Rearranging this Message Board

Hans · Post by **Hans** » 05 Mar 2007, 17:13

Hi,

In the weekend of 10 and 11 March, we will implement a rearrangement of this Message Board. Basically this will mean we will carry through a diversion between spotters specific sub forums and "the rest".
During this weekend of 10 and 11 March all recent postings will be moved to another forum where appropriate, some will be joined or the subject will be changed. Afterwards, when you can not find the post you are looking for, please use the search button in the upper left corner.

But part of this rearrangement is also the introduction of some extra "rules and guidelines" - which will be addressed below.

But first start with the new setup;

Administration and Announcement Forums
- Rules and Explanations
- Messages from & to Scramble
  No changes here.
Spotters forums
- Scramble Intelligence Service
  This forum will change from military only to military plus civil. The idea is it will be restricted to those upcoming movements for which one "might jump in his car and drive at least an hour to catch it." All other (minor) expectations can be posted in the appropriate thread in the other forums.
- Amsterdam - Schiphol
- Rotterdam - Zestienhoven
- Soesterberg
- TLP
  Just the four already existing subforums
- Spotting Netherlands & Belgium
  All other airports and airfields not covered in the above forums. But unlike the current situation, we hope all posting on one particulair airfield will be put in one thread, so you just have to check this particulair thread to see everything which is relevant to (for instance) Leeuwarden or Maastricht-Aachen instead of searching the whole forum.
- Spotting Europe
  All European airfields outside The Netherlands and Belgium. Again all posts on one airfield in one thread, though we can imagine some exceptions will take place for complete trip reports further away.
- Spotting Worldwide
  Reading the comments on previous two forums, I guess this one is pretty obvious
- Airshow news
- Radio Activity
- Photo forum
  No changes on those three forums
- Airfields forum
  New forum for discussions on what the best spots on a particulair airfield are. This can be seen as an extension to the current Airfields Guides Scramble already publishes, not a replacement.
Spotters organisation forums
- GRAS Gilze Rijen
  No changes on this forum either, just more emphasis on the fact this forum is run by "an external party" which we just happen to host.
General aviation forums
- Civil news
- Military news
  Two new forums for posting and discussing "aviation news".
- Tourist info
  Just the current forum.
Scramble's Aviation Wiki
- Wiki General
- Wiki Help
- Wiki Discussion
  No changes in this category.
Fun & non-aviation related forums
- Tattle Lounge
- ’t Praethuys
- Photography
- Your Website
  No changes on those forums either.

Disappear will the next forums;

Nostalgia
Any messages currently posted in this forum can then be posted in the appropriate thread in the spotters forums
Trade forum
Because of the low volume of postings in this forum and other means to sell your goods, it will disappear, reverting this Message Board to a "no sales" Message Board.

In most forums a "sticky" message will be posted -although maybe not from day one- which sets some extra guidelines for that specific forum on top of the general rules as can be read in http://www.scramble.nl/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Also the moderator team will be more active on removing those posts which only consist of other "useless remarks".
Those include also the "thank you!" or "nice pictures!" postings; Although we do not think those are useless as such, we even encourage to say "thanks", we also feel they do not add anything for all other visitors to read. We would ask everybody to make more use of the "Private Message" button!!! This was already announced last year, but in effect hardly enforced.

Also, up till now, most moderators used to send a private message after they deleted a posting, explaining why it was deleted (or moved). Starting next week this will not be done anymore when we feel it is obvious -by reading the rules- when this action was taken.

With those changes we hope this message board will be more clear for everybody to use, and a bit more easy for us to maintain.

When you feel you have good reasons why some changes are not desirable, please send me a Personal Message (and "I do not like it" is not a good reason

)

On behalf of the Moderator team.

Sincere regards,

Hans

Hans · Post by **Hans** » 11 Mar 2007, 10:09

All,

Starting now, I will start with above mentioned rearrangement.

This will mean some sub-forums will be closed for posting during this process.
As soon as I am finished, I will release them again.

I'm sorry for the inconvenience this may cause, but please be patient during this period.

Regards,

Hans

Hans · Post by **Hans** » 11 Mar 2007, 16:12

All,

I have just finished the job. Probably we have forgotten some things, are not clear enough, or need to do some fine tuning in the near future.

When you note something, please let me know (by Private Message).

Regards,

Hans

Hans · Post by **Hans** » 01 Apr 2007, 19:35

Hi,

Due to external factors I have not been able lately to put as much effort in Scramble, and this Message Board, as I would have hoped for.

Nevertheless I have been following all reactions to this new set-up as closely as possible.

To give some answers to the general raised questions:

Why those changes?
- To create more logic.
- Allow for less moderation.
Can we reverse it?
- Everything is possible, but I have some very good reasons (technical and time related) this will not happen. Sorry.

As everybody knows by now, this was even announced prior to the actual changes, but apparently not everybody reads what I personally consider the most important sub forum on this message board - as we did not receive one single remark prior to the changes.
But with hindsight it now appears that especially on the subject of "more logic" we looked too much at ourselves, what we liked, what we thought was logical etc. I guess we can conclude this experiment failed. And I sincerely apologize for that.

OK, but what's going to happen next then?

Although I still think a lot of the expressed resentment is primarily because of "it has been changed", not because of the changes itself, there still seems to be several genuine items which could be improved or fine-tuned.
So we need to find a setup that better suits everybody's needs - or at least those of the majority of our visitors.
What we would like to do now, is invite people who are willing to think constructively with us how this Message Board would be best arranged. This includes opponents, but also supporters of the current changes. We are not looking for people whose only contribution would be "I don't like it, it su***, change it!"

When you are interested in thinking about the future of this Message Board with us, please drop me a private message within the next couple of days.

We then hopefully will try to start implementing any new changes in about two weeks or so.

Sincere regards,

Hans

Key · Post by **Key** » 13 May 2007, 12:26

Hi,

After a thorough evaluation, plus brainstorm with some of our members (thanks guys

), we came up with yet another concept for the structure of this board. We believe this setup will suite all needs as far as practically possible.

The bad news is, the current version of the software does not support sub-forums and we need to be able to create those to implement the new structure. We have to wait for version 3 in which the makers have announced the needed functionality.
The good news is, that once we implement this there will be no more 'year topics' for the most discussed airfields but these will have their own sub-forum, there will be distincition again between civil and military, and there will be much better overview of subjects through multiple pages with subforums. Yes, the latter may require a bit more clicking around but you will be able to do so with a clear goal.

Any further news will be posted in this thread, that stays locked to keep it clean. Feel free to discuss the matter in the Tattle Lounge or 't Praethuis of course!

Erik

Key · Post by **Key** » 16 May 2007, 01:06

At the moment, the Airfields forum is being merged into the respective spotting forums. We have decided to keep airfield info together with movements and other items. Please post your airfield info or questions in the spotting forums.

Thx!

Key · Post by **Key** » 16 May 2007, 17:45

Hi, the move of the Airfields forum topics to other forums has been completed and that forum has been deleted. It did serve a purpose but the overlap with the spotting forums was too big and we think extra forums should have a very good reason to exist.

'General Aviation forums' has been renamed to 'Aviation in general' to avoid confusion with corporate & private aviation, which is not what we meant.

Erik

Key · Post by **Key** » 16 May 2007, 22:45

And yet another update is moving Gilze-Rijen in line with the other airfields. When we get to a layered setup in the future, GRAS will get its own forum for society matters. At the moment we do not want to put an extra forum in the long list so both social matters and movements etc. go in one forum for the time.

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