The SETI Forum diversification - CLOSED

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Message 651018 - Posted: 29 Sep 2007, 19:58:31 UTC
Last modified: 29 Sep 2007, 20:17:24 UTC

When you see the Seti statistics you'll find amazing over 220 world nationals participation which proves Seti as a first true international project.

But in this main Seti forum we see less than 10 nationals daily.

Could current forumers and Seti officials do something about to make those hidden members voices to be heard?!

I have been raising this issue for not few times but especially those native english speaker members hugely ignoring those non english speaker members and their right of voice. This is NOT FAIR!!!

Even in one thread I talked to Eric (Seti head official) and Pappa (Seti official) on this issue but it is silenced as time passed.
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Message 651045 - Posted: 29 Sep 2007, 20:54:11 UTC
Last modified: 29 Sep 2007, 20:56:45 UTC

Everybody can post in their own native languages, and I have seen posts and threads in Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, French, German, and I occasionally post in my own native language Danish myself.

But it is a fact that if you want to communicate to a larger group than your own language group, English is the international language to do it in.

It was discussed in the beginning of the existence of this forum about which language to use, and English was what people wanted to be the most used language. But again, I have seen people ask questions in other languages and get answers from people in the same language. In the Cafe there are threads in other languages, like German.

I guess people use their own team boards when they want to communicate in their own language, like Danish, French, German, etc.

Nobody will forbid you to post in what language you might want to use.


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Message 651047 - Posted: 29 Sep 2007, 21:00:27 UTC
Last modified: 29 Sep 2007, 21:06:13 UTC

It is not matter of language only. Maybe language factor is less than 50% whole world understands that english is pretty much international language.

But amazingly out of 200 nationals too few are speaking which reveals something is wrong with forum Admins, forum Mods, Seti Institute officials and their policy lack of restoring international culture here.

The background of this forum is over 220 countries.
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Message 651053 - Posted: 29 Sep 2007, 21:08:57 UTC - in response to Message 651047.  

It is not matter of language only. Maybe language factor is less than 50% whole world understands that english is pretty much international language.

But amazingly out of 200 nationals too few are speaking which reveals something is wrong with forum Admins, forum Mods and their policy lack of restoring international culture.

The background of this forum is over 220 countries.


Ehh, the purpose for this project and with this the existence of this forum is and I quote: "SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is a scientific area whose goal is to detect intelligent life outside Earth." I don't see any mention of policies to restoring international culture on this site.





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Message 651057 - Posted: 29 Sep 2007, 21:13:56 UTC
Last modified: 29 Sep 2007, 21:25:37 UTC

It is not matter of language only. Maybe language factor is less than 50% whole world understands that english is pretty much international language.

But amazingly out of 200 nationals too few are speaking which reveals something is wrong with forum Admins, forum Mods, Seti Institute officials and their policy lack of restoring international culture.

The background of this forum is over 220 countries.


Ehh, the purpose for this project and with this the existence of this forum is and I quote: "SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is a scientific area whose goal is to detect intelligent life outside Earth." I don't see any mention of policies to restoring international culture on this site.



the issue title is Seti Forum diversification not Seti Diversification.


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Message 651100 - Posted: 29 Sep 2007, 22:30:13 UTC - in response to Message 651045.  

Everybody can post in their own native languages, and I have seen posts and threads in Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, French, German, and I occasionally post in my own native language Danish myself.

But it is a fact that if you want to communicate to a larger group than your own language group, English is the international language to do it in.

It was discussed in the beginning of the existence of this forum about which language to use, and English was what people wanted to be the most used language. But again, I have seen people ask questions in other languages and get answers from people in the same language. In the Cafe there are threads in other languages, like German.

I guess people use their own team boards when they want to communicate in their own language, like Danish, French, German, etc.

Nobody will forbid you to post in what language you might want to use.


People tend to post where the majority of the posts are in a language that they understand. Since the majority of the posts here are in English, mostly English speakers will post on a frequent basis. For some, English is not their first language.


