It's kind of interesting how this whole topic arose, has developed and the different (sometimes seemingly strong) opinions it has evoked.
For what it's worth I kind of feel that:
a) Any change should be made for a
reason i.e the change should address a genuine problem or bring some genuine added value. So far, TBH, I have the feeling that this whole subject came about because the new hot-rod sub-forum answered a question that nobody had actually even asked
(in the sense that there was a real, significant demand for it - but maybe I am mistaken)
b) If heavy traffic in the street forum is actually a real and relevant issue ( by this I understand it to mean that there are so many new threads (not posts) appearing that relatively new ones are dissappearing into a black hole somewhere to be lost for eternity) then certainly the simple and elegant suggestion that has been made to have a seperate "Completed/Gallery" sub-forum should go a long way to resolve this. It should theoretically cut new threads by 1/3 if we assume that for every 2 progress threads started only one is posted as completed.
I have to say that personally, while I don't actually see the "disapperaing thread" issue as a problem, I do think that none the less a combined "Completed" sub-forum would be a nice idea and makes more sense than a e.g "hotrod" or "motorbike" or "Ferrari" or "WRC" forum.
Overall a forum, I guess, serves 2 basic functions:
1. Share ideas, techniques etc that help EVERYONE improve
2. Massage our egos by showing everyone how clever we've been and collecting as many "oohs" and "Ahs" as possible.
The proposed split should let us all have our cake
and eat it.
c) At the end of the day - as can be seen in many of the posts - the whole "all for one and one for all" WIP forum lobby versus the "each to their own" lobby is actually all to do with subjective preference and therefore to my mind falls into is more about the Forum's philosophy and mission as defined by the owners/administrators. They should make the call. Whatever they decide to do some will like it, some won't at first but everyone will calm down in 2 weeks and get used to it. Ulitimately thread title and thread author will probably be the best measure of whether or not you wnat to enter a thread. But looking into threads - even those that are outside of your core field of interest - is free, you lose nothing but always stand the chance to gain something and to my mind is what a forum is all about
d) Post policing mentioned by Mick. Again it's a Forum culture/philosophy thing that falls to the Admin to decide the rules and "enforce" them. Some areas will be quantitative: image size and quality, use of punctuation (it's
always possible to tell the diffeence between a non-native speaker who is trying his best and a sloppy native speaker) etc others will be more qualitative: image quality, should posts contain 15 pictures of the same shiny body at various glamorous angles? etc. Personally, I think that (based on my vision of a forum) there could/should be some slight improvement in this area.
e) I think our mods are good - even great, do a thankless job which is rarely appreciated and are intelligent, experienced modelers and I'm quite happy to go with their decisions (even if I don't agree with them
) because it's highly improbably that they are going to do anything outrageous. Democracy is fine but someone's got to be boss
Sorry for the long blurge - I like this forum a lot for it's diversity and it was my right to post this and it's your right not to read it
EDIT 1: Sorry for all the mistakes in my post
EDITY 2: Sh*t I write slowly! By the time I finshed writing this, another 10 posts had appeared