Region specific forum sections please

[kwerks]

I am writing this because I believe it will enrich the community aspect of the forum. Being a part of an automotive forum for many years (rx7club.com) I can say that having region specific sections helps members discuss/share topics with in a specific region. If you visit the forum listed above you will find that members give advice and reviews to places with in a region as well as setup club meet-events and participate in other forms of entertainment.

Screen shots of the idea:

Here you see the regional sections of the forum broken down into groups of states etc...



A deeper look into the NE section reveals plenty of information available to members of that region.

Things such as:
- List of merchants in the area along with reviews of them (great advice)
- Meets (excellent way to spend time with friends of the community)
- Willing to BUY or SELL requests for locals
- and many more . . .




Thank you for your time!

[NightWish]

Hint: Avoid mentioning site names unless you want people to assume your post harbours an intent to advertise. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

Originally Posted by kwerks

I believe it will enrich the community aspect of the forum. ... region specific sections helps members discuss/share topics with in a specific region.

The list you present is very North America centric. I suppose the idea could be expanded slightly, though quite where you would draw the line on granularity of each forum's catchment I don't know. Living in a small town I've always found location demarcation based on major cities rather annoying. Particularly sites that lump most of the south of England into "London". This might work for states, but it really doesn't in the UK. To sensibly cover AnimeSuki spread of users we had would be quite hard, I think.

As for what threads would be located in such forums:

Originally Posted by kwerks

Things such as:
- List of merchants in the area along with reviews of them (great advice)
- Meets (excellent way to spend time with friends of the community)
- Willing to BUY or SELL requests for locals
- and many more . . .

You're not selling the idea to me yet... for Anime merchants we have a thread, and I've not heard calls (or more importantly seen a need) to expand it. For buying and selling, we're mostly against this for various reasons, so wouldn't want forum sections devoted to it. For meet ups, I have less objections... not a bad idea actually. However, I wouldn't create a bunch of hard to moderate forums just so people can post one thread every 6 months about meeting up... I'm sure there are more possible threads with a location angle, but our community's diversity makes me think location is not a useful attribute to sort by.

Maybe someone has an argument to convince me otherwise?

[SeijiSensei]

Anything that would segregate people geographically on AS wouldn't get any support from me. I find having the opportunity to converse with people around the world one of the most important benefits of this place. Having regional forums wouldn't necessarily discourage cross-cultural interchanges, but I suspect they might.

Also unless the regions were really large (like "Asia"), I don't see how this would work here. I suppose you could have country-specific forums, but some countries are really large geographically and others are not. A Singapore forum might work since it's so compact, but telling me about an anime event in Texas when I live in New England is pretty useless.

[Daniel E.]

Sorry, Me not like this idea!

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

Anything that would segregate people geographically on AS wouldn't get any support from me.

Agree.

[NoSanninWa]

I'm not terribly fond of it either. I think the idea has died stillborn, without any sympathizers

[xris]

Agreed. I would have thought one of the advantages of the forum is that it breaks down walls, not set them up.

[kwerks]

"Hint: Avoid mentioning site names unless you want people to assume your post harbours an intent to advertise. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt." - Nightwish

I had no such intention, thank you for the benefit of doubt. It did not even cross my mind to think of that since the forums have nothing to do with each other. Regardless I appreciate the hint.

I do understand the advocate to such an appurtenance but I want to clarify that the idea is not to split the entire community into regions! I get the feeling I'm a bit misunderstood. The notion I'm attempting to convey is if regions where added similar to how there is a general section :


I'm sure this site gets statistics as to where its members come from around the world..so that could help. I propose a time to test the idea until new years, and if it causes any problems take it off.

[xris]

Then I still have no idea just what you are suggesting then. Could you give some specific examples, the screen shots you provided give me no idea.

I can't see any reason to split any of the existing forums into regional sub-forums. We don't allow personal buy or sell posts so we can rule those out. I don't see how it would help if we had the (existing) Convention or "Where to Buy" threads located in a regional forums.

Are you suggesting that we just a have a number of independent forums based on region? Again, this seems to be creating walls, plus it would seem to also encourage the use of local languages instead of English.

[xris]

Originally Posted by kwerks

No not at all what you wrote above. The best way for you to understand is if you visit the following forums:

<snip>

As has been requested before, please do not make what I can only assume are adverts for other forums.

I've looked at the forum you suggested and I still have no idea what you are trying to suggest here. I see nothing that could be remotely applicable to a layout for AnimeSuki. Do you mean we should have forums for the different anime studios? That's not going to happen. Do you mean we should have forums for different genres? That's not going to happen.

If you couldn't be bothered to try and explain what it is you mean then I can't say I will take the time to try and second guess you.

[kwerks]

Ok one final time...

Please look at the drop down list image


Notice it lists country and then its regions...

ADD that to the animesuki forum just like that pic has it...so that people from those regions can talk about stuff specific to that region of the world.

Example...There is the new york city anime fest coming in dec. i want to post in the Tristate USA section saying Hey anyone interested in meeting up before the NYC event...this way people who are from the region will know that they can automatically find things happening in the region they are in.

I don't understand how this sets up walls or hurts the community, every major automotive forum has this setup and works well. We in the rx7club use it and it helps us organize meets and rallies.

[xris]

Originally Posted by kwerks

Notice it lists country and then its regions...

ADD that to the animesuki forum just like that pic has it...so that people from those regions can talk about stuff specific to that region of the world.

Strange, I thought I had already rejected such an idea.

Originally Posted by xris

Are you suggesting that we just a have a number of independent forums based on region? Again, this seems to be creating walls, plus it would seem to also encourage the use of local languages instead of English.

Originally Posted by kwerks

Example...There is the new york city anime fest coming in dec. i want to post in the Tristate USA section saying Hey anyone interested in meeting up before the NYC event...this way people who are from the region will know that they can automatically find things happening in the region they are in.

Why in the world should we limit such discussion to just a region? What is wrong with such a post being in the General Anime forum within one of the existing Conventions thread?

There is so little of this kind of discussion that creating a whole bunch of region specific forums (that would have to cover the entire world, not just the U.S.A) would just be silly.

Originally Posted by kwerks

I don't understand how this sets up walls or hurts the community, every major automotive forum has this setup and works well. We in the rx7club use it and it helps us organize meets and rallies.

Just because it works in your automotive forums doesn't mean it has to work here. Again, you seem to be too American-centric about this. The forums you are comparing have huge numbers of members located within the U.S.

Thank you for the suggestion but I don't see it going anywhere.

[NoSanninWa]

If I understand this suggestion, it seems to believe that the regional listings would be helpful for meetups, trading and merchant listings. That makes a lot of sense for an automotive forum where people want to see each other's cars and need to know who does good bodywork in the area. When your hobby is automobiles location is very important.

By contrast, anime is pretty much independant of location. We purchase our anime from online stores, sometimes importing it from Japan. We download fansubs from the internet. None of this is at all dependant on location. Meetups might be nice, but the need for this is really satisfied by conventions.

The problems surmounted by an automobile forum just don't apply to us.

[GHDpro]

The way I see it, you are suggesting the creation of a TON of forums which I think are going to stay very, very empty. Not that not a single post will ever be made in them, but still. If there really was a need for region specific discussions, why has nobody that I can recall ever proposed this in the past?

In any case: unless this thread is overrun by people who all think this is a great idea, your suggestion is rejected. As it stands, we only have people are against your idea posting in this thread so far (excluding yourself of course).

[kwerks]

I understand the reasons for rejection. Thanks for your time!