Should we split Postwar Projects into sections - Fighters, Bombers, VSTOL?

Proposed by Thorvic. Sections are:

Fighters
Bombers
Transport & Civil
VSTOL & Helicopters

Ideas welcome.

I can see a great deal of merit in this proposal, but many projects defy easy categorization.

For instance, which section would JAST/JSF fall into? Fighter? Bomber (or Attack)? STOVL? All three?

What about the increasingly important unmanned category? Is a UCAV a "bomber?"

Last but not least, the "VSTOL & Helicopters" category would seem a bit anachronistic.

Shouldn't it be "STOVL & VTOL" instead?



There is a fine line between attempted simplification and additional complication.

There is a fine line between attempted simplification and additional complication.

Click to expand...

I agree

I think the current classification works ok

What did I start? My idea of having a V/STOL section was not based on sectarianism, but rather the fact that there seems to be a lot of V/STOL threads all over the place, some with less than obvious names. It just seemed a nice idea to put them together for maniacs like me to find them all with ease.

However, my mania is limited, essentially to V/STOL (or STOVL) fighters. Lumping helicopters in with V/STOL, or splitting V/STOL transports off from other transport projects, seems wrong to me. And don't get me started on STOL!!!!

So maybe leave well alone, or at most just add obvious descriptive 'keywords' to thread titles when creating them if the subject is not clear, e.g. "What Happened to Rals? (Keywords: V/STOL, Fighters, Engines)" The search facility will then bring them all up (searching on 'V/STOL' does not currently bring up the recent RALS thread near the top of what is found, for e.g.).

Perhaps we could come up with a list of possible keywords, and add a maximum of 3 or so to each thread title if needed? Of course, 'standardisation' is needed when we all use stovl, vstol, v/stol, vtol etc. to mean the same thing.

Hmm, a can of worms.....!

Adding a prefix word to the thread title might help, I'd presume the forum search engine could help there when you put in "V/STOL" and search titles only, it should pull up a list of threads about V/STOL designs.

On our forum we categorize aviation news in a similar way with a keyword before each news headline so you might see "FLEET: QANTAS orders more 787s" or "LABOR: United pilots in negotiations for new contract".

The tough part might be agreeing on a standard set of keywords because you can get caught in a trap of which keyword do you use if a design spans different categories.

I agree with the V/STOL section becasue there are so many designs on the board and doubtless countless others to be added.

I think the current oldie and newer aircraft project sections work just fine and things may get too complicated with numerous sections for everything.

At the most a civil and military divide might be worth it for ease of reference.

My suggestion is divide in two sections, military and civil projects.

Saludos

I agree with Tinwing and SC. If anything, I think if we were going to break it down, we can either break it down by decades, based on starting date of the projects, or by country, possibly as a tag like SC suggested.

Such as

US-Military
US-Civil
UK-Military
Ru-Civil

Alliance-Military (Alliance would cover multi-country projects, such as MRCA/Tornado, JSF, etc)

We should think about the problems, we will face with more sections. Modern
projects divided into civil and military, ok, but where you will be looking, for
example, for the civil derivatives of, say, the B-58 or the Republic Rainbow ?
Dividing into decades : Where to post something about one of the long lasting
designs, we can still see today ? Who would look into the '70s section, to find
the latest F-15 proposals ?
Least problematic seems to be dividing by country of origin, although for the
RN Crusader proposal, you'll have to look into the US section ...
More sections not necessarily mean more clearness.
Of course, an advantage of more sections would be, that older posts wouldn't be
pushed to "page 2" in a matter of one or two days, which often means "forgotten" !

Hmm...dividing projects by country leads to a problem with cooperative projects (Concorde, Jaguar, EF-2000) etc. In my database for example I have such a structure: Country (I divided them very freely - USA, USSR/Russia, European Aircrafts with subfolders, Chinese, etc) -> Manufacturer -> Project. But such a programs as JSF are separate folder in US Aircrafts with shortcuts leading from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, McDonnell Douglas, etc...We must think twice.

I think harrier's suggestion of keywords may have some merrit. However it would be cumbersome to require the topic starter to include appropriate keywords in the topic title. IMHO that would lead to some really extra long titles and it doesn't really help if the info one is looking for hides in some kind of interesting tangent that the thread went off on after several pages of messages. Personally, I think allowing users (perhaps even members other than the author himself) to tag individual posts with keywords which are searchable with the search engine as seen in many blogs would be ideal. It would keep the keywords out of the topic title and the message body, to be displayed/searched only if the user so desires. If something like that is possible limiting the range of keywords to a sensible selection provided by the moderation team could be a good idea.

Is this kind of tag-system feasible with the forum software?

My suggestion is divide in sections like military, civil and VTOL section.

the only Problem is
some projects are crossover like Starfigther F-104
who is a Military plane but also has a Civil version and VTOL studies
cut in three ?
put all to gether in Military ??

In my opinion we have so powerful search engine that there is no need for any dividing. As was said before, any new categories will make additional problems with categorization.

how about

Military ... Civil
Fighters
Bombers
Transport
V/stol
Rotary/ hybrid
airliners
VLJ/ PJ
Cargo Conversion
Rotary/hybrid
bad editing but you get the idea

I would break it up by geography as first step: At least Soviet/CIS vs. NATO and possibly split the "West" into some combination of American, English, French, Central European etc.

I don't mind either way as long as its easy to use.

But how would we deal with a design that has proposed role variants/types?
And where would we put a fighter-bomber?

Cheers
Peter

It could be really useful, at this point we have some "poutpourri" effect.

Otherwise we could divide the posts by nations (considering that there are not so much ones...).

Reading this Thread reminds me of several things; mainly the arguments between "Lumpers" and "Splitters" from when i spent some time on a bird sanctuary counting birds (and drawing them).

"Lumpers" are driven by the desire to simplify the Linnean taxonomy system, whereas "Splitters" are driven by the desire to generate more clarity by more finely differentiating species and sub-species. The same argument can be applied to aircraft [and other Projects]...just Exactly how are we proposing to develop a simple and coherent system with which to both Classify and Search For Projects? :-\ This applies as equally to "Early" as to "Postwar" Projects.

As i do not know exactly how the software for this Forum works, i don't know how to contribute constructive comments further than to ask: Are you trying to reinvent the wheel? ???

And something like the F-35; would it be in the STOVL category, stealth, fighters?