My Compliments on the New Categories

[Motor City]

I like the changes on the forum with the new categories and renaming of some others.  Great job!

 

[Bugatti Fan]

New categories paid out fairly logically.   Personally I would like to see Motor Cycles given their own work bench and finished sections instead of being grouped with aircraft scisince fiction etc.

Edited April 20, 2020 by Bugatti Fan

[Xingu]

3 hours ago, Bugatti Fan said:

New categories paid out fairly logically.   Personally I would like to see Motor Cycles given their own work bench and finished sections instead of being grouped with aircraft scisince fiction etc.

Part of the reason for the change is to give the site a smaller footprint so that it is easier to maneuver with a phone or tablet. We see so few motorcycle builds here that decided to keep them in the Everything Else section. It just isn't feasible to give everything it's own (in this case 2) category.  

[ChrisR]

No problem with categories but I wish that in the unread postings in list Model Cars as Model Cars completed (or under glass) and Model Cars WIP.

[borz666]

I only ever went to the truck section. Now the Truck reference and discussion has lumped in with everything else.

It's going to be really had to find what we're looking for now. 

I had no issues on a mobile device. ?‍♂️

 

[vincen47]

On 4/21/2020 at 2:33 AM, borz666 said:

I only ever went to the truck section. Now the Truck reference and discussion has lumped in with everything else.

It's going to be really had to find what we're looking for now. 

I had no issues on a mobile device. ?‍♂️

 

100% Agree! I spent most, but not all of my time, in the truck section and I’m extremely disappointed to see “The Truck Stop”, one of the most useful truck categories, merged into a huge blanket category of general discussion.

Now it is harder to figure out if it’s a useful new thread or not. For example, I’d never click on a thread title of “22 inch wheels” in a car section. Those are silly. But I’d always click a title of “22 inch wheels” in the truck section. A HUGE difference. 

 

 

[Xingu]

Members will need to be a little more descriptive with their titles. It is fairly easy to add Truck:   or Big Rig:  or Muscle Car:  into the titles. I also know that some folks will think that is just entirely too much work and won't do it. I believe the truckers will band together and come up with a way to distinguish threads that pertain to them from the other automotive threads.

[Jordan White]

Does this forum software allow for thread tags that appear next to the thread title?

[vincen47]

42 minutes ago, Xingu said:

Members will need to be a little more descriptive with their titles. It is fairly easy to add Truck:   or Big Rig:  or Muscle Car:  into the titles. I also know that some folks will think that is just entirely too much work and won't do it. I believe the truckers will band together and come up with a way to distinguish threads that pertain to them from the other automotive threads.

Very true, members could adapt and become more descriptive in their titles, but I don’t think they will in most cases. It places the responsibility of creating a user friendly platform on the user, rather than the creator. That never works in the real world.

As a result, I believe now a thread question has less of a chance of being answered thoroughly because the members who normally browse the Truck Stop are not going to take the albeit small, but extra effort to browse a broader category and differentiate content titles. This is especially true when a broader category with more frequent new posts will drive a thread downward on the list and over to page two more quickly. 

I understand the desire to consolidate and simplify, but in this particular case I believe it is at the expense of a valuable resource to hobbyists.

There are separate truck and car categories for all other facets, including workbench, under glass, aftermarket, and industry news. This is to make it more user friendly. Can you imagine the confusion and awkwardness if any of those were merged? The general discussion is no different, especially as it pertains to specialized subject matter.

 

[Xingu]

9 minutes ago, vincen47 said:

Very true, members could adapt and become more descriptive in their titles, but I don’t think they will in most cases. It places the responsibility of creating a user friendly platform on the user, rather than the creator. That never works in the real world.

As a result, I believe now a thread question has less of a chance of being answered thoroughly because the members who normally browse the Truck Stop are not going to take the albeit small, but extra effort to browse a broader category and differentiate content titles. This is especially true when a broader category with more frequent new posts will drive a thread downward on the list and over to page two more quickly. 

I understand the desire to consolidate and simplify, but in this particular case I believe it is at the expense of a valuable resource to hobbyists.

There are separate truck and car categories for all other facets, including workbench, under glass, aftermarket, and industry news. This is to make it more user friendly. Can you imagine the confusion and awkwardness if any of those were merged? The general discussion is no different, especially as it pertains to specialized subject matter.

 

I agree. There is a bit of information that is missing though. The amount of time the moderators had to spend moving threads from general areas to the location they should have been posted in the first place. Some of the changes are to also make it easier on the mods. Full disclosure, I wanted to merge Aftermarket and Industry Corner and was talked back from ledge.

[peteski]

Yes, everybody's life woudl be much easier if people actually stopped and thought as to which forum is the best fit for their new thread.  That is just as bad as people quoting a super-long post with dozens of large photos, just to add "Nice job" as a response.  They should be banned for life!  Come on people - wake the heck up!

