The long answer – on re-structuring.
I have been thinking a lot recently about how to increase popularity / participation at the
forum. I know we discussed changes a while back. But this
thread brought up the merging of two.
My first thoughts were that Conservation definitely goes with Uncleaned – after all they are both really about cleaning a coin, whether from dirt, corrosion, BD, or wax. They are very similar and could go together.
But personally I don’t feel Photography and Storage go with them. Totally different subjects, plus if combined with uncleaned they risk alienating people who might think it is only about photographing or storing uncleaned coins. They are wider topics and photography especially can be quite technical.
So that led me to thinking about what function each section serves. And that lead me to a potential change to the structure. The change I outline below would emphasize “collecting” as a broad
area, with specific coin
types under another section.
The rough outline would be:
Announcements &
Help –
fine as is.
Collecting – A new section to try to be more newbie/user friendly and up the participation rate. It would include ACF,
History & Archaeology Discussion, ID,
Fakes, Photography & Storage,
Members Galleries, COTD, Uncleaned. So this is the section about collecting in and of itself.
Buying &
Selling –
fine as is.
Coins – Just the coins, so it would be like Numismatic &
History Discussions minus ACF,
History & Archaeology, COTD, Books and References, Photography Conservation & Storage, and Uncleaned.
Antiquities –
fine as is.
Resources –
Numiswiki,
Maps, Books, Reading for the Advanced.
Other Languages –
fine as is.
As you can see the only real change is to put all the collecting-related in one
part way up top and move the resources down to the bottom.
SC
PS. If the Conservation is removed from the Photography and Storage – either as
part of a big change or just a small change – I volunteer to go through that section and move the Conservation messages to the Uncleaned section.