I will have a go at explaining the "where to post" confusion.
It always has been the idea that ID requests should be initially posted to the general Glass (or Paperweights) forum. The country forums were intended to be for discussions or research on topics that were definitely known to belong in those categories. When ID requests in Glass were suitably answered, a moderator would move them to a country forum, or to the Resolved / Unresolved sub-forums within Glass if there was no country forum for an item.
In the very early days of the GMB, Murano was the only “country” forum, but in fact it was set up as a “Murano society” rather than as a basic country forum as we have them now. When there was only Murano as a specific forum, in most cases the items were reasonably certain to be in the correct place and to move them out to Glass, only to move them more or less immediately back again, was unnecessary work. So the habit of posting to a country forum developed from there.
But when the country forums began to be extended, ID requests were often posted in all those forums, even when the poster had only a vague idea that the item might be of that particular country (or range of countries). Over the past few months there have been quite a few cases of posts having to be moved out of a country forum to the general Glass forum.
Very recently the board’s front-page category headings were extended to say “Post here for ID requests” and “No ID requests here please”. This was a simple way to try to encourage members to do what had always been intended.
Having said that, it is, of course, acceptable that if an item is known to be of a certain country then its original post can be made in the relevant country forum. This would normally only apply to posts where an ID request is, say, in respect of a designer rather than a glassworks or a place. Also, any post which is a general discussion relating to a specific country can be placed immediately in that country forum.
With many forums and sub-forums, it will never be easy to maintain to a specific set of guidelines for where to post because there will always be exceptions to any guideline! But the idea of “ID requests always start in Glass (or Paperweights)” was intended to keep things simple – especially for moderator work load.