When reading the forums, I come across many posts of Numista users asking the same question, "Why isn't my coin dated 19-whatever listed here?" If the article isn't locked, that user often adds that year to the list. If the article is locked, the user nags the forum and Numista admins to fix the "error". However, as I've seen repeated many times before, that user overlooked a different Numista entry for a similar coin. This most often happens when a coin changes composition without changing design.
A good example of this is the British penny KM935 and KM935a. They look the same to the naked eye, and it takes a magnet to tell them apart. A user searches for a 1993 British pennny, finds the KM935 entry, and assumes they have an unlisted coin. (They do not notice or find the KM935a entry, which would be the correct one.) This leads to a forum post or an article edit addressing the "missing date". If the user had found the KM915a entry, this mistake could have been avoided. This is a particularly common problem when two or more designs or compositions bear the same date.
We can prevent these kinds of mistakes from being made. My suggestion to fix this problem is to add a section of each coin's entry called "See Also" or "Similar Coins". In this section, there is a list of other coins that look similar to, are frequently mistaken for, or were made at the same time as the coin in question. Numista users could propose coins for entry on this list, and admins could approve these suggestions. Each coin page would be populated with a list of related coins that a user might have been looking for instead. This way, hopefully users searching for their coin will more easily find the correct Numista entry for their coin, rather than assume that the first entry they find is incorrect.
Let's face it... users searching for coins here don't always find the right coin entry on the first try, and giving them more ways to find the correct entry will pay off in preventing mistaken coin identities, inaccurate entry edits, and annoying requests for needless admin action.
What do you think of my idea?