1. Marspedia 2018 Mars Society Convention presentation
Recognize Frank and Nicole
2018 Mars Society Convention presentation
JAMES BURK – CHAiR, MARSPEDIA GOVERNING COUNCIL | IT Director, The Mars Society
FRANK CROSSMAN – mgc/Marspedia EDITORIAL SUBCOMMItTEE | Chief archivist, The Mars Society
BRUCE MACKENZIE – mgc/Marspedia editorial subcommittee | President, Mars Foundation
NICOLE WILLET – VICE CHAIR, MGC | EDUCATION DIRECTOR, The Mars Society

2. The Goal
Marspedia is…
An online encyclopedia with free public domain content and maintained by volunteers.
A way to promote the ideas around the human exploration & settlement of Mars.
A knowledge repository for the space advocacy organizations.
A great chapter & volunteer project.
I’m excited to talk about this project, Marspedia, which is

3. Recent History
Marspedia.org (the domain name) is owned by Mars Foundation / Bruce Mackenzie.
Marspedia (the wiki) was originally set up by The Moon Society in 2007 along with Lunarpedia.
The Mars Society joined the effort in 2017, after long discussions.
James Burk (TMS), Bruce Mackenzie (MF), and James Gholston (MoonSoc) wrote our Bylaws.
A Governing Council was formed.
The wiki code was moved to Mars Foundation’s VPS web server.
New logo created – early 2018.

4. The Marspedia Governing Council was formed in October 2017.
Current Members:
James Burk (Jburk), Chair
Nicole Willett (Nicolew), Vice Chair
Frank Crossman (Frank C)
Mike Delaney (Mdelaney)
Bruce Mackenzie (BMackenzie) *Ex-Officio (Executive Director of the Mars Foundation)
Carie Fay *Ex-Officio (Administrative Director of the Mars Society)
James Gholston (Strangelv) *Designated Representative to Marspedia by the Moon Society
Kerri Miller
Lucinda Offer
Michael Stoltz

5. Editorial Subcommittee
Responsible for the content of Marspedia and ensuring quality.
Weekly conference call using Zoom.us service.
Created a new Category Hierarchy with human exploration & settlement as a focus.
Presently building out a list of Needed Articles.
In we will be creating new articles.

6. Technical Subcommittee
“Meet” (ongoing discussion channel) on Slack.
Modernized the wiki including upgrading Mediawiki and cleaning up spam users & content.
Working on a Category selector for the Visual Editor extension of Mediawiki.
We will be bulk-creating all of the needed articles as “Stubs”.
In we will be building a new Mars Atlas (the “Areology” section) with an article page for every named feature on Mars, and a 3-D globe.

7. New Category Hierarchy/
I. Mars Planetary Science
physical description of the planet; all the science data that is collected
II. Mars Spacecraft/Robotic Missions
(non-human) - mission planning and execution history.
III. Mars Human Exploration
human exploration concepts and planning
IV. Mars Human Settlement
including plans & concepts, philosophical/ethical considerations, and mars analogue research
V. Mars Outreach
Advocacy for Mars Exploration/Settlement - people and organizations (Mars Society, Marspedia, etc), political action, and public outreach & education
VI. Mars Arts and Literature
Mars in literature, music, movies, plays, graphic arts, photography
All categories for Marspedia will roll up into the following 6 top-level categories:
At the Irvine Mars Society Convention last year, James, Josh Baldwin, and I discussed the idea of applying a consistent set of categories to all Mars Society media (TMS YouTube channel, TMS MarsPapers, etc.). Then Marspedia was brought into the fold. In 2003 when I started up MarsPapers, I had examined the first conference proceedings and the stated objectives of the Mars Society, and I rather arbitrarily established 20 keywords that have been used every since to allow folks to quickly locate related papers on a topic. Of course since that time, search engines like google have turned loose their indexing robots to allow searches for words and word combinations contained in the entire text sited on each URL. But we’re all aware that those items that appear at the top of our search will be prioritized. You may find a gem of a information source ten pages deep in the search results, but who really looks that far? Most of us use some information in the highest priority items to prepare a more detailed search that may bring the cream to the top.
The Editorial Subcommittee examined the current ad hoc approach of categorization of Marspedia articles and found it to be lacking a structure of how information about Mars is displayed and searched. The Subcommittee wanted a logical and navigable hierarchy of categories. This would also form the core of a new Browse experience.
The new Marspedia category tree is much more focused on the future and specifically expanded on aspects of the future human exploration and permanent settlement of the Red Planet. It also focuses on outreach (advocacy) and the arts and literature to encourage individuals and the public at large to support human exploration and settlement there. Finally Marspedia is focused on providing the best source of information about past, present, and future exploration and settlement of Mars. These are goals of The Mars Society and that is why The Mars Society sponsors and manages Marspedia. We don’t apologize for the emphasis and focus on the future. That is what energizes the volunteers of The Mars Society and Marspedia.
New Category Hierarchy

8. Areology Section
3-D Mars Globe, viewable on a modern web browser (WebGL) and also in VR.
Each named feature is displayed.
Click on a feature to get to a Marspedia article page about that feature.
Zoom all the way down to ground level and walk around with “WASD” keys!
Possible with MOLA data and imagery from different missions.

9. How you can help Sign up for an account – they are free!
Join our Subcommittees to help edit and improve the wiki.
Tell people about it including your children and educator friends.
Help us come up with new ideas for articles.
Submit content that you’ve written elsewhere.

10. Q&A