I love this forum but it goes so fast, has so many posts, that it is really hard to keep up with.
How about separating it into two parts? There could be several ways to organize this, maybe with one section on ARF based warbirds and the other for kit, plan & scratch built planes. I'm sure there are other ways to do it too.
The main thing is to make it all more accessable and easier to follow without going searching for any day-old subject.
What do you think?

I could support a build vs ARF split. I rarely if ever read the ARF posts.

Tom

Works just fine with me as it is.

I could agree with this, However RCU already has an insane amount of splits already. Aerial Photography and Video/Digital Camera Photo Editing?

Well, a split may be a solution. For my purpose, I refind the threads I want by using the powerful search engine on the top left of the "Warbirds and Warplanes" section page. The only thing you need is either the title of the topic or the member name of the one who launched it. Like this it only takes a few seconds to find what I want, only a few times this will become a greater exercise...

regards

Chris

Something definitely needs to be done, but the whole site needs to be reevaluated to make it more efficient. Most people don't like change no matter what, so it won't happen, but we can talk about it. Military Scale Models needs to have it's own section, ARF, ARC, Kit and so on. ARF's almost completely dominate this forum now as it is. The kit section would be full of build threads, tips and questions about the various Warbird kits, easy to find and if you only like kits it makes it easy to sort through. The problem is we have an ARF forum with Warbirds in it, a kit section with Warbirds and sport planes, a twin section with sport models and Warbirds both ARF's and kit and a Warbird section with ARF's, kits, ARC's and twins or multi engine planes! Do I want to debate this? No way, these are just my thoughts.



Pappy

Not a flame to you, but personally I have not had much luck with the RCU search engine. I do a search for CMP P-40 (or whatever) and get 300 threads out of the Trucks and Boats sections with a few Warbirds mixed in. It doesn't seem to be as efficient as the RCG one. Pehaps I am not using it correctly.

If you want a good site for builders and one that seperates kits from ARF's then try this.
http://www.rcscalebuilder.com/forum/default.asp

I hope moderators take same actions when anybody post a free advertisement on a competence site as well as when other member complain about that same site.

That site.......for me just no way!.

Best Regards,

Jesus Cardin

I think if RCU wanted to they could be just as great.

There is discussion going on in a number of the RCU forums about splitting out the kit and scratch building from the ARFs but nothing ever happens. It seems like it would be pretty easy to have sub forums under kit building for the various classes and another setup under the existing ARF forum. The scale forum could be split as well and moved into kit/scratch and ARF. As is stands there is duplicate posting going on in to different forums that should be together so members can find them. You would think it would be an advantage to the advertisers because they could target the different groups, etc. What does it take to make forum changes on RCU?

I have no idea what you are saying here.

I'm not really sure what forum you're speaking of splitting. We have a kit forum, a scratch build forum, an arf forum, a warbird forum and a vintage forum. What exactly is the request for, th request makes the recommendation but doesn't specify what to split.

Nathan

I think what people are discussing is setting up RCU so that the Kit building forum contains the main heading of “Kit and Scratch Building�. Within that forum have sub forums for scale, warbird, sport, etc. The same thing for the ARF forum. The main forum called “ARF� with sub forums for scale, warbird, sport, etc. As is it is now the warbird forum has a mix of ARF and kit/scratch building and it is very hard to find what you are looking for. As an alternative you could split the warbird forum into an ARF section and a kit/scratch forum. Same thing for the scale forum.

The first solution would be my choice and would be happy to volunteer to help tag threads that would need to be moved.

Ok, that makes a little more sense. We've always resisted splitting too much for several reasons, but we'll take a closer look to see if it's a reasonable thing to do.

I don't know why this was moved out of the RC Warbirds and Warplanes section, this is a good way to silence it though. In my opinion the RC Airplane forums need to be reorganized into a much more logical, efficient and user friendly format. It's so screwed up I don't really bother looking for things anymore. I have nothing against ARF's, I own several, but they are completely saturating all of the forums. Sport, twins, civilian twins and scale are all mixed in the kit section, I don't want to read anything about a Monokoted sport plane and I don't like having to run several searches in several different forums to find a particular subject. More and more I just think to myself, why bother with RCU? It's a waste of time the way it's set up.

Once you get into a forum scroll to the bottom and use the search windown on the bottom right hand side of the screen, it will only search in the particular forum that you are looking in. The search windows at the top of the page do search the entire RCU, hope this helps.


What I wish we could do is have the warbirds forum as is but allow the poster to choose, while starting the thread, to post weather it has to do with kits/scratch built or ARF. Then give an option when you enter the forum to look at kits/scratch built, arfs, or both.

I agree. Moving this thread from the Warbirds and Warplanes forum to here was a dumb move. If we are going to have a discussion about how to organize Warbird conversations, this forum won't get the traffic it deserves. This tactic in itself is enough to send me to RCSB.

Tom

For those that are advocating "search" as an option, I submit that I enjoy scanning all threads related to warbird kit and scratch building as I learn much from each. It would be better to see them all in one place. I do use search quite a bit, and I think that this forum has the best search utilitly in the business. For example, if I select Advanced Search and type in "buy" and "PC Board" I get lots of great answers by knowledgeable posters. Can't do that on RCSB as far as I know.. If they figure that out, you'll lose me for good.

Tom

Thanks for your interest Nathan.

I think what many people are looking for is to have the forums organized by their interest. If someone is interested in kit or scratch built warbirds they want to be able to find them all together in one thread. Same thing for people that are interested in ARF warbirds. The same concept also applies to the scale forum.

I realized that making the organization change will not be easy but the longer you wait the harder it will be to get it organized. I would suggest the following steps:

1. Create a sport forum section under the ARF section and move all the existing ARF threads into the sport forum.
2. Move the complete Warbird thread under the ARF section labeled Warbirds.
3. Change the name of the Kit building thread to Kit and Scratch building.
4. Create a new Warbird forum and sport forum under the Kit and scratch building forum.
5. Move the existing kit threads into the sport forum.
6. Review the Warbird thread in the ARF forum and move all the kit and scratch built threads to the new Warbird thread in the Kit and Scratch building section.

After that is complete do the same thing for the scale forum. In the case of the scale forum there are fewer ARF threads so I would move the scale forum to the Kit and scratch building first. Then review it and move the ARF threads to the scale sub form the ARF forum.

Because of the effort required you may want to make the change in a two step process by splitting the Warbird forum into a kit and scratch forum and an ARF forum first. Get it organized and then move them. Same for the scale forum.

Please let me know if I can help in any way because I think the change is well worth the effort.

Wow!
I just checked the Warbirds forum, saw 0 (zero) responses, was fairly discouraged but THEN realized the thread had been moved.
I am gratified to find that I am not the only one frustrated with this (generally great) resource. I see there are so many interesting ideas about reorganizing the threads that I am hopeful it will only get better.
Thanks.

I was going to post my thoughts but Mugenkidd beat me to it. (Hi Mikey) My only diff in idea would be make it simple by using one of the thread topic icons which are on the left side of every thread showing usage and hit factor. Make the thread mark blue for KITS and red for ARFS. And then as Mugen said,,,