How to use these new FD scale subforums...

[Colosseum]

We have just created new, subject-specific subforums for FD scale work. Please use them as you think appropriate: I no longer think it's necessary to post a new thread for each plane or vehicle - I leave it up to the artists to decide how to organize the drawings posted in the forums.

For "collection threads", please post those in the forum that fits your topic the best: for instance, "Polish Wings" should appear in the FD Scale Air subforum.

I will shortly post a few threads with my meager FD scale work in an attempt to illustrate how these new forums should be used. I will rely on our FD scale artists to spend some time reposting their work in individual threads: I expect we will all enjoy seeing work that's so often buried under hundreds of pages being brought to the surface. The original "FD Scale Vehicles" subforum located under the "Non-Shipbucket Projects" forum will be discontinued.

We will try out this new system for a few weeks, and if it doesn't work we will move back to the old system.

Thanks all.

[eswube]

I would like to suggest to merge "FD Scale Vehicles" and "FD Scale Armor" into "FD Scale Land Vehicles".
Leaving aside that "aircraft" and "armor" are also "vehicles", there's just IMHO no point in separating armored ground vehicles from non-armored ground vehicles. (Btw. is - for example - up-armored Humvee qualifying into "armor" or "vehicles"?)
For example - if I ever were to start "Polish Army in FD scale thread" (pure example - I'm not planning such thread) - should it be in "armor" or "vehicles"? Because certainly I wouldn't make two separate threads.

P.S. I'm also heavily disinclined to make separate threads for every aircraft (or other vehicle) type.

P.P.S. One suggestion I'd make to make clear, hoping it would be made a rule: to put related planes/vehicles under different names into one thread. I mean, for example the MiG-21 begun with Ye-2 prototype - so that if there will be Ye-2 made some day (hopefully by me), it wouldn't have separate thread, but would be under MiG-21.

[denodon]

Perhaps in your last statement you could group posts by manufacturer, country or some such. Probably not terribly efficient but still some ideas

[eswube]

@Denodon
Grouping them by country would be rather a bad idea unless it's "manufacturer country" - after all, often there are often files/templates with with some plane (or ground vehicle) but several user countries.
Making threads by manufacturer is much better idea (one I think would be most practical in these circumstances), but still would create some interesting questions: for example - should F-16 be under General Dynamics or Lockheed-Martin? Should Chinese clones of Soviet aircraft be posted separately or with their Soviet counterparts?

And if I were to make now a separate thread for each type of aircraft I made, I'd have to make literally several hundred threads. Colosseum - are You sure You want to see it?
(and I hope You don't imply by "discontinuing old FD forums in 'non-Shipbucket drawnigs' part" that I should re-post all the Polish Wings from scratch?
I just wanted old FD-sub forum to be moved from "non-SB drawing", not replaced by new arrangement - which, I can already tell You - won't work better than previous.)

[Hood]

Yeah, I think by manufacturer would be best and as long as each image still has a text tag the it should be searchable.
While several famous aircraft went through multiple variants, the majority would only be single posts. I've most (by no means all) FD scale aircraft saved and they come to well over a thousand...

As to discontinuing the old FD section, I'd like to see it locked to new posts but wiping it would be a loss given the old members who've gone and who can't transfer their posts.
(I'll probably transfer the What-If British aircraft as one thread but many of those works are not mine and so some may be lost/ left behind)

[eswube]

I'm collecting FD drawings (initial intent was the Main Site Archive) and currently I have:
-1108 Land Vehicles - Real-Life
-38 Land Vehicles - Unbuilt
-50 Land Vehicles - Museum (old drawings - both real-life and unbuilt - that were superseded by newer ones)
-2603 Air Vehicles - Real-Life
-277 Air Vehicles - Unbuilt
-35 Air Vehicles - Museum (old drawings - both real-life and unbuilt - that were superseded by newer ones)

And now Colo has an idea that all of it has to be reposted - or, in other words - to fix what wasn't broken.
Sorry, but the more I think of it, the less I like the idea.
I devoted my time to creation of significant number of drawings, both in SB and FD scale, I devoted my time to reorganize SB Archive folders, I devoted my time to update FD Archive.
But I'm not going to waste my time on re-posting 992 (nine hundred and ninety-two) files with my FD work.
If the FD will revert to previous system, I'll be happy to be back, but as it is, I'll just feel I'll have to cease my participation on Shipbucket.com.