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Message 651109 - Posted: 29 Sep 2007, 22:41:10 UTC - in response to Message 651018.  
Last modified: 29 Sep 2007, 22:48:38 UTC

When you see the Seti statistics you'll find amazing over 220 world nationals participation which proves Seti as a first true international project.

But in this main Seti forum we see less than 10 nationals daily.

Could current forumers and Seti officials do something about to make those hidden members voices to be heard?!

... SNIP ...


Orgil,

I support you on this.

The majority of it's crunchers and supporters are western from very few societies.

I am not sure this is all SETI's fault but more historic, ecconomic and cultural.

Though what does amaze me for example is the massive growth of computer usage in India yet so few people in India are involved in SETI.

I am not sure what we can do about it.

At this level SETI can not really call itself a project for humanity.

It is a Western technological adventure and every culture has the right to adventure but...

... it would be nice to crunch alongside (and meet) a broader range of people from across the world.

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Message 651127 - Posted: 29 Sep 2007, 23:09:13 UTC - in response to Message 651109.  
Last modified: 30 Sep 2007, 2:18:54 UTC



I remember a guy from India who were quite active in the Cafe, he was nice. He joined team TFFE, by the way. He suddenly stopped posting, what became of him? Have you heard from him?



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Message 651162 - Posted: 30 Sep 2007, 0:02:47 UTC - in response to Message 651127.  
Last modified: 30 Sep 2007, 0:11:07 UTC


...
Though what does amaze me for example is the massive growth of computer usage in India yet so few people in India are involved in SETI.

I am not sure what we can do about it.
...


I remember a guy from India who were quite active in the Cafe, he was nice. He joined your team, by the way. He suddenly stopped posting, what became of him? Have you heard from him?


I have no idea Fuzzy! (If you remember his name please let me know.)

I think given there are 900+ million in India and a rapidly expanding middle class and a high level of computer education one single individual that may or may not have joined my team is small fry related to the topic.

What do you think Fuzzy?

How many Indian, African, Chinese people join in or crunch in comparison to Europe or the US?

I think the only people to blame are those that own or support the project.


(No one should ever be dismissed with a word.)
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Message 651201 - Posted: 30 Sep 2007, 0:39:36 UTC - in response to Message 651162.  


...
Though what does amaze me for example is the massive growth of computer usage in India yet so few people in India are involved in SETI.

I am not sure what we can do about it.
...


I remember a guy from India who were quite active in the Cafe, he was nice. He joined your team, by the way. He suddenly stopped posting, what became of him? Have you heard from him?


I have no idea Fuzzy! (If you remember his name please let me know.)

I think given there are 900+ million in India and a rapidly expanding middle class and a high level of computer education one single individual that may or may not have joined my team is small fry related to the topic.

What do you think Fuzzy?

How many Indian, African, Chinese people join in or crunch in comparison to Europe or the US?

I think the only people to blame are those that own or support the project.


(No one should ever be dismissed with a word.)


No, I don't remember his name, you can look on your team site, he's from India.

But you really notice when somebody outside from the usual countries starts to post, and he was a very nice person.

I don't know, I was just googling for a map, I think I have seen some time ago, where the distribution of the BOINC'ers were spread over a world map, but I can't find it. Or I don't use the right words in my search?

But of course, participating in a distributed computer project is kind of a surplus phenomenon, you don't participate if you 1) don't have a computer to participate with, 2) if your computer is too obsolete in regard of the requirements of processor power, free space, and RAM, 3) if you don't have a steady internet connection available, 4) if you can't afford to have a 'net connection, 5) if the costs of power is too high for your income to let your computer run just to crunch, 6) ....


So, participating in this project, how exciting it may be for some to find ET, requires a surplus, and countries with a certain technological and economical level will be over-representative on the world map. This means that North America, Australia, Europe, and Japan will fill a lot on the map, where countries in Africa may be under-representative.

