Should we expand the United States forums again?

Well, when you get to PA and NY you have states that take 5 to 6 hours to drive across. Philly to Pittsburgh and NYC to Buffalo are long trips.

 

When it comes to Pennsylvania, I could go either way.

Like @guinness77 @sulldaddy @Sheppard and @ColdOne have said - the NE WBAYDN thread is great, and a lot of people vacation and travel within the larger Northeast region so you get a lot of cross pollination in those types of conversations.

But it does seem from my perspective that engagement in new or existing threads related to Pennsylvania are less than what they were 5 years ago, but don't know if that is related to the combining of the regions a few years ago or not. But Delaware and Maryland would be nice to be grouped back with PA.

 

Just separate the PNW and California. We don’t get along well. Our beer is better and they know it.

 

I agree with my Cali homie. Apparently, CA beer is so good that they can't even drink it all. So, they send their shelf turds (cough PtE cough) up here get it out of their sight.

 

After some initial hesitation, I’ve come to (mostly) appreciate the current iteration. In part, it seems like the larger geographic approach brought some of the under trafficked state/regions into the fold.

And even for the more active groups I think it’s led to some nice conversations. I’ve definitely found myself checking out what’s happening in Portland, for example, without necessarily having any reason (like an upcoming trip).

If there is another iteration I’d think about it in terms of maintaining roughly even usage (participation/page views/whatever metric), as opposed to one strictly based on geographic lines, with 5-6 clusters, as opposed to 8-10.

 

Being in Portland and traveling to California and Washington a fair amount during the course of each year, I really don't mind having California threads in the same forum.

 

It really doesn't matter to me but I note that it is getting harder to find the US forums as they have moved further down the list of topics in the Regional section. Too much scrolling to get to them. Put the United States back at the top of the section and move the other regions down. Alphabetical order is not necessary.

 

I personally hope it goes back to what it was. I was just thinking about this the other day…

There used to be much more local discussion in the mid atlantic forum than there is now. I think some posters post more than others and a lot of the previous mid atlantic threads that would’ve got more talk just get buried sometimes.

I think the revert back would be a positive.

 

True: However, as noted by @guinness77 and @sulldaddy change can introduce new relationships and experiences one would otherwise never encounter.

More importantly, there is no restriction on who participates in which region, rather the region highlights what places/beers are found in the region.

I think this change might be good, provided we don’t get scrambled up again soon. In other words: It’s the rate of change that concerns me more.

** EDIT **

It might be worth auditing the regional threads to determine if there would be a loss of critical mass by breaking them up. If there are only a few regular participants, and they get split, then it might adversely impact participation in the new regional grouping.

 

Here's a programming chore you weren't looking for: user defined regions. Toggle boxes that allows the user to include/select what states to include in 'their' region.'

For example, my natural territory is the I-91 corridor. I'd select CT, MA, NH, VT and QC.

This is an example of why you don't ask users for their opinions. But, yeah, when you have a couple hours. Please.

 

Yes I think Virginia (and West Virginia) should be included in the mid-Atlantic region.the majority of the WV population is in the panhandle and that is wedged between Md and VA.

 

Grouping Minnesota with Wisconsin makes sense to me, because the majority of Minnesotans live in the Twin Cities, which is just west of the Wisconsin border. So western Wisconsin breweries are considered "local".

The problem with the current groupings (as I see it) is that the Midwest forums are greatly dominated by Chicago. Half of the threads talk about beers I can't even buy here.

In a perfect world, each thread would have a "State" attribute, so we could use filters to see only the states we're interested in. :-)

 

Came to think about that people living close to the border of say one of ten forums very well could participate also in the neighboring forum. It would still be just one fifth of the USA, on average.

I'm neutral though, of course didn't vote...

 

FWIW: I think Southern California (San Diego, LA, Santa Barbara, Paso Robles) could be It's own region. Population wise it would still be bigger than many of the other regions.

Having said that, going back to California and Hawaii would be an improvement.

My thinking is making the regions smaller, gives them a more local feel to them.