Yeah, it helps to organize the forum as a whole if you put your question into a specific subforum or subtopic, such as Aircraft, Armor, Techniques, etc. This way you can aim for the audience who is most suited to answering your question, while at the same time you won’t clutter a subforum with a question that doesn’t fit there. I think it also helps with server space to keep the website running smoother.
Well, I believe you have to get a kind of a “feeling” of what goes where - I’d say by reading several posts of every section. Please note how often posts are added to each section. For example “Airbrushing” seems to be much slower than “Armor” - so a question about painting a tank might give you a better response in “Armor”. But in any case start by reading and searching - chances are good you might find the info you’re looking for already posted. When you get to know the topics and also the customs well, you’ll be good to go. Good luck with your projects and have a nice day
One thing to do is to go through the list of all the forums. Each forum has a paragraph explaining what the purpose of that forum is. It is a long list, and there is a temptation to stop before you get to bottom, but the last group of forums- tools, techniques and reference materials- has some very good threads. In particular the Techniques forum can be used for many of those “how do I …” questions.
That list of forums can be looked at by selecting the “discussion forums” from the options at top (and sometimes bottom) of each page in forums.
Pawel has a great point. Often you have to weigh the probability of your post being seen by a lot of people versus how specific you want to get on your topic. Within reason you can cross-post, per se, with no harm done.
Thanks dirkpitt77 (BTW-read all those series, he’s way better than 007) I’ll keep that in mind as I ‘surf’ the aircraft section of the forum. What is obvious, is that there are some amazing model builders out there! To all of you – Thanks and keep your wheels up!
The internet modeling world has gotten a lot bigger and more complex than it was in the mid 1990s. Back then, modeling newsgroups were all inclusive with only topic titles being labeled [AIR], [ARM], or [SEA], etc. to give potential readers an idea of what was being asked. That way you could quickly bypass a subject you weren’t interested or knowledgeable in.
Starting in the late 90s, modeling forums broke up into aircraft, armor, sea, automobile, etc. specific forums where only those subjects were discussed. Those sites broke down the major genres into very specific forums. For instance, Missing Lynx is a popular armor site where subforums are broken down into WW2 Axis, WW2 Allied, Modern, WW1 Armor, 1/72 Scale, 1/48 Scale armor. There are similar breakdowns in aircraft related sites.
Around 2001-2002, a few General modeling sites popped up where folks with an interest in multiple genres could enjoy all their likes at one place. But even places like this still break up modeling into various genres.
This site tends to have too many subforums, many of which get ignored by members. This leads to confusion when new members ask for modeling related help in a subforum designed to help members with the operation of the forum and then wonder why they don’t get the help they asked for in a timely manner or at all.
I know when Armorama started in 2001, there were new users there who thought it worked like an online chat help line. They’d type a question and then leave in a huff when someone didn’t respond within seconds. “I typed this question over ten minutes ago and no one has answered me yet! I’m leaving!!” I guess operators weren’t standing by.
Yes, the above did happen to me with a half dozen private messages each becoming more hostile as they came in.
On this site, I check the armor forum daily, sometimes the general modeling a couple times a week. Sci-fi, aircraft, helicopters maybe once a week, other subforums even less. The vast majority of forums I never check.
My response in any other subforum is more a chance of luck; the topic title caught my eye and was recent enough to be listed in the recent activity when I go to the forum home page.