And about the boards, I have seen people from more different countries on the Number Crunching board than on the Cafe board, so I don't know if it's so English dominated, except for the language, which JM7 has explained earlier in this thread. Again, participating and specially participating on the forum is a surplus phenomenon, and not all people in the world may have the time to sit and chat with others.


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Message 651251 - Posted: 30 Sep 2007, 1:13:04 UTC

The difference of this project forum is most countries involved but least of them freely talk in this forum. That is the weirdest thing.

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Message 651284 - Posted: 30 Sep 2007, 1:49:39 UTC

I don't think this is SETI@Home's responsibility to basically make people talk on the boards.

If people from other cultures have something to say, they will say it. I've seen the occasional multilingual posts. There's certainly nothing preventing people from other cultures to post their thoughts. You can't force them to speak up. What more do you want? Why don't you start more multilingual posts and see if you can find others to talk to? If you cannot, it's not SETI@Home's fault nor is it their responsibility to find people for you to talk to. They are in the science business, not the social networking business.
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Message 651287 - Posted: 30 Sep 2007, 2:01:07 UTC - in response to Message 651284.  

I don't think this is SETI@Home's responsibility to basically make people talk on the boards.

If people from other cultures have something to say, they will say it. I've seen the occasional multilingual posts. There's certainly nothing preventing people from other cultures to post their thoughts. You can't force them to speak up. What more do you want? Why don't you start more multilingual posts and see if you can find others to talk to? If you cannot, it's not SETI@Home's fault nor is it their responsibility to find people for you to talk to. They are in the science business, not the social networking business.


And I'll ad to this, posting English spelled backwards doesn't exactly further the communication with people who don't have English as their native language.


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Message 651300 - Posted: 30 Sep 2007, 2:32:50 UTC - in response to Message 651284.  
Last modified: 30 Sep 2007, 3:12:48 UTC

... SNIP...

it's not SETI@Home's fault nor is it their responsibility to find people for you to talk to. They are in the science business, not the social networking business.



Ozz it is sad that as a mod you treat the project in such a sterile way.

I guess I come from a different social and scientific background...

I thought SETI was a project aimed at providing benefit to the world rather than just crunching some raw and impersonal numbers!

I assumed that without a social network we would never (SETI would never) have had a network of computers in our homes to use!

I would not be crunching if it was not for the social value.. Would you be?


In this sense it is a major question:

Is SETI just a project that simply deals with maths or is it a project about the hopes and aspirations of those who wish to look outwards in discovery?




My guess is that SETI is an aspirational project embrassing the best of human hopes.

In this mindset it is pretty silly not to search for ways to include other people from around the world. (Though I can see many excuses for not even trying..)

For me I just think it a worthy question to ask why there are so few (statistically) non white people involved.

Denials aside the SETI project does not do so well in involving non-english speaking or non-euro-origin people. Fact!

I can say "ye numuk haraam hai" but I need to say it in phonetic roman even though the words should be written in a form of Arabic script (Urdu)...

... If I was a native speaker of a language that did not use euro-roman text how could I speak on these boards?

Personally I think the arguement about "english" is a sideline issue..

I think the question of 'diversification' is worth asking.

It does not need us to run to protect SETI.

It needs us to think of ways in which we can promote the project more widely!


(Why such negativity amongst us?)
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Message 651323 - Posted: 30 Sep 2007, 3:13:58 UTC - in response to Message 651300.  

... SNIP...

it's not SETI@Home's fault nor is it their responsibility to find people for you to talk to. They are in the science business, not the social networking business.



Ozz it is sad that as a mod you treat the project in such a sterile way.

I guess I come from a different social and scientific background...

I thought SETI was a project aimed at providing benefit to the world rather than just crunching some raw and impersonal numbers!

I assumed that without a social network we would never (SETI would never) have had a network of computers in our homes to use!

I would not be crunching if it was not for the social value.. Would you be?


