Mr. Salvatore Iovene,
I want to send a note of appreciation for all of your efforts with AstroBin. This has been a wonderful, welcoming community. With the exception of a few toxic forum posts, my every experience with AstroBin has been positive.
I want to spend a minute and talk about what I like about AstroBin. And I would like to invite other users to reply with what they like, too.
First, what I've seen of moderation here has been lenient, fair, and professional. Moreover, moderation is performed by humans who we can actually interact with. I don't know how familiar you are with Facebook's moderation, but let me tell you the experience here is a thousand times better.
Second, I'm just really impressed with AstroBin. I am a software engineer, and when I look upon AstroBin, I see quality and care. The site is fast and responsive, and it has a clean, intuitive UI.
Third, before I came to AstroBin, I tried using Instagram for my image hosting. Uploading images there worked well enough, but there was no sense of community. No one noticed my images. The only feedback was "that's pretty" from people who've looked at the night sky maybe once. After I came to AstroBin, that all changed. I can share an image and have people follow me and like my images and, honestly, it just feels kinda good. I see all these other absolutely delightful images of the same objects I've captured, and I can set a new bar of excellence for myself. I want to produce images that look great to other astrophotographers, and AstroBin can help me get there. Instagram can't do that, and doesn't even try.
Fourth, when I needed some assistance with AstroBin's plate-solving, I was positively shocked when I received a reply within hours -- and you're in a different country! I think that speaks to the care you have for this community.
Thank you, Mr Iovene for all of your hard work. It is most appreciated.
Amy
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Astrobin is an invaluable resource!
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I agree wholeheartedly ! Astrobin has become a wonderful community of very talented scientists, photographers and artists. Ive been here since your first year live. Ive seen things here I would never see anywhere else. Ive met and become friends with people passionate about their hobby and science. It's an amazing place!
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I haven't been here very long, but so far this site is great. A+ for the moderation team.
I've never seen any forum post that I felt got closed unjustly or stayed open but should've been closed.
My only complaint is that I can't go and Like Salvatore's answer to the last one of those posts.
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AmyWarble:
I want to send a note of appreciation for all of your efforts with AstroBin. This has been a wonderful, welcoming community. With the exception of a few toxic forum posts, my every experience with AstroBin has been positive. I agree 100 percent, as I'm sure do the vast majority of members; this needs to be emphasized even more so now especially after the handful of recent posts from some bitter members (well just one really) which Salvatore handled extremely professionally..
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I completely agree! Sal did an amazing job of developing this site and he does an incredible job of managing it. As a refugee from Cloudy Nights, I can say with some authority that Astrobin is a world class site. That's due to Sal's policy on moderation, a bit of self policing, and a collaborative community focused more on learning things and exchanging ideas. Keep up the good work Sal! You and your efforts here are very much appreciated!!
John
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I urge everyone who appreciates, as I do, Salvatore's efforts to provide this wonderful community to contribute to his efforts. While profitable, AB is not yet profitable enought for Salvatore to bring on help, and he works an ungodly number of hours each week to keep it running (his words, not mine). Salvatore no longer has a link for donations up on the site, but he shared this link with me and I urge those in a position to help to consider doing so. https://welcome.astrobin.com/voluntary-donationsI receive far more benefit and enjoyment from AB than my annual membership fees warrant. I consider the added donation to be well spent if it helps keep the lights on. CS, Dan
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Daniel Cimbora:
I urge everyone who appreciates, as I do, Salvatore's efforts to provide this wonderful community to contribute to his efforts.
While profitable, AB is not yet profitable enought for Salvatore to bring on help, and he works an ungodly number of hours each week to keep it running (his words, not mine).
Salvatore no longer has a link for donations up on the site, but he shared this link with me and I urge those in a position to help to consider doing so.
https://welcome.astrobin.com/voluntary-donations
I receive far more benefit and enjoyment from AB than my annual membership fees warrant. I consider the added donation to be well spent if it helps keep the lights on.
CS,
Dan Well, I for one, would gladly pay twice as much (or more) in order for this site to fine tune and advance - personally I believe higher fees rather than voluntary donations are the best way forward.. Where else will anyone find this kind of platform ?
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I wholeheartedly agree. Astrobin is, apart from my newspaper website, the only website I see/use every single day. It is the best ressource to get help and input for our hobby. @Salvatore Iovene - very well handled 👍
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If astrobin wouldn't exist, someone would need to invent it - great, actually phantastic job @Salvatore Iovene on an indispensable resource! Matthias
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Like the original author, @AmyWarble , I too was looking for a platform to publish and store my astrophotography. After finding AstroBin, I quickly subscribed. First as a beginner subscription, then as a more advanced subscription, when I noticed the quality and smoothness of the site. Also how it met my needs. Thanks @Salvatore Iovene . I also want to thank the Astrobin community. This is a great place to learn and develop in this hobby, to become a better astrophotographer. Personally, I am not very keen on competitions like IOTD and such, I am too old for that 😊. But I get to know what others have achieved and how they have done it. For me, the best thing about AstroBin is that it gives a lot of inspiration, new ideas and courage to try new goals and even difficult targets. By studying the AstroBin’s «database» I find a lot of tips and advice to achieve better results. Often people give negative criticism, sometimes even disguised as constructive criticism. However, this thread gives positive criticism, well deserved, mind you, which is very nice. I just wanted to contribute to it.
