[iceman (Mike)]

Regarding chat room, mojo echo'd my thoughts.. It was discussed quite a while ago in this thread, but at the time the decision was the same as now - while it's fine in theory, it's more of a "general chat" chat room where people could get to know each other, but from the IceInSpace side, any astronomy-related discussions are gone as soon as they leave the page. So I won't be creating one and/or linking it to IceInSpace.

SliceOfHeaven, amen brother that's the sort of feedback we're after. Thanks!

A 'what's to view' section would be at the top of the list,maybe monthly, with a special events for the week. Add a new forum for people to discuss that section. How many people checked out trapezium after Vin666 made that post. Or jupiter after Aus' post.

Very true. I'll start working on a template for "what's to view this week/month" and try and rope in some volunteers to help in gathering the information.

There's a lot of buried information in the threads that could be condensed for howto's and reviews. Example.. EP case. Good thread for making your own ep case and storage of ep's. Full of tips. Everyone with a scope has ep's that need maintaining

Good point. The How-To section on the website is designed for exactly that, smaller how-to guides that can either be written by someone or from a number of sources/threads and combined into a handy guide that can go on the site. Again though, I'm going to need help from you guys.
Hopefully Starkler will get some time to finish the GS Dob FAQ soon because that will be a great allround guide for dob owners.

another idea maybe a "checklist" of objects to check out (include a pic (which is what it would look like through the scope type) and description of the object) and do a seperate checklist for binoculars, smaller scopes, and larger scopes. I think a lot of people get disheartend looking through a smaller scope trying to find something that they cant see, or not recognise from photos which were taken from larger scopes

Getting the pics will be difficult.. I might search around and see if there's something already available.. but a description would be good. And yes it can be confusing for newcomers who see full colour pics of a nebula or galaxy and then see it through their eyepiece and it's a small grey fuzzy blob.

HEY big thought how bout contacting the big mobs (andrews bintel maybe suppliers direct) and organising some sort of ...whats the word for it..... advertising/sponsorship/review thing.
Maybe make an item cheaper for purchase as a "door prize" for larger star events????? (member only draw)

hmm not a bad idea for star parties.. i'll look into it for the May 7 star party.

Keep the momentum guys and gals.. what else would you like to see?

Also what about the forums? Is the current category/sub-forums structure to your liking? Are there any other categories/sub-forums that you think could be created?
We just have to be careful about creating too many small specialist forums if there's not going to be many posts in it, so there would have to be enough interest in it to keep it going.

Thanks!