Catagories at hipstamp
I've just noticed that Tahiti is listed under "French Colonies," but French Polynesia is under "Australia & Ocenia." I'm sure there are other similar anomalies, but just this example is enough to make me cross eyed...
Comments
There are too many inconsistencies to list completely.
Some entities are not listed (Bangkok and Griqualand West) - one has to resort to listing in "Other" for those listings. At least they do come up when you do a site-wide search.
Some areas are listed in the wrong location. Brunei is a good example. Bermuda is listed in the Caribbean. There are many former colonies that are listed in their geographic location rather than under the colonial country, so most colony listings under individual countries are incomplete. French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa are listed under Africa and not under "France & Colonies" , German East Africa is listed under Africa and not under "Germany & Colonies".
And then there are the double listings. I have listed a lot of West Berlin stamps and when I started listing them I went to the "Germany & Colonies" heading and saw the heading of "Berlin" near the top of the list. So I started listing my stamps there. Later I noticed that under "Germany & Colonies" at the bottom of the headings is West Berlin. So I checked and the stamps listed under Berlin do not show up under West Berlin. So if you are listing, which category do you pick? There are other examples, such as Central African Empire and Central African Republic listed right next to each other - why not just one heading? The St Thomas and Prince Islands are listed under Caribbean but they are also listed as Sao Tome and Principe under Africa - this is the same country located off the west coast of Africa (not the Caribbean) - one is an English spelling and the other is the Portuguese spelling - it is not, however, listed under "Portugal and Colonies".
When listing one can't see all the categories that ones sees when browsing. So when listing a former colony that is now an independent county and the names are different, you have to list under the independent country name and assume that it will be listed under the subcategory under that country. An example is Barbuda. You can find Antigua on the list of available countries to list under in the Caribbean category, but Barbuda does not show up when you pick Antigua to list an item under. It does get placed in the Barbuda subcategory, however, once you go to into the Browse mode.
Another example would be Basutoland, a British colony. It was never part of South Africa, but you have to list it under South Africa because that is the only place you will find it when you do a browse of the categories. Basutoland should show up under Lesotho because Basutoland became Lesotho upon independence, but instead it is listed under South Africa.
And the list goes on. I would have to assume that whoever put the category listings together never collected stamps because most of this would be very apparent to a world-wide stamp collector.
I contacted the management of this site a couple years ago and brought this issue up. I was told that this was on their list of things to do the next year. That next year was either 2019 or 2020. Obviously nothing has been fixed. And based upon the lack of action and refusal to comment when these questions come up here in the Forums, I assume that it will never be fixed.
https://www.hipstamp.com/store/wilton-philatelics
Also under Austria in Browse, a subcategory of "Austrian Offices in the Turkish Empire" shows up but there is no subcategory for Austrian Offices in Crete.
The more one looks, the more problems one finds.
They should put the subcategories under the country where they belong, like Scott does.
Wow, now there's a simple solution........
https://www.hipstamp.com/store/harry-patsalos-philatelics
https://www.hipstamp.com/store/fatdanes-stamp-store