Do you like the new Regional Forum Updates?

There's nothing stopping it but there's nothing encouraging it. And by merging forums with a huge number of brewery specific threads it only makes it more difficult for more general threads to have any space to breathe.

 

Just gotta make a point to read and post on them, creating more clicks, which is what I think the whole point of this is.

Quote from Todd in his OP on the topic: "forums that weren't as active, and to liven things up a bit".

See don't see how burying posts about Bellingham, Bend, Spokane, or Boise with hype-boi threads from Denver, SD, LA, and the Bay Area is gonna liven things up. It's gonna drive users in smaller places away from participating. Do either a Denver user or I care about the the latest thing from a 7bbl brewery in the others city?

 

I don't like it.

If anything, these regional forums should be smaller than larger, as people want information on their local scenes, not scenes as far as 500 miles away.

The main forums (Beer Talk, Beer News & Releases) are there for folks who can't get enough of reading about general beer info.

Conversely, the Chicago beer nerds are very active...where we used to only piss off 4-5 states, now we're pissing off like 10 states.

I'm not sorry that we are active, but I'm sorry that now a ton of other states feel "oppressed" by us or something. Looking at you, @eawolff99 @morimech etc. We post a lot, and we're not going to stop. Blame @Todd

 

Not fond of this idea. Small, distinct regions are likely to be buried by the (sometimes vastly) larger ones. To be honest, I really enjoy reading the NW forum for tips on local production I may have missed and local scuttlebutt, but sometimes log on to find myself days behind. Aggregating could well overwhelm my ability to keep up, and much of the new content on breweries in CA will be out of reach for sampling anyway. Perhaps some way to see an overview of nearby regions to sample content from the adjacent forums might be a better approach. It's a good idea to keep up with neighbors. I'm glad BA is trying out new ideas and I'll keep my mind open, but this one gives me trepidation.

 

And, I'm repeating myself here, what good does it do anyone outside the very Northwestest of Washington to know what the latest from North Fork is, and what good does it do us to hear about the equivalent brewery in Denver?

Denver is 1300-ish miles away from Bellingham. The distance from Boston to Daytona Beach FL is 1200-ish miles. Why are they not in the same new region?

Within Cali alone, Yreka to San Diego is 750 miles. San Diego is roughly the same distance from Bellingham as is Denver. How are either of these local or regional pairs?

 

This is an interesting viewpoint, but I do think most users of the regional forums tend to go to a specific landing spot (or two) rather than bounce around the way you like to. Having moved from Florida to Maine four years ago, I encountered virtually none of the same folks in both forums, except now that I think about it, you were pretty active on both. But I think you’re the exception rather than the norm in that sense.

 

Being a Maryland resident, I was always frustrated that majority of regional traffic was NY, and now we have the full New England States added as well any of my posts about rural breweries will quickly fall to page 2 and not get visibility. think Mid Atlantic should be re-added Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, NJ and Del. NY can go to northeast because that state stretches all the way to Canada and boarders VT. It’s Northeast and let Suarez and HF conversations be in same group discussions.

 

It needs to have the note in description like before that says what states make up the regions to clarify for users.

 

As long as the DC metro remains split between two regions, with DC proper and the Maryland suburbs in one forum and the Virginia suburbs in another, I will remain dissatisfied with the regional format.

 

With the way beer scenes are hyper local these days, this is an odd choice. So much of what most people drink comes from small breweries with Smurf-sized distribution footprints. This makes what's happening in my corner of NW WA totally irrelevant to someone in California and what's going on in CA meaningless to me.
Worse still, with so much more hype/activity in CA the threads that are actually relevant to me will be drowned out as will the tight NW forum community I've been reading for more than a decade.

 

Don't like the change. Keep the California group separate from the Northwest (Oregon/Washington).

 

That's a no for me for reasons stated already. A busy and active Regional Forum was combined to make a crowded one that I have to pick around numerous threads I'm not interested in. Pre-COVID I traveled to some of the areas that were combined in my local forum but if I wanted travel information I would just look through the then separate Regional forum.

 

As a native of Upstate NY, I'd like to point out that's it's a long way from Niagara Falls to Montauk. Where I'm from (near Rochester), Toronto, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh are closer than Boston, NYC, and Philly.

There's gonna be flaws in any regional system, and trying to divide states isn't practical, but smaller regions instead of larger seems to be the way to go, if you're trying to make regional forums more active.

 

Maybe because they were getting drowned out by the bigger cities? How does the activity in Illinois shake out? If you had a few active users in Southern Illinois, would they even be able to get a word in edgewise among all the Chicago chatter?

 

Where did this idea come from that some arbitrary volume of posts for certain cities or states scares others from wanting to discuss breweries in their own area?

I don't know why that seems to be metastasizing in here, but that's completely absurd. If someone is so fragile so as to be intimidated away from creating a thread because all the big bad Portlanders talk too much, they aren't going to make a thread any other day either.

I get some of the other arguments that have been made here, but this one has got to go.