In this sense it is a major question:

Is SETI just a project that simply deals with maths or is it a project about the hopes and aspirations of those who wish to look outwards in discovery?




My guess is that SETI is an aspirational project embrassing the best of human hopes.

In this mindset it is pretty silly not to search for ways to include other people from around the world. (Though I can see many excuses for not even trying..)

For me I just think it a worthy question to ask why there are so few (statistically) non white people involved.

Denials aside the SETI project does not do so well in involving non-english speaking or non-euro-origin people.

I can say "ye numak haram hai" but I need to say it in phonetic roman even though the words should be written in a form of Arabic script (Urdu)...

... If I was a native speaker of a language that did not use euro-roman text how could I speak on these boards?

Personally I think the arguement about "english" is a sideline issue..

I think the question of 'diversification' is worth asking.

It does not need us to run to protect SETI.

It needs us to think of ways in which we can promote the project more widely!


(Why such negativity amongst us?)


Us, inclusive, all of the crunchers and other supporters of S@H. If you (any of you) can think of something that would help increase usage worldwide that does not involve much moderator time, I am certain that it would be appreciated.


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Message 651329 - Posted: 30 Sep 2007, 3:41:22 UTC - in response to Message 651300.  

Ozz it is sad that as a mod you treat the project in such a sterile way.


That's my job. To keep things sterile. I prefer unbiased, but hey, nobody's perfect.

I thought SETI was a project aimed at providing benefit to the world rather than just crunching some raw and impersonal numbers!


Nope. The way I understand it is that SETI@Home is strictly to find "the signal". They provide message boards as a courtesy. If anyone, which includes people from all walks of life on all continents, wishes to post, they can do so. It is not their job to actively promote the message boards in any way.

I would not be crunching if it was not for the social value.. Would you be?


The fact that SETI has survived due to grass roots movements, doesn't mean they have to force people to speak up.

In this sense it is a major question:

Is SETI just a project that simply deals with maths or is it a project about the hopes and aspirations of those who wish to look outwards in discovery?


I think it is quite clear: to look for an alien signal so what we know we are not alone. Has nothing to do with hopes and aspirations of making people talk.

In this mindset it is pretty silly not to search for ways to include other people from around the world. (Though I can see many excuses for not even trying..)


Silly? They're not actively excluding people, so I don't see how it's their job to include people either. That would be our job. If we want so many multilingual people here, then we need to spread the word. Tell your friends.

That is what grass roots is all about. Not making the scientists spend their already little time promoting a message board provided out of courtesy.

The rest of your post is nonsense. Preaching that it is somehow the Admins or the Mods job to recruit people to post, which it is not, and should not be.

The job of the Admins is to keep the project's technical and scientific aspects going. The job of the Mods is to make sure peace and intelligent discourse reign over chaotic bullying and ignorance.

The job of the SETIzens is to tell people about it and encourage them to join if they wish.
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Message 651331 - Posted: 30 Sep 2007, 3:49:04 UTC

Hmmm...we have 50+ members of our team....from many different countries....and only about 20 of them have posted on our forums.

We had someone from Germany join us....then someone else....so we wound up with a German Thread.

We now have a member from India...but he posts in English.

We ( either Calm Chaos OR Seti ) cannot FORCE diversification. If you feel that there isn't enough diversification, or if you feel that non English speakers are being shut out, then your best bet to attempt to change that would be to make use of the Seti Cafe and make a thread in a non English language.

Just my two cents.


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Message 651332 - Posted: 30 Sep 2007, 3:56:22 UTC - in response to Message 651284.  
Last modified: 30 Sep 2007, 4:24:50 UTC

... SNIP...

it's not SETI@Home's fault nor is it their responsibility to find people for you to talk to. They are in the science business, not the social networking business.

Ozz it is sad that as a mod you treat the project in such a sterile way.

I guess I come from a different social and scientific background...



Sterile as in neutral and unbiased? Yep, that's what everyone wants from a mod.

