Dysfunctional Science Websites At NASA
Well I just sit here in my basement and point out these obvious flaws and easy fixes month after month and yet no one at @NASA even bothers to fix them. In the real world this upgrade would have been done last year.
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) September 4, 2020
Keith’s note: A year and a half ago Jim Bridenstine directed NASA to fix its online services. he told the agency “I am calling for a full modernization of NASA’s digital presence to best reflect the priorities and activities of the Agency in this new era of science, discovery, and exploration. To accomplish that we will: …” . Have they done what he asked them to do? No. In fact, some things have just gotten worse.
Here’s one example. Go to NASA Science Mission Directorate homepage and click on “news” and then “press releases”. You’d expect to see a current listing, right? Guess again. The last one posted is dated 30 July 2020. No mention of NASA’s Chandra Opens Treasure Trove of Cosmic Delights or Primary Mirror for NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Completed or The Moon Is Rusting, and Researchers Want to Know Why issued in the past 24 hours. If you go to More science news they are not mentioned either.
But if you go to NASA.gov these things are available. Curiously when you go to NASA.gov there is no way to find the SMD homepage. If you click on Solar System and Beyond you see SMD’s recent stories but no link to the SMD homepage. If you look at the SMD homepage you will notice that there is no link to NASA.gov – unless you scroll all the way down to a little link at the bottom of the page.
If you use the NASA.gov search engine and look for “astrobiology” the official NASA Astrobiology website never shows up in the search results (I stopped looking after 3 pages of results).
In summary: NASA SMD won’t easily send you to NASA.gov and NASA.gov won’t send you to SMD. None of these sites has a consistent and current link to the things that SMD releases – and the search engine for all of NASA can’t even find the main home page of the program (Astrobiology) that drives all the science on the fancy new $2 billion rover headed to Mars.
– NASA Has Had A Year To Reorganize Their Web Presence. Did They?, earlier post
– SMD Sends A $2 billion Astrobiology Mission to Mars and Then Forgets About Astrobiology, earlier post
– NASA Just Can’t Stop Doing Web Stuff Twice UPDATE: Three Times, earlier post
– NASA’s Confusing ICESAT-2 Websites, earlier post
– Progress Made In Making NASA’s Internet Presence Leaner, earlier post
– Dueling NASA Websites Update, earlier post
