I just wanted to say Kudos to the CoinTalk crew who dug through thousands of threads to separate out the World and Ancient forums. To @Peter T Davis and whomever was involved, bravo! Cheers, Brandon
Eh, I liked them combined. Like I just said in another thread, I am a world coin collector, its just many of mine are older than others. My question is where is the cutoff? Where do I post things like Vandals, or Sassanid, or Hepthalite coinage? The beauty of having them combined is classification was not an issue. Now, there might be a great Carolingian thread I miss if I am just checking out Ancients, or a great 10th century Byzantine thread I miss if I only am looking at world. I do applaud the effort put into this change, just wish there were more of a cutoff for everyone to understand. Maybe make it Ancient and Medieval, (pre 1500), and World, (post 1500)? Its an idea.
I think such a decision should/would be made by the users. I wouldn't change the "titles" of the forum sections to dictate this. Some people are just impossible to please. By extension of your suggestions, the USA is also part of the "World" so we wouldn't need a separate World and USA coins section, eh? I know the members who post here who don't live in the USA always prod us a little on our exclusivity of the USA from the rest of the World.
I think this will just come naturally as people post new topics. I'm not sure it needs to be formalized with a year cut-off as @medoraman suggests. Some decision must have already been quasi-made in the separation of historical threads to the two separate forums.
So then where would I post Medieval coins? Your solution will lead to medieval coins to be posted in both areas, making medieval a red headed stepchild. Why would I come to a site if I have no idea where threads of interest to me might be found? It sounds like the same logic as doing away with lines at Disneyworld and telling the visitors to just "figure it out" who is next for the rides. I am not saying my idea is perfect, but medieval coins and collectors usually have more in common with ancient coins and collectors. I mean medieval are hand struck, just like ancients, and any cutoff between ancient and medieval will be argued forever. So why not just put the hand struck coins, (pre 1500 mainly), in one category, and machine struck coins, (mainly post 1500), on a different category. Even with this solution I have series that will be cut in two, like my medieval Thai coins. But, its a start.
Any dogmatic "split" you make is your personal opinion. It's like NGC defining modern as "post-1950" for USA coins, but as post-1970 for non-USA coins. Why? Your argument seems to suggest that the line be based on technology? "Ancient/hammered coins" vs. "Modern milled World coins". Then you have people who collect British coins where some are hammered and some are milled under one ruler. My point is that you can't make everyone happy, and people have differing ideas of what goes where. Heck, some ancient folks call anything after 1000 AD "modern". I'm not being combative, I'm just stating that your solution is one of many. Some cross-posting will unavoidably happen. The search functionality works across forums, so I don't see your argument/point as being salient with regard "finding coins of interest".
Yes, some cross posting will happen. My proposed solution, only a proposal, though would minimize it. Many other sites and auction firms split coins based upon this exact same date. I am not reinventing the wheel, just proposing some already in use delineations. I am simply saying World versus Ancient would have a lot MORE confusion and cross threads than a World (after 1500) versus Ancient/Medieval, (up to 1500) would. I was trying to minimize the confusion. Nothing would eliminate it. Btw, breaking them apart from each other, World versus Ancient, the move you are congratulating Peter on, is itself a "dogmatic split". What precisely is the difference between a 1602 German thaler and a Ptolemaic Greek Tet? Why is this first split to be congratulated, but any further clarity a "dogmatic split that is my personal opinion". A personal opinion split has ALREADY happened, and I am just seeking clarity to manage the split.
I congratulated them on the review of thousands of threads to partition the sections. I was perfectly fine with World and Ancient together -- especially after having been told for years by Doug that it wasn't going to change. Given that the search feature works just fine here, I have never had a problem with fewer forum sections. So, again, I didn't "congratulate" them on the split -- I congratulated them on the effort that went into it. I'm indifferent on the split itself as I can use the search mechanism just fine to find anything I want here.
Sure, then we can split exonumia into "Medals" "Tokens" and "Other Exonumia" Maybe we should also split the US Coins forum into each denomination? lol
Nah, fine with me. This is basically a US site, and many American collectors do not consider the US part of the world. Other sites have different setups. It is primarily a question of what people post. As for a dividing line between "ancient" and "world", we can work that out while continuing to post. For European pieces, some time around 1000 would make sense, simply because coins were not as common in the early Middle Ages as they were in ancient Greece or Rome ... Christian
