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Comment by spullara | Hacker News Reader

Who is flagging this extremely valid criticism of this photo release circus? I totally agree with this sentiment and it is something that science teams will have to reflect on for future communications. This was absolutely terrible.

interestica 5 minutes ago [flagged] [dead] | prev [–]

What a weirdly botched release. 90 min delay with nothing more than a title screen and a terrible repeating music track. (When it was at least an opportunity to display material related to the project for those stopping in due to media coverage). A labyrinth of a website with interlinking and crosslinking throughout. Web links that come up blank. And an unprepared accompanying statement for the image given off the cuff by the director. Weird press conference -- 'who is this for?' All around, just strange and poorly executed from a communications/media standpoint. Completely inexcusable for an organization like this.

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From the HN guidelines:

> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—things like article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.

This was not the first awkward science press event and it won’t be the last. It’s annoying but that is not noteworthy; life is full of annoyances. A new deep image from a new space telescope is what is really noteworthy.

Also from a practical perspective, complaining here won’t reach the people you actually want to influence. NASA staff are publicly available; if you want to complain, look up their email addresses and write to them directly. You might even get a reply!

Flagging because overly-harsh armchair criticism towards a piece of the world's most advanced precision engineering operating in deep space that isn't really even fully operational yet. President of the world's most powerful country at least coming out to talk about it. Only really one image to release because said device is brand spanking new. What exactly do you want? Kanye West and a load of confetti?

The telescope is great. The presentation was a joke. I waited an hour, went to the kitchen for a couple minutes, came back to find it had just ended and couldn't be replayed. Found a direct link to the science page myself.

Ever wonder why lots of people don't give a hoot about science funding? This is why, you promise them something important and exceptional and then deliver a low quality product. Again, I refer to the streaming event, not the telescope/science team.

And yet, oh look, the images online for instant access, forever, without having to leave the kitchen.

I knew to look for that because I'm a nerd, as are most people here. I'm talking about the impression this makes on those who are not predisposed to be interested. Those people vote too, and when NASA delivers the sort of experience stereotypically associated with the DMV it influences their outlook.

In fairness, some of the criticism isn't armchair: some of us work in science, may know what good science communication can look like, and can then be fairly critical of what is a wonderful opportunity for effective communication with a large audience being mishandled. These opportunities do not come every day, so it's important to make the most of them.

I imagine the NASA conference tomorrow may give more clarity, e.g. perhaps today's announcement was a last-minute press op that wasn't sufficiently planned? Maybe the full NASA briefing will be better.

With that said, I think it's fair to keep this discussion separate so as not to overshadow the very real and tremendous accomplishment we're witnessing today. Obviously the manner of the announcement is insignificant compared to the result itself, and I hope everyone involved is very rightly proud.

> Obviously the manner of the announcement is insignificant compared to the result itself

Not really, I'd argue it's just as important.

Without solid PR for current projects, future projects get less funding.

> Who is flagging this extremely valid criticism of this photo release circus?

People who are more interested in the photo and the technology that produced it than public communications, would be my guess.

I just found how bad it was to be utterly strange and unexpected:

No updates via their channels on the delay. Their linked live stream had no mention of delay and just displayed general unrelated content (about the ISS). In situ comments were also turned off so there was no way to corroborate with others that there was a delay or if one was even in the right space for the release. Even when eventually ready to go live, they made no update -- those that got to see from the beginning were those that happened to be keeping the feed open for the 90mins.

In the press conference, it was a screen of a screen displayed within a screen. When the 3 highlighted members were featured, their names were thus too small to be seen on the feed.

Sounds a lot more fun to just talk about the picture and the science.

Criticism can be both valid and entirely irrelevant at the same time. People are just protecting the S/N ratio.

The same people who flagged me for predicting the public speaking would be as terrible as it turned out to be and that they needed to find better people to handle this. This was just embarrassing, especially considering what's been done in the past.

A few days ago I saw a tweet (because Twitter shows me "Popular" crap all the time) from some "science influencer" that said something like "The new pictures from the Webb telescope are bringing scientists to tears!".

I get that's how they earn their bread but from my point of view it comes off as awkward and dishonest, it does the complete opposite of getting me excited about the release.

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