Part of the problem is the absence of a handy up-to-date reference which would be not descriptive (like e.g. Rene's website), but assertive. In many fields of knowledge one has sources such as textbooks and handbooks to start with, which contain statements of established facts, which would cut off many false or suboptimal directions of research.
One old idea in this Forum has been to comprise such a reference for which I suggested a fashionable title VMBOK (Voynich Manuscript Body of Knowledge). The You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. section of the Forum is dedicated to that task. However, this work requires much effort and dedication, not only from the mods team but also from the community, and time proved it not very popular, the section is dormant. Maybe the idea was not that good after all.
In general, I highly recommend to take time to browse our Forum and participate in discussions prior to publishing anything about the VMS. As of now, it looks like it's the other way around: the authors publish something, then, in the process of searching for mentions of their article on the net, they discover our Forum (which of course is the first to discuss what they have written), and then they join it to discuss and defend their results.
One old idea in this Forum has been to comprise such a reference for which I suggested a fashionable title VMBOK (Voynich Manuscript Body of Knowledge). The You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. section of the Forum is dedicated to that task. However, this work requires much effort and dedication, not only from the mods team but also from the community, and time proved it not very popular, the section is dormant. Maybe the idea was not that good after all.
In general, I highly recommend to take time to browse our Forum and participate in discussions prior to publishing anything about the VMS. As of now, it looks like it's the other way around: the authors publish something, then, in the process of searching for mentions of their article on the net, they discover our Forum (which of course is the first to discuss what they have written), and then they join it to discuss and defend their results.