Regional Forum Updates: It's Like a Big Group Hug

The structure for our United States and International forums have more or less gone unchanged since we created them, but how people use them has evolved. In recent years, we've seen less general threads and more catchall threads for a small number of popular brewers with thousands of replies each. On top of this, many breweries now distribute and operate across multiple states/regions.

United States

Previously, we were using a tweaked version of the Standard Federal Regions for our US forums of which there were ten (arguably too many forums). To help with crossover discussions, breweries that span multiple regions, discovery, forums that weren't as active, and to liven things up a bit, I'm in the process of consolidating our US forums into four core regions and hope to have it wrapped up over the upcoming months.

• US - Midwest: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin (was Great Lakes and Midwest)
• US - Northeast: Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont (was Mid-Atlantic and New England)
• US - South: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia (was South-Atlantic and Southwest)
• US - West: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming (was Mountain, Northwest, and Pacific)

Other Updates:

• The United States category has also been renamed to Regional.
• The Hobbies category has been renamed to Interests and I'm hoping to add more.
• The new regions have been applied to the In-Person forums and all IP forums now live within a single category.

International

• Due to lack of activity, the Belgium, Germany, Scandinavian (now Nordic), and United Kingdom forums have been converted to prefixes and all threads have been moved into the Europe forum.
• Same with Mexico and Australia, which have been moved to Rest of the World forum as prefixes.
• We can create new county prefixes as needed. We'll see how it goes.
  
• No changes to the Canada forum.
• All forums that were previously under the International category (retired) are now under Regional.

Consider this a big group hug (virtual, of course) that'll bring us closer together.

I'll post a follow-up here once it's complete.

 

Updates:

• South and South-Atlantic forums were merged into Southeast on April 19.
• All of the above updates listed under International were made on April 19.
• I just merged Great Lakes and Midwest into Midwest.

 

Updates:

• Mid-Atlantic and New England are now the Northeast.
• Regional forums have been reordered alphabetically.

 

Updates:

• Northwest has been merged into Pacific.
• Forum descriptions (if any) now appear on mobile when you're viewing thread lists within the forum.

 

Updates:

• Mountain and Pacific have been merged and renamed to West.
• Southeast and Southwest have been merged and renamed South.
• Delaware, District of Columbia, and Maryland have been moved to South.
• Arizona and New Mexico have been moved to West.
  
• I moved a bunch of threads specific to DE, DC, and MD to the South. If I missed any, especially brewery threads, please report the thread for mods to review and move.
• In-Person forums reflect theses changes too.

Note: Our breakdown for the US is based on the widely-used US Census Bureau regions that were defined in 1950.

This project is now complete. Thanks for your patience, feedback, and banter during the process. Enjoy the big group hug!