[Bernard Kron]

In my case I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to the whole subject of categories. I believe we shouldn't have any at all, except maybe distinguishing between works-in-progress, general informational discussions, and formal presentations of completed models. This the MCM forum has always done well and is one of its great strengths. I believe it's a key reason why it remains so well attended and vital. The "other magazine's" forum was destroyed by having too many categories, too strictly enforced, and absolutely no recognition of the important distinction between On The Workbench and Under Glass. A general review and simplification of categories can only be beneficial.

Assuming that categorizing one's work as "trucks", "drag racing", "showroom stock", "sports cars", etc. is a desirable thing, then I think this is a big improvement. In terms of what has been gained, we at last have a separate Under Glass for each of the category types, with no exceptions that I see. Fans of a particular sub-type might be disappointed to see their own particular genre missing ("sports cars" or "vintage and antique" for example) but I'm guessing that the proper research has been done and the categories we see are the ones that are the most often chosen. The result is the occasional oddity. For example, to my eyes at least, that of  Motorcyles being relegated to "Everything Else", along with battleships, biplanes, and fantasy figures. The problem of T-bucket hot rods being "Model Trucks: Pickups, Vans, SUVs, Light Commercial" survives. I'm sure there are others as well...

I enjoy discovering what's new regardless of category and let the thread title do the work for me. For this reason I''ll continue to use the  "Unread Content" filter under "My Activity Streams" to keep me on top of what I've missed since I last visited.

[bobthehobbyguy]

2 hours ago, Xingu said:

Members will need to be a little more descriptive with their titles. It is fairly easy to add Truck:   or Big Rig:  or Muscle Car:  into the titles. I also know that some folks will think that is just entirely too much work and won't do it. I believe the truckers will band together and come up with a way to distinguish threads that pertain to them from the other automotive threads.

This is not an unreasonable burden on the user. In fact more explicit titles are important overall.

In addition to clearer titles the use of tags would help for retrieval of specific topics. For example when posting a motorcycle adding a tag would allow easy viewing of that motorcycle.

[bobthehobbyguy]

32 minutes ago, Bernard Kron said:

In my case I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to the whole subject of categories. I believe we shouldn't have any at all, except maybe distinguishing between works-in-progress, general informational discussions, and formal presentations of completed models. This the MCM forum has always done well and is one of its great strengths. I believe it's a key reason why it remains so well attended and vital. The "other magazine's" forum was destroyed by having too many categories, too strictly enforced, and absolutely no recognition of the important distinction between On The Workbench and Under Glass. A general review and simplification of categories can only be beneficial.

Assuming that categorizing one's work as "trucks", "drag racing", "showroom stock", "sports cars", etc. is a desirable thing, then I think this is a big improvement. In terms of what has been gained, we at last have a separate Under Glass for each of the category types, with no exceptions that I see. Fans of a particular sub-type might be disappointed to see their own particular genre missing ("sports cars" or "vintage and antique" for example) but I'm guessing that the proper research has been done and the categories we see are the ones that are the most often chosen. The result is the occasional oddity. For example, to my eyes at least, that of  Motorcyles being relegated to "Everything Else", along with battleships, biplanes, and fantasy figures. The problem of T-bucket hot rods being "Model Trucks: Pickups, Vans, SUVs, Light Commercial" survives. I'm sure there are others as well...

I enjoy discovering what's new regardless of category and let the thread title do the work for me. For this reason I''ll continue to use the  "Unread Content" filter under "My Activity Streams" to keep me on top of what I've missed since I last visited.

I agree Bernard that less is the best.  However I think the current catagories are good.  Rather than more categories I think the tag feature would help for filtering.  The tag feature is under utilized as far as I am concerned.

I also find the new activity feature helps also.

[mk11]

On ‎4‎/‎22‎/‎2020 at 3:11 PM, vincen47 said:

 I understand the desire to consolidate and simplify, but in this particular case I believe it is at the expense of a valuable resource to hobbyists.

There are separate truck and car categories for all other facets, including workbench, under glass, aftermarket, and industry news.The general discussion is no different, especially as it pertains to specialized subject matter.

The overhaul of the forum structure here seems to be pretty well done but I concur with Vinces opinion stated here;  general automotive and truck talk modeling threads would be better off separate. Seems like kind of an oil and water mix otherwise.

Jes' my 2 bits. ymmv 

[redneckrigger]

I have no issue with the redo, EXCEPT that the Truck Stop is now embedded into the general automotive talk section, and is literally lost there. Yup, people need to do a better job of titling a thread, but the truck subjects are now spread out FAR and wide in this section, and instead of going there to peruse them, it is now a job of scroll, and scroll, and scroll...... This could have been done with a Car Talk section, and keeping the Truck Stop section, and not gentrifying them both together in a mish mash. Otherwise, well done.