..SNIP..


No. Sterile as in a mod that thinks that SETI is just about crunching numbers and not about social activity or value.

Quote: "... They are in the science business, not the social networking business. ..."

I never assumed sterile meant 'neutral and unbiased'.. Do you really believe sterile means this?



It's quite funny that so many moderators have congregated in this thread.

Why so many Mods?

There was not attack on SETI.. Just a question..

Why so many troops when all that was needed was a recognition of the lack in our diversification.

Maybe if 30 mods joined in this thread the problem might be solved nay?

@ John McLeod VII

Us, inclusive, all of the crunchers and other supporters of S@H. If you (any of you) can think of something that would help increase usage worldwide that does not involve much moderator time, I am certain that it would be appreciated.


So far all I have seen is people blaming those who may have never even heard or stopped to think about SETI for their lack of involvement.

The first issue in promoting a project for me is recognising that others are not to blame for our lack of promotion.

I am not sure I see enthusiasm.

I see a lot of mods telling me the system is perfect already or it is other peoples problems..

I don't see mods here believing that SETI is a project of hope.

Such negativity amongst us :o(


Does SETI have a clear set of recent statistics? (Current & active users, computers, countries, etc..?)
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Message 651335 - Posted: 30 Sep 2007, 4:04:15 UTC - in response to Message 651332.  

No. Sterile as in a mod that thinks that SETI is just about crunching numbers and not about social activity or value.

I never assumed sterile meant 'neutral and unbiased'.. Do you really believe sterile means this?


SETI is about crunching numbers with a forum provided out of courtesy. Those who wish to be social about it can do so. Those who wish not to participate can do so.

It is purely a matter of choice.

It's quite funny that so many moderators have congregated in this thread.

Why so many Mods?

There was not attack on SETI.. Just a question..

Why so many troops when all that was needed was a recognition of the lack in our diversification.

Maybe if 30 mods joined in this thread the problem might be solved nay?


I saw the thread and I decided to jump in. I hardly jump in any posts outside of Number Crunching. I didn't know there was a problem with this.

So what, just because we respond, that means you have to bring out that very adversary team of the '30'? We have to turn this into a war instead of an intelligent conversation? I think this will be my last post here if that's the direction it's heading.

So far all I have seen is people blaming those who may have never even heard or stopped to think about SETI for their lack of involvement.

The first issue in promoting a project for me is recognising that others are no to blame for our lack of promotion.

I am not sure I see enthusiasm.


So we have to embrace every single idea? Even a bad one? I'm sorry, but I stick to my original opinion: this is a grass roots issue. Not a SETI issue. If you want change, provide it. Don't blame others and then accuse them of blaming everyone else.

I see alot of mods telling me the system is perfect already or it is other peoples problems..


Nobody said it was a perfect system. What we are saying is that it's not the Admins nor is it the Mods job to do something about this.

Does SETI have a clear set of recent statistics? (Current & active users, computers, countries, etc..?)


What's the difference? It is not their job to actively promote people to talk on the message boards. It is purely an optional thing.
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Message 651341 - Posted: 30 Sep 2007, 4:13:14 UTC - in response to Message 651329.  

Ozz,

I Sniped everything because I am not going to get into a war with the moderators.

I simply believe Orgil is correct in asking where the non-euro or english speaking people are.

My primary language is English so I did not assume he meant anything to do with language but more to do with the idea of 'diversification'.

All I have seen so far is that mods are more concerned with self protection.

Personally I don't care.

Risk in life means we don't have to argue. It just requires our attention.

SETI would not exist if it's founders had not taken a risk.

You would not have had my WUs without me leaving my PC on for 24 hours a day even though it provides me with no mathmatical or scientific value to do so.

Why do you think I run my PCs into the ground yet have no scientific bussiness repayment for doing so?

Orgil is absolutely correct to ask his questions.

As a forum we should support this.

I am gob-smacked that so many mods have turned up..

Wow.



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