Luftwaffe Location

[musec04]

Hello,

Motivated by the fate of Steve Coates recent post I would like to open up a discussion on the location of threads concerning Luftwaffe aircraft in the period 1933–1939. At present if a post covering this period is placed on the Luftwaffe board, the moderation team will move it to the Pre-World War Two board. I have previously discussed this with Nick Beale via PM. The response I received was as follows:


“Occasionally I also get people reminding me that pre-September 1939 is not the Second World War and that the Condor Legion was not the Luftwaffe any more than the Flying Tigers were the USAAF. I appreciate your point and of course the inter-war conflicts in (e.g.) Abyssinia, Spain and China did affect the "main event" in 1939. In the end you have to draw a line somewhere if the forum is to have any structure at all (I don't find ones that put everything in together, whatever the topic, easy to use) and if you don't do it by date then what do you pick?

I'm just trying to keep things consistent and one thing moderators can do is leave the redirect notices up longer. I tend to use three days or a week before they expire but that's not sacrosanct.”

Naturally, this is a considered and well thought out response. However, I would respond that the Luftwaffe differs significantly from other air forces in this regard. Firstly, unlike other air forces covered on the main boards of TOCH, there is no organisational continuity between the Luftwaffe and its Imperial German predecessors or indeed, either of its post war successors. The period 1933-1945, on the other hand does form a continuation, with a clear starting point and a clear end point.

I would also argue that moving Luftwaffe posts of the period 1933-39 is not the best option for the posters, as indeed is shown by the fact that posters do usually post to the main Luftwaffe board in the first instance rather than post directly to the pre-war board. It might be possible to comprehend the existing policy if posts in error to other boards were also moved automatically to the location in which they belong. However, we can see that this does not happen consistently as shown by the presence of a thread on the pre-war board in which the aircraft shown are not even military machines. Yet they have not been moved to the general board.Nor is this an isolated example.Could we please have some consistency at least.


Do other users have a view on this topic?

Regards,

Clint