New Forum Section: Nihonto Theories

[Hoshi]

Something which I've realized lately: we get appraisal demands all over the place. It spills in translation, which veers off topic towards appraisal. You find them shared between 'Nihonto' and 'Nihonto general discussion' which aren't clean categories either.  I understand we can't just re-organize these sections, but 'Nihonto' could be renamed as 'Nihonto appraisal' to differentiate it from 'Nihonto Theories' 

 

I'm more interested in the theory topics, but there isn't a section devoted to it. And there is a lot to be said on the topic, and has been said - but it ends up all crowded in en between the wak appraisals which are posted at the highest rate. It's also not clear what we learn as a community across the plethora of wak threads and rust-bucket identification, but we do provide a valuable and free service and that's cool - but it shouldn't crowd out areas where we can be challenged and learn the most. 

[Gakusee]

Well, I really enjoy your threads and topics as they make us think and reach for our knowledge and encourage good debate. Wherever they are placed. I miss the old threads of 6-10 years ago where people would pitch their experience and knowledge in sometimes heated manner but at least gems of knowledge were coming out. A lot of the older contributors seem to have retired or to have been exiled (that is a “theory” here for you).....

[Pete Klein]

'Exiled'?  Is that as in being thrown out, asked to leave, being shown the door or perhaps 'summarily expunged'?  Of course, it could also refer to a state of 'self imposed exile' where one chooses not to associate further due to any number of rationale or circumstances.  This reminds me of a wonderful line from the movie, 'Victor/Victoria' where Robert Preston's character 'Toddy' quips, "Please... Being thrown out of this place is significantly better than being thrown out of a leper colony".

[Jussi Ekholm]

I've been enjoying the more theoretical topics a lot too. I agree that lot of new topics seem to be about military swords or random average items. Now don't get me wrong there is nothing wrong about that and that is the level for many of us (me included). However I feel that some theoretical debates might be lot more beneficial in advancing our "common" knowledge. Not sure if we need a new section though.

 

I think I'd have more than few topics that I could start with a question that really puzzles me about high end collecting. I have few on my mind that I've wondered lately but I'd need to figure them out as understandable topic openings. They make sense to me in my own head but would not make a good forum post opening in the current form.

[Guest Rayhan]

I think many new sections and even a direct bidding arena for sales with tracked exchanges and sales details so the NMB can take a small fee on sales directly for helping as a source?

[Ken-Hawaii]

Do all of you realize how much more work this would be for Brian? Let's figure out a way to put him on salary, & then we can ask him to be a full-time Web-master!

[Brian]

I second the motion
What I do during working hours is not really fair on my employer (I try to keep it minimal) and only have an hour or 2 in the evenings.
Luckily we have great mods, but can't expect them to devote more time either.
It would be frustrating to try and have to moderate more posts and decide where they belong. I am currently speaking to a generous benefactor who might enable us to grow and have more resources and with that, we could expand and have more people assisting etc. It is all under some serious thought right now.

[PNSSHOGUN]

There are enough regular posters that additional moderators/janitors could be assigned to cover new sections or growth. For the most part regular posters here are older, wiser and level headed enough to not go mad with power.

[Guest Rayhan]

What size team would be needed not to moderate only, but to maintain? Mods we can assign more if there are group or subject leaders?

[Brian]

None of it would be possible until we have better hosting. I think we are having resource limit issues as we get busier, and already I am dealing with email issues where outgoing notification mails are being blocked by Gmail and Hotmail

I think a server move and software update is unavoidable (as Ray and I am discussing) and after that we will have room to make changes and do much more.
Biggest problem will be we need to move several hundred thousand files, onto a new server, then update the old software several versions higher...get everything up and running and then migrate. And we will lose posts and members done over that period. Likely to be several days to a week I guess.
Maybe a good time for this would be Easter when there is some downtime.

[Stephen]

What would it take to be rated secure?

[Brian]

If you mean the HTTPS protocol, that will come with the new software.

[Guest Rayhan]

As Brian has mentioned we are in the stages of looking at new hosting and software but maybe we should have a team of devops to handle the on boarding on the new servers so no one is stressed. How long do we think we will need?