Telescope Reviews: Astronomy & Space Exploration Forum Guidelines

After a few close calls and a few private messages from concerned readers (who were smart enough not to respond directly to the offending posters) , I'm taking a few minutes to make clear what should appear on this forum and what should not. A few examples should make sharper the thin blurry line between what is off-topic and what is not, and more important what is acceptable in this type of forum and what is not. I am doing this to make the forum friendlier for everyone, so please post on this thread your suggestions and concerns.

Choosing the proper forum
This forum is for discussing what's out there, not what you use to look it out. Example:
- "can I observe the Encke Gap with my 6" reflector?" is an OBSERVATION question, and belongs in the "planetary observing" forum. It is not a question about the existence or not of the Encke Gap, or what it is made of, or how it was discovered, which would be legitimate questions here, by the way.

- "How do they know the rings of Saturn are made of chunks of ice?" is a history of astronomy and planetary exploration question, a planetary science question, so it's perfectly at home here.

What is acceptable and what is not
The above examples show what is off-topic and what is not, but it's just a house-holding tip; there's no harm done. Here I am talking of occasional posts which bring little to the scientific debate but have the power of offending people and give the offended people that Cloudy Nights condones the offense. It usually implies politics.

-"NASA should better keep Hubble alive than launch a new x-ray satellite"

is a legitimate question because there is a science interest question, of priorities within a science program, and the only people you can offend are X-ray astronomers, who can answer to the question in a polite and science-oriented manner.

- "the idiots in government should save Mount Krigelwenbergos observatory rather than spend millions supporting the (no-false-country-name-at-hand-sorry) junta"

is not a good post. You offend people who support or have voted for the government, the people from the given other country, and make a judgement on the government of that country. Besides, this type of post is rarely of great astronomy interest, be it for the scientist or the hobbyist, and people posting them are rarely in the capacity of judging any government's action. I guess you understand my point.

All the other values and rules governing this website still apply: avoid

, and remember that even written with #%ù*, profanity is still profanity.