Moved some sections around - comments welcome - poll

[overscan (PaulMM)]

I've moved around the sections and groupd them in a way that feels more logical to me. Let me know what you think.

 

[dan_inbox]

Good job.
Nice and effective way to address much of what was discussed in the thread about Alternative.

 

[Hood]

Looks good to me, I was going to suggest something similar as a possible solution.

 

[steelpillow]

Dare I suggest a few more tweaks

"Theoretical and Speculative Projects" is more about us reporting stuff than discussing our own ideas. But everything else in the Discussion and Speculation forum is about our own ideas and opinions. So I'd suggest moving it to either the General or the Research Topics forum.

The section on "Alternative History and Future Speculation" could do with a sticky "Rules of this section" message.

Move Fake aircraft and aircraft projects (Blacklist !) from the Alternative History to the "Theoretical and Speculative Projects" section, as it is more about us reporting stuff than fantasising.

I think that the titles, "Theoretical and Speculative Projects" and "Alternative History and Future Speculation" are a bit ambiguous over "speculating". Whose speculations? Are we reporting or fantasising here? How about renaming them to make this a bit clearer without needing to read the local rules for each, as say "Conceptual and Speculative Projects" and "Members' imagination" respectively?

 

[Grey Havoc]

I would have to disagree. IMHO, I think that the "Theoretical and Speculative Projects" and "Alternative History and Future Speculation" titles are fine as they are. The former generally covers real historical projects that were never intended to be practical, or didn't get anywhere near that stage (though sometimes that can be a grey area, with updated information allowing for threads to be later moved to an appropriate research topic for example), while the later section covers what could have occurred if historical events and associated technologies had been allowed to proceed, or been knocked on to a different path, as well as covering what technologies and events might be occurring in our own actual future based on ongoing discoveries and current trends (social, political, research, etc.). The 'Theoretical' section is also used for news on interesting present day research blue sky research projects and the like that don't, at least yet at this point of their development, firmly fit into any of the research topics. And of course, it is available for members own blue sky thinking.

 

[Justo Miranda]

The question is: do you prefer to have a large backyard where children can play to their liking or have them inside the house while you try to concentrate on your work?

 

[Jemiba]

...
I think that the titles, "Theoretical and Speculative Projects" and "Alternative History and Future Speculation" are a bit ambiguous over "speculating". Whose speculations? Are we reporting or fantasising here? How about renaming them to make this a bit clearer without needing to read the local rules for each, as say "Conceptual and Speculative Projects" and "Members' imagination" respectively?

Principally it's clearly said in the "Rules of this section":
"The purpose of this section is to post designs which are not serious designs by companies, but which are nevertheless interesting to forum users. Examples of this would be University graduate projects from an Aero Eng course, an artists impression published in Flight, more generally a design which has had real thought put into it...".
So, reading and adhering to those rules would be enough and probably don't overburden anybody here, I think.

 

[Archibald]

I don't care about it being moved a) if that avoids its deletion and b) if that silence some elitists and grumpy people I'd happily put on my ignore list (not you Steelpillow - the other one).

 

[steelpillow]

Principally it's clearly said in the "Rules of this section":

Indeed. My points are twofold:
1. The other section has no such sticky Rules post.
2. It's nice to know from the titles, without having to fiddle about repeatedly reading the rules until one is used to the difference.

 

[UpForce]

Slightly disorienting perhaps since I'm (among other things) a creature of habit but this is only partly due to how the site is structured.

Creative and sometimes idiosyncratic takes as to what topics, posts and opinions belong where have always directed/reduced my browsing heuristic here to opening each section in its own tab and methodically inspecting them for potentially interesting content (essentially by headlines and the people posting on a topic, or "judging books by their covers based on some experience"). By now, I've sort of internalized an index which keeps evolving somewhat irrespective of prevailing organizing structure.

I only hope my somewhat sporadic posting doesn't add too much to anyone else's confusion or reduce other's incentives to frequent this site - given the expertise of some here I'm usually highly self-conscious about my abilities to be of benefit. These notions are not meant as a criticism of the management of the site, mind you, just providing a data point in general for what the user experience here (and perhaps on discussion boards in general) is.

In any case I prefer this format to a "socially" driven one, by far.

 

[dan_inbox]

Paul,
Maybe you could swap the General snd the Books&Products sections.
That way General would be just below the UnbuiltProjects section, of which it is a sort of extension for current matters.

 

[DWG]

It's mostly irrelevant to the way I've got into using the sections. Mostly I just check which threads are active via "New Posts", whereas if I want to hunt down something specific I'll search for it, given you often get results from several sections. It's fairly rare that I pop down into the actual sections to see what has cropped up that I might not have noticed.

 

[dannydale]

Seems more logical to me this way.

 

[dan_inbox]

Not sure if this section is the right place to ask:

With the discussions about the coming US military budget, a recurring theme is the scenarios this budget is based on, which has already led to stuff like "Russia invades Ukraine and China invades Taiwan Simultaneously".

I'm of a double mind about it: on one hand discussing what a budget is supposed to prepare for is the most legitimate question, on the other hand such topic is obviously going to be very close to the political/geopolitical slope.

US/RU/CN is maybe the most blatant, but not the only one: for ex, Europe's budget priorities depend on expected actions by Putin in Ukraine/Baltics/etc, and on AlQaida + China's in Africa, etc. Discussing whether project X makes sense requires understanding why it is meant to be used.

Should there be a section in Discussion and Speculation about the geopolitical position of various countries, of course restricted to how each country's vision of the scenarios it face drives it military+R&D budget priorities? Something like "Scenarios countries prepare for". Not to be based on individual opinions and jugdments, but on public information about policies.

Of course it will require discipline from the posters to refrain from from jugdmental statements, and it may require more moderation. But discussing choices and projects withouttheir background removes a lot of significance.

What do you think?

 

[toura]

Bonjour Jens

What is this new site ?

I don't understand anything !!
could you tell me, how to do now, to find something ???

Thanks for your answer
PAUL

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

What are you talking about? All that changed was some sections moved around? A month ago?

Nothing's changed on how you find something.

And why ask Jens (Jemiba) when he's not in this conversation?

I broke the site briefly for a few mins while editing the fonts used earlier but fixed it pretty much straight afterwards, so if everything looks broken just refresh the page.