Topical Collections

[MikeC99]

Topicals are a great way to explore our various interest without being tied to a country, album, or particular method of collection.

This has been posted in a lot of threads and some are set up to talk about this in particular.

One thing i have noticed in the last 2-3 months is that often members are hesitant to start a thread on a topic not already listed.

Please please please please post a new thread anytime you have something to show or talk about if we do not have a thread on it. Odds are someone else wants to know also (or see in the case of topicals)

Gee you can even start one on a topic you dont have!! We have all seen me do it. Go ahead.

_________________
Happy Stamping!!
Bear

[Fire]

MikeC99, If I want to start a topic on Kingfisher birds only, do I start a new threat under Birds or a complete new threat.

[Admin Bear]

as long as the thread is very specific to the king fisher a new thread would be fine.

on a related note when going to start a new topical thread please be sure to look around the topical area we have TONS of them started and duplication just makes things hard.

while i would love to have 1 million topical threads going, this would be pointless if 50% of them were identical.

[FairyFoot]

An idea from another forum, Postcrossing. They have many round robins and tags, and they have a directory page of them. Perhaps something could be done here with headings, eg. animals, types of people, technology, fun and games...

[Deleted]

FairyFoot I am not sure I understand what you are suggesting. Maybe I should have drunk more fennel tea to stimulate my brain. Can you post a link to that directory page?

Is what you have in mind creating an index of the threads in the Topical section of StampBears? If so, there's probably more than one way of doing this - I am sure it is feasible.

[FairyFoot]

forum.postcrossing.com/viewthread.php?tid=96649 for the round robins

forum.postcrossing.com/viewthread.php?tid=85538 for tags

these are alphabetical. 

[FairyFoot]

With various animals on stamps with different threads, you could alphabetise under a group category, etc...

[Deleted]

FairyFoot Many thanks for those links. I have just spent a little time trying to understand how tags and round robins work on the PostCrossing Forum and what they are for. I ended up looking at the newbie guidance  forum.postcrossing.com/viewthread.php?tid=88580 and even then am not entirely sure I really understand. Am I right that they are mechanisms by which people can exchange things? We have our own section of StampBears for trades, giveaways and round robins, which can be straightforwardly initiated by members. Those more expert than I on the inner mechanisms of StampBears may be able to comment on the feasibility of having a more systematic approach of the kind it looks to me like the postcrossing forum may have if my glimmer of possible understanding of it is right. I suspect it would take quite a lot of work and time to set up, and I am not sure how feasible it would be with the ProBoards forum system which acts as our host. But, as I say, others are more expert than I.

[FairyFoot]

It isn't necessarily the trades but the way it is easy to find the one you are looking for. Having the list of already started topical threads in one post, instead of going through pages of threads on a board... Oh look, there's a postcard swap group (round robin) for postcards with as many stamps as you can fit on as postage (a philatelic friend sent me a postcard with 18 2p stamps on for postage...). Oh look, there's one for castles... etc.

So, eg. could have a directory of threads:

People:
Artists -- stampbears.net/thread/3027/famous-artists-on-stamps
Authors - stampbears.net/thread/2188/famous-authors
Charles Darwin - stampbears.net/thread/569/charles-darwin
Scientists - ....

Animals:
Birds
Cats
Dogs
Elephants - stampbears.net/thread/116/elephants-on-stamps

Transportation - stampbears.net/thread/309/transportation
Cars
Ships
Trains

Sport
Golf - stampbears.net/thread/2498/golf-on-stamps


etc etc...

[Deleted]

Thanks, FairyFoot. That clarifies things. I agree a list of topical threads would be helpful. I am consulting the moderator/admin team on whether we should go further and reorganise the Topicals section of the Forum to put threads into groups ("sub-boards") - eg group the various animal threads together.

[Deleted]

FairyFoot Thanks to you focusing our minds, and to Admin Bear's hard work, there are now a set of sub-boards and sub-sub-boards within the Topical section of the forum. I am starting to move threads to what I think are the appropriate boards. Once I have finished doing that, I will be producing one or more indexes to this part of StampBears. All this should make it much easier to look through the Topical section and find threads. As time permits, I will do a bit of rationalisation of duplicating/overlapping threads. I hope that, if anyone thinks I have put a thread in the wrong place, they will message me.

[Admin Bear]

Sept 1, 2015 8:09:22 GMT -5 @michaelcayley said:

FairyFoot Thanks to you focusing our minds, and to Admin Bear's hard work, there are now a set of sub-boards and sub-sub-boards within the Topical section of the forum. I am starting to move threads to what I think are the appropriate boards. Once I have finished doing that, I will be producing one or more indexes to this part of StampBears. All this should make it much easier to look through the Topical section and find threads. As time permits, I will do a bit of rationalisation of duplicating/overlapping threads. I hope that, if anyone thinks I have put a thread in the wrong place, they will message me.

At the risk of being mean - i would like to ask to see a rough draft (and very short version) of the planned index.... my thought is that seperating into sub-board and sub-sub-boards is more than enough and an index as i am seeing above is A) to bulky, B) a giant PITA to create and maintain, and C) way more work than i want to add to the moderating team...

[Deleted]

Admin Bear - no problem. You're not mean at all. I was thinking of an alphabetical list of all the topical threads. Simply because there are a minority of threads which could fit in more than one sub-board (e.g. do you put Famous Authors under People/Occupations or under Art, Music, Film and Literature? (Provisionally, I am opting for the latter.) I would be happy to have one job less!

[Admin Bear]

yeah sorry bud.. after looking at the idea and really considering it i have to say no.. this would be a beast now and to maintain as we grow would create a ton of "work"....

I would rather the team enjoy the things they do now and continue to participate and monitor for rules issues etc. not baby sit an area that people can search on their own.

if it is really that much work to search it out, they can always start a new thread..

[Deleted]

Admin Bear No problem. As I said, one less job for me.