Views on the Merging of Region Threads?

Although his account is still active, he did wipe all of his reviews.

 

At the risk of causing mass disappointment, I'm alive and well, still keeping an eye on the forums but not posting (except for this) or keeping up particularly closely on developments. Never had any reviews on this site, for the record. Wishing well to all of the beer advocates and industry participants of the Midwest, Great Lakes, and beyond. Now back to my slumber...

 

Not terribly bothered either way, though I can see how it could cause confusion if you're not familiar with all the individual breweries.

 

As I commented in the other thread about this...

An odd choice, to make the regional forums cover a larger region when craft brewing is becoming more and more local.

It also seems like a counterproductive approach if the goal is to increase participation. How does combining lower-participation regions with larger-participation regions increase participation? It may SEEM like participation increases, but it is a faux increase, caused merely by adding together two groups, and is likely to actually decrease participation overall in the regional forums.

I participated in the (former) midwest regional forum primarily to discuss beers and brewers from Minnesota and the Iowa and North Dakota ones who distribute to MN. Personally, I would have liked Wisconsin to also be included.

Beyond that, the brewers from the remainder of the (former) midwest region were of only occasional interest. Smaller brewers from other states now added to the (new) midwest region have little interest to me since they don't distribute here.

When a new brewer showed up in the state, it was usually discussed in the "Twin Cities Bottle Sightings" thread, and if I cared, I could then visit the appropriate reginal forum, or just look up the brewery/beer in the BA database.

TL/DR: The merging at best creates a faux increase in participation and likely actually decreases participation. I know it will decrease participation for me, at least in the short term.

The idea of a regional forum in the first place is to have discussions with more focus on local interest. This change does not do that, and, in fact, does the opposite.

 

FTFY

 

Don't like it. Us Chicagoans already annoy our Great Lakes neighbors with incessant babbling. Now these states west of the Mississippi are going to get a much better idea of why 'Sconnies have a point calling us FIBs...

 

Oh, I didn't need any help understanding that!

 

It’s like we’ve (Great Lakes) gone back in time

 

LOL 8 out of 10 people (voted) hate this.

 

Man this describes my opinion exactly. The scene is so localized it seems. Every state has so many of their own breweries and beers and festivals and releases to keep up with. With the exception of a few states you could almost have a forum for every state. I think it’s foolish to condense it now with as much is going on in every little corner of the country.

 

I voted love and I don't see what the big deal is. Getting the TG drama thread and SP all one-stop-shop makes sense since there's so much fanbase overlap between the 2 regions. Maybe I'm making too much of an assumption here but the Midwest forum always seems relatively dead compared to rhe Great Lakes forum (though I will concede most of the action in the GL seems to be Chicagoans doing their Chicago-ing over Chicago beer). So maybe if I was here for more of the Midwest stuff I'd be pissed since my favorite threads might end up buried in specifically Chicago jibber-jabber. But if you follow your favorite threads you get updates anyway so it doesn't matter how buried they are. Give it a couple weeks and I bet everything will even out. I give the change a thumbs up.

 

FYI, it's not just the 'Sconnies' but thanks for the revelation.

 

It wasn't broke. Why did someone "fix" ie. break it.

 

I’ve now got more people to annoy me with their posts. And in turn, I will annoy more people with my posts. Sounds pretty even to me.

 

The more I think about it, maybe it’s not so good. I look at the threads and it’s pretty much the old Great Lakes threads. Will the traditional Midwest threads get lost in all this? Perhaps.

 

Exactly what I’m thinking. As I write this 7 of the top 10 are Chicago specific, and 2 are just general (this and top 5 Midwest beers)

 

Masses being ~200 users between the two polls (not including those who voted in both)? Above poll should have included an Indifferent option imo. In some respects, this seems to be making a mountain out of a molehill, but again I'm indifferent as it's the user created posts/threads themselves which really matter in the end. It does not impact how I use the forum but if most people want it reverted, sure.

 

Yeah, I have not participated in the new forum until now. Too much Chicago stuff that I have no need for. I'll probably move to other social media platforms where I can focus on the breweries that are actually local.