About the current state of the forum (a personal OPINION)

[Ruy Horta]

Let me repeat that all feedback is important, also when its negative. The reason I put so much emphasis on Kari's post was to see if others might share his views, or have objections of their own, and that I might learn from that.

Of course all positive feedback is much appreciated

[Don Caldwell]

I spend less time on TOCH than before, because I find it harder to browse. I found the old flat format very conducive to quick scanning. To each his own, however; this is Ruy's baby, we're not going back, and I can live with it.

I have promised myself that I will never again read any but the first page of a long thread; the odds are too great that I will eventually conclude that I have just been wasting my time. I do blame the moderator(s) for not cutting off long, crappy threads, and suggest a guideline: any thread that has degenerated into mud-slinging by two or three participants, with little or no attempt to present new data other than "gotchas", should be deleted by the moderator, even if it is not blatantly obscene or libelous.

I hope that this is constuctive enough for the membership.

Don Caldwell

[Christer Bergström]

What you moderators could do is to intervene - as moderators - in debates and ask people who fail to provide source references to do so. Too often, discussions degenerate because some people take advantage of how easy it is to get away with totally unsupported assertions. I can understand Don Caldwell's feelings toward long threads - sooner or later many of them degenerate into loose assertions, and those who contribute with supported facts withdraw, leaving the scene to the babblers who have no reliable sources for their assertions.

You could intervene in threads with written warnings: "Show your sources in your next post, or it will be deleted. Such unsupported assertions lead us nowhere."

If you force people to shape up in that way, I'm sure we will be saved from much unnecessary mudslinging, and it will create a much better culture on this board. There is a Swedish saying - the first to raise his voice is the one who feels that his position is weak. (Maybe typical of us calm and boring Swedes )

All best from an ice cold Sweden,

Christer Bergström

[Jukka Juutinen]

I think the site is very good at the moment as far as format goes. Though LEMB has its good moments, its registration is real pain and the overall I think it is abit too fragmented (i.e. almost down to separate forums for left handed Luftwaffe personnel and right handed ones.

Contentwise the TOCH´s greatest shortcoming is that deeply techincal discussion is often lacking. See for example the La-7 thread I initiated. My intention was to have serious technical/engineering discussion. Now it is politics, strategy and tactics argumentation. As odd as it sounds, AH simulator forum has far better threads for gearheads.

[Ruy Horta]

Well, the thread development is influenced by the participants themselves.

I saw too little hard data and a lot of opinion, if you want to conduct a discussion based on hard data, there is no better way than to supply hard facts - that is upload documents and ignore any drift from the subject.

Personally I'd like to include a tech forum, but last time I tried any additional category it wasn''t much appreciated.

As a test, I'll inlcude a new forum which will be TECH only, lets see if it catches on. I'll even split the La 7 thread and place it there as a first post.

[O.Menu]

Hi Ruy !

Viewed topic turn from dark red to black...

Unfortunately the contrast between those two colors is so small that i m pretty sure many even dont notice about it...

So is it possible to make the color change more visible ?