Do we need a world classic forum?

As a world wide collector, I know you are travelling in the direction of an enormous headache.
To manage the vast compass that Philately is, you shall almost never conquer a suitable hierarchy.
Where to put "Hutt River"?
Australia?
Cinderellas?
Locals?
and so it goes.
The only way I manage it, is with a top line search engine, (Agent Ransack) and stamps placed in Alphabetical order.
A-Z
South Africa was the Styx for me, the vast amounts of territories and re-names, then there's Vietnam, with confusing political entities.

Good luck with what you decide, but it will never be perfect, I would mention the TSF search engine is wanting, brings up
posts when it should just bring up thread titles. Imagine in 2 years time when there are thousands of misplaced posts
how to search then.
The above is no criticism of your work, you are doing a fab job.
Rod.

I think I got that licked Rod. Time to put a sub-forum in Cinderella and Local post called Micronation

If you take a look at the New Latin America and Caribbean you will see what I trying to do.

This forum has a lot of abilities I can make a sub-forum for a sub-forum and so on its never ending.
But I agree it needs a better search engine. Something to work on in my spare time
I have a new hobby, This forum

With respect that is worse.
You need to approach the problem assuming the enquirer knows nothing of Philately.
Put simply Hutt River should be under "H"

Postmarks should be under the Country of issue, or if general under "P"
Registration labels should be under country of issue, or if general under "R"
and so on.
Your system will work fine, if you have a correspondingly good search engine.

A good example to reflect on, is what / how Catalogue producers lay out their menues
Alphabetically, yet Scott, in it's wisdom, puts Reunion under France.
That may be politically correct, but for the Noob, rather hopeless.

I have 40 subforums under "United States" so it certainly can go haywire.

Rod I am going for something like that.
Each continent I will list each country alphabetically and if the need arises create sub-forums for each country.
I have already done that with Canada I have sub-forums in the Canada forum, same with USA and GB .

When I am finished all a new member needs to do is look at the continent forum and go down the list of sub-forums to the reach the country they need.

No matter what I do it will not be perfect and the search engine is only as strong as what proboards provides. Its important to have clear titles to threads to help the search.

Admin Taking a break for a while,,,, think I might open up that cigar box of stamps I been meaning to look at

Rod, if you click on "Search" in the horizontal menu just below the banner image, it will take you to the search options where you can tell it to give you results as threads rather than posts.  

Something to think about, though... Jack, when you get around to messing with the search stuff, can you see if the default for the little search box can give results as threads instead of posts?  (Hopefully that makes sense?)

Jerry I will be heading off to school next month so want to get everything organised.
I will still be living here so I will be on the forum most days.

I don't mind adding most country's into the sub-forums. It does not take long I open up a list of country's and just cut and paste into the forum.

If after a while if we have many dormant sub-forums and it looks kind of derelict I can always hide them from view and just add them if requested.

I have also left a sub-forum titled SUB-FORUMS YOU WANT so if someone wants one they can leave a post there and I will see it.