Telescopes' are most important. I allowed a few lines for
AstroWeb information, and made those lines be dense with useful links.
I would be happy to use the same introductory text as everybody else,
but I would be reluctant to put the table-of-contents on a
subordinate page.

I do think that it would be a good thing for us to standardize our
<TITLE> lines. I am prepared to change to your title, or to any other
title which represents the consensus of the Consortium members.

 > ..do we keep the van Gogh logo or advertise globally for a new one?..

I like that image, because I feel that it expresses the grand scale of
astronomy in space and time, its panchromatic character, plus a
certain element of mystery. If you also like the picture and want to
use it for your pages, please do so!  If you prefer some other image,
tell us about it; I may change my mind.  In addition to a picture, we
might want to consider constructing an AstroWeb graphic logo, a
trademark...

-Don