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Thank you very much for the kind words! I know I am doing something right because messages like yours are very common when people write to ask me something. Detractors like Klaus will often use FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) and make it sound like lots of people are dissatisfied ("If you don't change your attitude [..], more and more people will gradually leave you"). I'll share a couple of data points that show that the community is very satisfied about AstroBin. Every few years I run a small "satisfaction survey". This is the result from the last one (couple of years ago, and meanwhile there have been A LOT of improvements on the platform):  Interpreting the Score: - A score of 0 or above is generally considered good.
- A score of 20 or above is favorable.
- A score of 50 or above is considered excellent.
- Scores of 70 or higher are deemed world-class.
But the most important metric is that people continue to sign up and rarely cancel!  The picture above shows that only 0.7% of revenue is lost each month due to people canceling (and that's in the 98th percentile of businesses of a similar kind (online services) and size. So yeah, messages like yours, and the hard data above, show that the AstroBin users are extremely satisfied with the platform! On my side, as many of you regulars know, I'm committed to continuously improve the quality of services, and @Daniel Cimbora who posted above knows that I work hard to do that :-) Anyone wants to have a chat, feel free to head over the /r/astrophotography Discord, where people with whom I chat regularly and have gotten to know me a little will confirm this even more  |
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I completely agree!, Astrobin is for me like Alexandria was , a cradle of knowledge and learning.
As I always say, don't stop looking at the stars
CS
Brian
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You can't make everyone happy. Fortunately the consensus is that this platform is amazing and I'm firmly in that camp. Appreciate all the effort that goes into creating and maintaining the site to give us all an outlet and community for our passion. Thank you!
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I am not even really sure what he wanted other than he didn’t like things and wanted to be given the ability to dislike even more things. Negativity seemed to be the end goal, and a purpose in itself.
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+1 to this. I'm not an active forum participant, but happily renew my astrobin subscription. Reasons include the quality of the engines (plate-solving, equipment searches etc) as well as ofc the quality (but also the breadth) of the images. The technical quality of the AP discussions is also excellent (I learned about GHS on astrobin from the developers themselves).
The only forum I've found that is better than astrobin for this combination of image quality and technical expertise is a v specialist one - solarchatforum. Otherwise, astrobin is my goto for imaging (not for visual though). I'm not sure how the marketplace has worked out - I don't really use it and other forums have more active marketplace communities.
Salvatore has always been responsive, and I actually like the laissez-faire attitude to his moderation. He does not strike me as a censor, and only seems to step in when discussions have become downright hostile & vitriolic. And that's fine b/c there's enough of that out there in the real world, that its not needed here.
I'm also a huge fan of the ability to have a subscription tier that guarantees no advertising - that is a huge positive, pls don't ever change that.
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I can only wholeheartedly agree with all that is said above. AB is a fantastic community where people both help each other and learn from each other. An invaluable source of inspiration and a very user-friendly platform to share images. The continuous improvements in UI and functionality are much appreciated and are a testament of an owner who is intrinsically motivated by developing a top of line platform. And feel free to charge higher subscription fees if that can help in future-proofing the site. And thank you @AmyWarble for starting this thread. Definitely worthwhile speaking out openly our appreciation for AB from time to time.
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All I can say is well done Salvatore!
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Yep! Astrobin is a great website and a wonderful resource for astrophotographers.
Thank you Salvatore!
Jerry
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I add myself to the thanks to Salvatore. Always kind, also with the rudest posts and discussions, keeping his head when all about him are losing theirs…
AB is definitely a reference for those who practice astrophotography for scientific or hobby reasons, at any level, and it is a pleasure to wander in the images posted.
Well done and thanks for the time and effort yo put in it.
CS
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I agree with everyone else, Astrobin is a tremendous resource and a great community. I've improved as an astrophotographer thanks to all the accumulated knowledge here, and it's also an oasis of calm in a world gone mad - its great to take a break during the day and just take a few minutes to enjoy the latest images. Thank you Salvatore!
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Médéric Hébert:
I haven't been here very long, but so far this site is great. A+ for the moderation team. As far as I am aware, there is no moderation team, just one single person that does the moderating on top of everything else (Sal).
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There's not much moderation needed, actually, as 99.99% of the people here are amazing. Over the years I've had to issue a handful of warnings, which have always been heeded. And as mentioned, this was the first time I had to suspend someone's account due to refusing to abide to the terms and guidelines.
Sometimes I jump in if I notice an argument is getting heated, and a few times I've thought some remarks were rather gratuitous, but all in all I couldn't be luckier in terms of how well everybody behaves :-)
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To be honest, I chuckled sensibly at that guy's "Open Letter".
My only regret is that we can't click LIKE on locked threads.
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Great job Sal! AB has made me a much better astrophotographer. I've received a lot of help from the forums and even personal help from some generous individuals. Please keep it up  Mike
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