[peteski]

While I'm mainly a car guy, I sometimes build heavy commercial trucks, so I regularly visited the Truck Talk section. I have to agree that merging it with the Car General section is not a good idea.  If you tracked the amount of traffic on the Truck Talk section, it was much less than on the generic General section, and unlike the potpourri of subjects discussed on the generic section, they mostly had truck-specific threads.  Even if people are 100% diligent, and include TRUCK in the subject line, those posts will get totally drowned out by the other generic chatter.  It would make much more sense to keep trucks separate, and make the trucks guys' life easier.

[redneckrigger]

I fully understand the reasoning behind the combination of 1:1 trucks and 1:1 cars into one section. Makes sense from an operations point of view, at least to someone who does not think of trucks as an entity deserving of it's own thread. However, when one looks at it from an historical perspective, WAY back in the day when truck kits were first introduced, they hit with a splash, and then were slowly gentrified into a mish-mash with cars, industry wise. And they darned near disappeared completely. We are presently in the middle of a resurrection of truck modelling. Truck modellers strive for extreme accuracy of a prototype , in my experience, more than car builders. Please don't take that away from us. The Truck Stop was an invaluable resource for all things in the 1:1 truck world, and was highly used, by myself and almost every truck modeler I am aware of. Now, to find one thread, it is endless scrolling, as trucks have once again been overshadowed by cars. This is not good, IMHO. Please reconsider this move, and perhaps just make one section "The Pit Stop" for cars, and one section "The Truck Stop" for trucks. This really should not affect the way that the forum is used by smartphone users, and it will not affect the operation of this forum in the least. It will also go a LONG way to providing the all too valuable, and now lost, (or at least HARD to find) resource that the Truck Stop was. We have already lost a HUGE resource when we lost Hank's Truck Forum and his photo site. To lose this now too, or at least make it impossible to use, is a double whammy the truck modelling community does not need. 

Knowing that management knew that the elimination of The Truck Stop would be received negatively is a given. But to assume that users would use tags and keywords to make the truck content stand out is foolish, IMHO. And to make it easier to search and group together would not be necessary if you left the two topics separate and already together within the topic. Look at this group, and see the age demographics. It is, at least in my mind, a bit of a stretch to think that we are all savvy enough to use keywords and tags. To be honest, tags are the metal things on the front and rear of my truck that tell the state it's registered in, and key words are the words I yell out loud when I lose my keys.

The rest of the changes are fine, again IMHO, but the conglomeration that resulted in The Truck Stop becoming largely invisible is not acceptable. Thank you for the opportunity to vent.

 

 

[Flat32]

There are model builders that build Big Rig trucks, but I've noticed there are a number of truckers building them and it's these guys that truly understand the importance of a Truck Stop.  They also take accurate detailing very seriously.

Think about the real truck world.  Primary ingredients are a Trucker, a Rig, a road, a load and the Truck Stop. They love their trucks and with good reason.  I love them because much of my business was involved with lighting and mirrors for them.

Whenever I travelled cross country in my Hot Rod coupe it's the truckers that were the most courteous drivers on the road and their Truck Stops the best places to get gas and a damned good meal 24 hours a day.  Quite interesting shopping in their trucker orientated store. 

Once upon a time there was The Truck Stop on this forum. Bad idea to eliminate it.

[BVC500]

Yeah, I don't like to new groupings.  It makes it harder and slower to find what I primarily look for - the cars section, which is now spread over a WIP, Completed, and News section.

[Tom Geiger]

Guys, you can avoid the categories.. at the top of the screen click on the icon of a newspaper.  That’s”Unread Content” of all categories. Posts come up newest to oldest. Just scroll the list and read what you choose. That’s how I read the board.

[redneckrigger]

1 hour ago, Tom Geiger said:

Guys, you can avoid the categories.. at the top of the screen click on the icon of a newspaper.  That’s”Unread Content” of all categories. Posts come up newest to oldest. Just scroll the list and read what you choose. That’s how I read the board.

Yes sir, that works. But for THIS old guy, when trying to find info about a certain truck, and wanting to search old posts that I may have already seen, now it is impossible as the truck content is drowned out by the cars. And to what end? Nothing for the benefit of the hobby, IMHO, but rather to make the site appeal more to someone's sense of order. Again, just my opinion.

[peteski]

I never go to unread posts - way too cluttered for me.  I only visit certain sections, and pick what messages I read, then mark the section read.

Edited April 29, 2020 by peteski

[mk11]

Hard to find anything to add to the well worded requests to have the truck stop reinstated next to the general auto talk so I'll just say one word... Please? 

I realize having the sections combined will eliminate the histrionics generated when a post about trucks is moved to that actual thread but having it next door on the list is just as

good