The Mars Society strikes me as an organization that is taking somewhat of a more practical approach to Mars exploration: they have discussions, news, a library, expeditions, etc... What I like about them is that they appear to be making a concerted and effort at organizing Mars exploration to see what we can find out and how we could eventually establish human settlements on Mars. What I also like is that they seem to be somewhat practical. They address various issue areas pertaining to Mars exploration (political, social, budgetary, etc), but it's also because a lot of the website is a compilation of various articles and news about Mars (aside from the political action section).
What I don't like about the Mars Society website is that their library, while it contains many credible articles, has a disclaimer that the Mars Society is not responsible for inaccuracies because the library isn't peer-reviewed. It seems to me that if the Mars Society wanted to be taken more seriously, they could start by having a research-worthy library. Another thing that bugs me is that their website is pretty sparse. It's mostly just a compilation of news and articles, with not very much information for the average internaute who wants to know more about the Mars Society but doesn't know what they're all about. After reading the mission statement, there's just nowhere to go. It would help if they had a section describing the specific goals they're trying to achieve.
That said, the Mars Society is like the Library of Congress compared to Richard Hoagland's website, Enterprise Mission. I think Hoagland is just a little to eager to interpret blurry photographs as signs of alien civilizations, or else he's been watching way too much X-Files. The references to 2012 alone are enough to make me roll my eyes; the fact that they're featured on the same website as all of this Martian conspiracy junk makes the whole thing downright laughable. I'm not sure how this whole thing plays into culture, but whereas the Mars Society contributes to a culture of curiosity and research, it seems to me that the Enterprise Mission contributes only to a culture of hasty judgments and alarmist conspiracy, something of which we have no shortage of in the world today. Maybe Hoagland really DID know too much, and NASA turned him into a raving lunatic so nobody would find out the "truth."
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