Marspedia:Editorial

Marspedia Editorial Subcommittee Meetings & Info

The Marspedia Editorial Subcommittee is chartered by the Marspedia Governing Council to improve and maintain the wiki though a group of volunteer content editors and authors.

Current Activities

• Here is our Project Task Board which uses Trello.
• Here is our Needed Articles List that we will complete, prioritize, and assign out work using.

Weekly Meeting Schedule & Join link

We meet weekly using the Zoom.us Teleconference service.

Join the Meeting

Meeting Schedule Every Monday at 3PM PST / 4PM MST / 5PM CST / 6PM EST / 11PM UTC

Passcode is "Marspedia" (without the quotes)

Joining from a computer with a headset is preferred, however you can also dial in from any telephone:

Dial by your location

       +1 669 900 6833 US (Los Angeles)
       +1 646 876 9923 US (New York)
       Meeting ID: 813 8717 9189
       Passcode is "Marspedia" (without the quotes)

Find your local or international number

Please download and import the following iCalendar (.ics) files to your calendar system. Weekly: Calendar iCal file

Previous Meetings / Minutes

Note: We meet every week, but not all meetings are significant enough to have minutes recorded here.

Current Needs:

• MDRS Archival project
• MDRS Archive server & file transfer logistics
• Needed Articles
• Articles that need editing
• Mars Atlas POC
• Contextual maps for Mars Atlas

Full Meeting Minutes

Monday 7/22/2019

• James Burk absent; meeting led by Frank Crossman
• Bruce said he would send MDRS message archive directly to Stefan in addition to James [update, first batch already delivered, late Aug.]
• Frank reviewed the Trello board, with the following updates:
  • Shaun has been chatting with sources regarding the Mars calendar information. Has good picture in mind of what eventual article will look like, and will begin writing soon once workload from new job slows down.
  • The 3 articles marked for review on the Current Article Hitlist (Hohmann transfers, wind turbines, and helicopters) are all finished. Could use once-over for any factual errors/typos, but are essentially finished.
  • Frank will work with James on linking 2002/2004 Mars Society song contest winners to Marspedia.
    • Some debate on whether music from CD sold with book can be posted online. Frank indicated that the licensing allows relatively free reign, and Bruce suggested that the artists often would not make a stink as long as we try to contact them, they are obviously given credit, and have a way to contact us if they want something removed.
  • Some confusion on publishing the results of the Mars Colony Design contest. Bruce thought no info would be published until 1 year after the fact, and suggested at least a short abstract and image for each presentation be posted on Marspedia. Frank will write a summary article encouraging people to buy the book for more information.
  • Animated GIF issue solved, if inelegantly: GIFs can be made to animate on Marspedia article pages if they are posted at full size, but do not work if posted as thumbnail. Therefore, authors wanting to use GIFs should resize them on PC before uploading (https://ezgif.com/resize is an easy online resizer). Marked as complete in Trello.
  • Verify ImageMaps work on Marspedia Trello tab seemed resolved due to Michel's written comments. Marked as Complete in Trello.
• Shaun (living in Australia) likes the new meeting time (3PM PST) and should be able to join in the future.
• Frank found series of short, 2-page essays on "Why go to Mars," written by authors ranging from students all the way to retirees. Suggested finding a way to incorporate this into Marspedia.

Full Meeting Minutes

Monday 7/15/2019

• James reviewed the Trello board including several cards marked "Review" using the label feature of Trello. Anybody can review these items and mark the card Complete (another label) if they pass your review.
• Frank provided an update on the Mars Colony Prize book publishing plan. He will be the editor of the book, and is working with Dr. Zubrin to publish it by October 2019. Marspedia & MarsPapers will be allowed to re-publish the colony design articles after the book has been in print for 1 year. During the first year, we can point to the book but after that we will be able to have more of the content on our two websites (Marspedia & MarsPapers).
• James discussed the need to begin creating archival pages for Mars Society Conventions, as well as the early crews at MDRS and FMARS. He has all of the early materials from a web server that went offline in 2011. Stefan volunteered to head up this project.
• James provided an update on the Mars Atlas including the 3-D Globe proof of concept created by Josh Baldwin, which James recently featured on the Mars Talk podcast. James went over the need for contextual images centered on an individual lang/long coordinate pair, and if somebody could research what solutions may be available to create one of these. Jim LeFavre volunteered to research this. Michel also offered to provide a link to the NASA JPL mars atlas that he has seen before.
• Frank provided several other updates and ideas of what content we could have as expert articles including lists or articles of non-fiction books, movies, music, artwork and other educational materials. He will send his notes to James so that these can be created as action cards on the Trello board.
• Michel provided several updates on articles & mini-projects he's been working on including the Colony tileset that could be turned into a game, and some 3-D modelling work he did to help the MarsVR project.
• We discussed whether Animated Gifs were working correctly on the wiki, as well as Image Maps.

Full Meeting Minutes

Monday 5/6/2019

• James reviewed the Trello board.

Monday 1/7/2019

James went over Needed Articles list. This is being built out and will be done soon. The first two articles on the list are the most urgent ones, so anybody can take them on.

We talked about Student Internship Program, and need for tutorials on Templates and Interwiki links.

Monday 10/8/2018

Full Meeting Minutes

Monday 10/1/2018

Full Meeting Minutes

Monday 9/24/2018

Full Meeting Minutes

Monday 8/6/2018

Frank Crossman, Bruce Mackenzie and James Burk met and discussed the plans for an Areology section in detail. The previous night, this topic came up at the annual Moon Society meeting, and it was clear that some technical decisions needed to be thought through. James Burk is working on an implementation specification which will detail our teams' current thinking on this topic.

