Post by heyrolled on Sept 3, 2011 19:41:11 GMT -6
Howdy, all.
This is my first post here, so let me quickly introduce myself: I'm a web developer in Austin, Texas. It's hot and dry here but that's not what I wanted to talk about. I've had a fascination with UFO's and the paranormal since I was about 11.
Over the past several years, I've been looking online for useful information about recent sightings. The data is pretty scattered. Some at MUFON, some at NUFORC. It's too hard to get to the interesting stuff. There's got to be a better way... something more modern and open to collaboration and sharing.
MUFON has a lot of interesting reports, but, 1) they're hard to get to, and 2) They don't tell you anything about the results of the findings unless you are a field investigator. Their way of sharing information with the public is to make you subscribe to the newsletter and feed you an article of their choosing. This has always been frustrating to me. All of it, with the exception of personal information, should be public. At least with the government we have FOIA.
So, being a web developer, I naively took it upon myself to come up with a new website in my spare time - a place where the public could report their sightings, upload their pictures and video, and provide comments and updates to the sightings. I started out thinking that the other organizations may want to work with me, as far as sharing data. That's when I started poking around and discovered what a state of turmoil the UFO "community" is in. That's when I found this forum and have really found it useful.
I'm not part of the established "community". I don't have a dog in the fight. I'm also not part of any government agency or corporation with unknown intentions. I'm just a guy who wants a better way to collect and look at UFO sightings. We need something new... it's time to start fresh. Nobody owns the right to collect sightings reports or study the data.
I wasn't really expecting to go "live" with the site, yet, but I wound up flipping the switch this morning. It's still a work in process but the framework is there. I'm asking for help from anyone who would like to participate.
The first thing the website needs is for people to post some sightings. I have a few placeholders out there, but they are temporarily "borrowed" and need to be removed as soon as possible. It's also important to start getting some sightings posted because the real power of the site doesn't become apparent until there are some real postings to look at.
There is also an investigator framework built-in, for volunteer investigators to validate the reports. If you are an experienced investigator and can provide credentials and/or references and would like to volunteer, I'd love to hear from you. This will not be a top-down organization. It will be primarily community-organized through mechanisms built-in to the website. There also isn't any reason I know of that you can't volunteer here if you already work with some other group. I think it's time for everyone to start working together on this issue.
www.sightingsreport.com
I won't go into all the details right now, but I'd welcome you to try out the site and provide any feedback or questions you have. I know it looks a little bare right now, but as soon as people start posting their sightings, the gaps start to fill in and it becomes very interesting.
Thanks for your comments.
This is my first post here, so let me quickly introduce myself: I'm a web developer in Austin, Texas. It's hot and dry here but that's not what I wanted to talk about. I've had a fascination with UFO's and the paranormal since I was about 11.
Over the past several years, I've been looking online for useful information about recent sightings. The data is pretty scattered. Some at MUFON, some at NUFORC. It's too hard to get to the interesting stuff. There's got to be a better way... something more modern and open to collaboration and sharing.
MUFON has a lot of interesting reports, but, 1) they're hard to get to, and 2) They don't tell you anything about the results of the findings unless you are a field investigator. Their way of sharing information with the public is to make you subscribe to the newsletter and feed you an article of their choosing. This has always been frustrating to me. All of it, with the exception of personal information, should be public. At least with the government we have FOIA.
So, being a web developer, I naively took it upon myself to come up with a new website in my spare time - a place where the public could report their sightings, upload their pictures and video, and provide comments and updates to the sightings. I started out thinking that the other organizations may want to work with me, as far as sharing data. That's when I started poking around and discovered what a state of turmoil the UFO "community" is in. That's when I found this forum and have really found it useful.
I'm not part of the established "community". I don't have a dog in the fight. I'm also not part of any government agency or corporation with unknown intentions. I'm just a guy who wants a better way to collect and look at UFO sightings. We need something new... it's time to start fresh. Nobody owns the right to collect sightings reports or study the data.
I wasn't really expecting to go "live" with the site, yet, but I wound up flipping the switch this morning. It's still a work in process but the framework is there. I'm asking for help from anyone who would like to participate.
The first thing the website needs is for people to post some sightings. I have a few placeholders out there, but they are temporarily "borrowed" and need to be removed as soon as possible. It's also important to start getting some sightings posted because the real power of the site doesn't become apparent until there are some real postings to look at.
There is also an investigator framework built-in, for volunteer investigators to validate the reports. If you are an experienced investigator and can provide credentials and/or references and would like to volunteer, I'd love to hear from you. This will not be a top-down organization. It will be primarily community-organized through mechanisms built-in to the website. There also isn't any reason I know of that you can't volunteer here if you already work with some other group. I think it's time for everyone to start working together on this issue.
www.sightingsreport.com
I won't go into all the details right now, but I'd welcome you to try out the site and provide any feedback or questions you have. I know it looks a little bare right now, but as soon as people start posting their sightings, the gaps start to fill in and it becomes very interesting.
Thanks for your comments.