[apdsmith]

Eswube,

Couldn't some of these be moved wholesale - for instance, as Colo has said, "Polish Wings" could just move to FD Air - and it's done! no further intervention on your part needed. Surely this would cut down the scale of work required?

Ad

[jabba]

We have just created new, subject-specific subforums for FD scale work. No longer will we be posting FD scale drawings in gigantic 50-page threads; each drawing of each vehicle will now receive its own thread in the appropriate forum.

For "collection threads", please post those in the forum that fits your topic the best: for instance, "Polish Wings" should appear in the FD Scale Air subforum.

I will shortly post a few threads with my meager FD scale work in an attempt to illustrate how these new forums should be used. I will rely on our FD scale artists to spend some time reposting their work in individual threads: I expect we will all enjoy seeing work that's so often buried under hundreds of pages being brought to the surface. The original "FD Scale Vehicles" subforum located under the "Non-Shipbucket Projects" forum will be discontinued.

Variants of a design (e.g., F-16, F-16A, F-16D, etc) should all be posted under a single "F-16" thread. It doesn't matter who originally creates the topic.

We will try out this new system for a few weeks, and if it doesn't work we will move back to the old system.

Thanks all.

I see what you are trying to do here, but can see the weaknesses of implementing this in the way that you have. I understand the intention was to separate FD-scale drawings from the rest of the non-SB sub forum. If I may make a couple of suggestions...

1) Amalgamate 'Armour' and 'Vehicles' into one section. There are not that many vehicles that this should be a problem. It should prevent any confusion arising out of armoured/non-armoured variants of some vehicles (as has been mentioned above)

2) Retain the new 'FD Scale Air' folder, but simply move the old 'mega-threads' (and all previous FD threads if possible) into this folder. These threads could be retained for those who wish to post there. I know there has been problems in the past with being unable to find specific drawings, but I think this has been helped by people adding text into their posts. Whilst I agree that it makes good sense to have individual threads for artists who want to post drawings in this way, I see no benefit in attempting to sub-divide further by country or manufacturer due to the confusion that will inevitably arise.

[Colosseum]

Will merge Armored and Non-Armored shortly...

Re: creating a new topic for each - I was hesitant to recommend this at first, and have to agree it's likely not workable. Either way, will keep the current new forums open and allow people to post as you'd like. Create an organization system that suits you.

In this situation, I was just trying to give FD Scale a little more "visibility". I'm first and foremost a Shipbucket guy, so how the forums are organized doesn't really concern me - just as long as it's organized in some form or fashion where finding drawings is easy. I leave it up to the FD scale contributors to figure out how they want to do that.

BTW: not sure why there's such vitriol over this - I am (contrary to popular belief) an entirely reasonable guy willing to listen to suggestions (indeed, most of the changes here don't happen without community consent...) I wouldn't just "force" everyone to go to a new system without at least listening to what people have to say... would appreciate it if we could stop being drama queens ("ceasing participation in Shipbucket.com".... please).

[Naixoterk]

I know i'm a newcomer here and although i think that my opinion will not be very valuable, here are my two cents.

I have to agree with Eswube, and i think that here we should have applied the proverb of if it works, don't fix it.

IMO the old FD subforum worked very well. When i wanted to find a specific airplane, tank or whatever i just googled it's name followed by the word 'shipbucket', click on images and then the 99% of the cases it would find it and for rest 1% i used the forum built in search function and it would find it. If results were not found then it meant that it wasn't drawn.

I think that in this case we are treating the airplanes or tanks like if they were ships and that's something that doesn't favour them at all, firstly because you can't compare the amount of airplane/tank models out there with the amount of ships and second because different types of vehicle deserve different treatment.

One of the flaws i see with the new system is that you could condemn many good drawing to oblivion just by not answering the thread they've been posted.

That said i think i will stay because i like to draw airplane camouflages and probably will adapt to the new system but anyway i still think that the old system worked perfectly, at least for me. It was enough with forcing the users to type the country (or countries) of the airplane/tank or whatever and the model name.