Monday 6/25/2018

Full Meeting Minutes

James announced partnerships with Lunarpedia and Spacepedia, and we planned out the implementation of the Recategorization Project.

Action Items

• James to update categories on all articles, per the spreadsheet.
• James to try using the bulk import tool to create Mars Society Convention pages and MDRS Crew pages.
• Josh Baldwin to continue working on Category Picker
• Bruce to send list of Marspedia items on his Mars Foundation planning spreadsheet.
• James to set up a project task board for Marspedia.

We met weekly throughout May & June to work on the Recategorization project

Monday 5/7/2018

We approved the Proposed List of Categories and agreed to begin work on updating all articles with these categories. We discussed creating a spreadsheet to ease this task, based on the one Frank had started. We also discussed rewards systems and Gameification of Marspedia but did not come to any consensus (further research needed). Shaun agreed to work on a Category Picker for the VisualEditor.

We agreed that we should wait to do any large announcements, contests, or internship programs until the existing content is re-categorized.

Action Items

• Frank to update the spreadsheet and hand to James to create a Google Doc (done).
• Everybody to review and complete the spreadsheet, putting in the final categories we want for the existing articles.
• James to fork VisualEditor to github so he & Shaun can collaborate on "Category Picker" (done).
• Shaun to work on "Category Picker".

Monday 4/30/2018

James was not able to join. The team discussed the Proposed List of Categories and "Category Picker" design.

Monday 4/23/2018

Action Items

• Frank to update the Proposed List of Categories based on today's meeting with our near-final list.
• Next meeting: review the list of Needed Articles.
• Technical Subcommittee to continue to work on "Category Picker" to limit the use of categories on articles to the final list we come up with.

Monday 4/16/2018

Full Meeting Minutes

Action Items

• Frank to continue to refine his Proposed List of Categories based on today's meeting, due by next Monday.
• Technical Subcommittee to continue to work on "Category Picker" to limit the use of categories on articles to the final list we come up with.

Monday 4/9/2018

Full Meeting Minutes

Action Items

• Frank to refine his Proposed List of Categories based on today's meeting, due by next Monday.
• James to include Shaun on Technical Subcommittee.
• Technical Subcommitee to research how best to create a "Category Picker" to limit the use of categories on articles to the final list we come up with.

Monday 4/2/2018

Full Meeting Minutes

Action Items

• Everybody to review Proposed List of Categories so we can approve & start using this.
• Everybody to check the recent submissions and review for quality.
• Everybody to think about what other content we need in the near-team, so that work can be assigned out. We can add to the list of Needed Articles and Marspedia:Topic List.
• James to work on PR announcements and begin work in Mars Atlas.
• [Done] James to fix bug that is affecting the wiki rendering on Chrome & IE.

Friday 11/17/2017

We had a quick meeting on this day and no minutes were taken as attendance was low. We remarked that having a business meeting on Friday late-afternoon/evening is probably a bad time for most.

We talked about continuing to add to the Needed Articles using the Marspedia:Topic List and also improving the Teachers Start Here page.

Wednesday 11/8/2017

Full Meeting Minutes

Action Items

• James & Susan: contact designers for a new logo.
• James: Post Nicole's articles to wiki but do not link up with home page / teacher's page.
• Nicole: Edit articles.
• Bruce: dig up & send whitepapers with Mars settlement concepts.
• Everybody: Continue to add to Needed Articles page.

Thursday 11/2/2017

Full Meeting Minutes

Action Items

• James: Follow up with Nicole on writing versions of her articles for K-12 and the Teacher's Page.
• Everybody: Review the Topic List and add needed articles to the Needed Articles page, based on what is in the Topic List.
• Bruce: dig up & send whitepapers with Mars settlement concepts.
• Bruce & Kerri: work together on transforming existing Powerpoints into content that can be used.
• Referred to Technical Subcommittee: Revise the Wikipedia Import article so we can start doing this process to build out the content.
• Referred to Technical Subcommittee: Create tag templates for different audiences (?) or come up with a way to tag content clearly for which audience it's for.

Thursday 10/26/2017

Full Meeting Minutes

Action Items

• James Burk to meet with Nicole (& record call) to get her approval for Marspedia to publish her content with a specific content license, including attribution preservation.
• Add a disclaimer section that our choice of licensing for content doesn't apply to the other wikis.
• Add more needed articles to Needed Articles page and prioritize it.
• Create a list of topics that we want to cover on Marspedia, and use that to add more to Needed Articles.
• Create a teacher landing page with links to key articles and a call to action for teachers to write for us.
• Set up an editorial calendar, and allow volunteer editors to sign up for shifts - James Burk to set up & manage this.
• Referred to Technical Subcommittee: clean up tag templates so that there is a clear set that can be used for tagging articles as needing various things.
• Referred to Technical Subcommittee: update the Mediawiki skin used from current Monobook to newer Vector (or a custom version of Vector). This is a prerequisite for updating the home page.

Slack

We have set up a Slack (which is a chat tool similar to IRC or instant messaging) to coordinate the activities of the Editorial Subcommittee.

Here is the invite to Join our Slack.

Email List

We can be reached using the email list marspedia-editorial.gp@marssociety.org. You can join the list by visiting this link.

Our Marching Orders from the Council (Oct 2017)

We need to determine what content is needed on the wiki, the process for assigning out & approving new content, and how the editorial committee can keep momentum, either through regular weekly working sessions or some of type of Slack-like tool.  It would be great to redesign the home page as well to add some graphics and make it easy for new volunteers to plug in quickly.

Update: As of January 2019, we have accomplished all of this and have established weekly meetings to maintain progress.