Reorganisation of material in the "Paper Items" forum

[UQWozza]

Hi Folks,

As you may be aware I have taken over moderating this forum and thought that I would do some reorganizing of the posted threads. This has been done in other forums e.g. "Badges".

What I am proposing is the creation of a series of sub-forums which would be specific for certain types of documents. The creation of forums must be done at the administrator level so I am not sure how much work it will involve. Thus, we may not want to be too radical.

A couple of ideas spring to mind:

1. Sub-forums for broad areas - military, non-military, display and preservation.
2. Sub-forums for types of documents - VBs, KKs, Grammotas, etc.

Suggestion 1 would involve a minimal number of sub-forums whereas suggestion 2 could mean many more.

Please let me know what you think.

If you would like to suggest other ways of grouping the threads please do so as I am open to ideas. After a period of discussion I will set up a poll so that we can decide on a final format.

Simon

[Art]

Simon,

Great idea..the work won't be in the creation of the sub-forums..that will be easy. The real task will be when you and I (and any other volunteer moderators ) have to sort through all these posts one by one and move them into their proper new home

No problem though..that's why we have coffee.

Forgot to mention. I think the software is limited to how deep you can nest the child forums off of a main forum. So for example this:

Main Documents Forum
--->Preservation
--->Display
--->Types of Documents
------>VBs
------>KKs

Might not be able to be done. I'll test this later and let you know.

I think preservation and display could be one section. Perhaps "Preservation and Display"?

[matteti]

I think sub-forums per broad areas is a good idea. Then, we can try to keep similar items at the thread level.

[Lapa]

Guys,

The overall split seems good, I'd simply suggest adding a couple more sub-sections to "Types of Documents": "Order Booklets" and "Medal Booklets"

Marc

[deValcourt]

I certainly don't want to make life difficult for the moderators since they have enough to do just keeping some of us in line. At the same time, I agree with Marc about the most obvious part of paper items - the awarding documents themselves. And if we are going to break them down into "Orders" and "Medals" we might as well add a third (if possible): "Badges" since many of the older ones were numbered and did have award booklets issued with them (and as for my KGB/MVD section, even many unnumbered badges had documents).

If you need anything other than moral support, I do all that I can.

Phillip

[EricFG]

Other thought(s):

Why don't we go through old threads and see what the majority of them are about and start grouping from there? One group that would jump out at me would be "translation help, please?" and another might be "what is this?".

We could do it like the "Soviet Bloc Awards" area with about 30 different main threads.

My thread: http://www.soviet-awards.com/forum/s...rotectors.html thread could go in the new conservation & display subforum.

When we decide what we're going to do I'd be willing to read through a page of threads at a time and suggest where they'd best fit in. A page of threads might take an hour, or less. That's doable I think. If we had a few volunteers that might make things a lot quicker.

[UQWozza]

So is this the sort of structure we are thinking of?

We can agree on the headings once the format is decided.

Do we want photos as a document type or a separate item?

Art - how many levels of sub-forum can we go?

Simon

[deValcourt]

Simon, I like it so far. My only worry is that if you have that "other" (sorry, I already forgot what you called that last subgroup) category, it could well turn out to be one of the largest because I can't even fathom the number of gramotas that were awarded for all sorts of things. Just the threads I started with KGB and Border Guard gramotas and other certificates of accomplishments are only a few of the many I have just in the area of security services.

Then, there comes the one I forgot that I should kick myself for - the actual university and academy, institute, etc. diplomas which to me are fascinating.

You may end up with a subsection in many categories as mentioned above of "Military, Police and Security services," "Civil Service," "Social and Professional Organizations" and "Other" (or something like this). I suppose that "People's Education" badge documents would fit under "civil service?"

Okay...my second worry in looking at my own posting here, is that perhaps simpler is better. I'll back whatever you guys decide. If thread searching and categorizing is needed as Eric pointed out, I'll lend a hand.

Phillip

[UQWozza]

The figure in my last post is only to get an idea of a possible format. Headings can be added or subtracted once an overall structure is decided. I originally also thought of military vs non military but if we are not careful we could end up with hundreds of sub-forums.

Simon

[deValcourt]

Originally Posted by UQWozza

The figure in my last post is only to get an idea of a possible format. Heading can be added or subtracted once an overall structure is decided. I originally also thought of military vs non military but if we are not careful we could end up with hundreds of sub-forums.

Simon

That's kind of what I started to realize by the time I decided to wrap up my previous post and thus the "keep it simple" notion. The fact is, however, with all the different specialty interests, we simply must keep things in a manageable structure. Perhaps take the sub forums used in "Badges" and with the addition of an "other" sub-forum, I think were could fit everything there.

Just a thought (and one that is "simpler" than my others).

Phillip