North America events sub-forums

[godswearhats]

There's a lot of posts in the North America sub forum for events, most of which are very local and not something that most NA players will be able to attend. I propose dividing the sub forum up into 8-10 regions so that players are more able to easily subscribe to a forum of events that they might actually attend.

[Squirrelich]

Even though I already liked the above, bumping this up because of squeaky wheel reasons.

[Lucidicide]

And what are the most logical regions?

/gets popcorn

[CougDyver]

Clearly there should be two regions... Region 1 being events I might be able to attend, and Region 2 being events that are too far away for me to attend...

[Squirrelich]

well to start with you could try: "USA, Canada, Mexico, and them latin countries to Brazil" as the subtitle of the forum suggests . I bet representatives of each of those could help break up their own areas further. I know I have a few ideas on how the US can be done.

[godswearhats]

Having had to go through this a few times in other communities, here's what I'd recommend for the US based on traveling times and distances, communities, and so forth.

This obviously doesn't include Alaska/Hawaii but they should probably be their own things because of remoteness. Anyone who lives near a border will likely have to check two (or more) forums, but that's a lot more manageable than going through all the different posts in the forum now, and the major gaming cities tend to be far from the borders.

From top left going clockwise, Northwest (Purple), Mountain, (Orange), Midwest (Grey), Northeast (Blue), Mid-Atlantic (Black), Southeast (Yellow), South (Red), Southwest (Green). Colors for illustrative purposes only.

Hope this helps,

~gwh

[keget]

I would love it, or anything close.  It is a pain to look though so much just for stuff in CO.

[Guslado]

2 hours ago, godswearhats said:

Having had to go through this a few times in other communities, here's what I'd recommend for the US based on traveling times and distances, communities, and so forth.

This obviously doesn't include Alaska/Hawaii but they should probably be their own things because of remoteness. Anyone who lives near a border will likely have to check two (or more) forums, but that's a lot more manageable than going through all the different posts in the forum now, and the major gaming cities tend to be far from the borders.

From top left going clockwise, Northwest (Purple), Mountain, (Orange), Midwest (Grey), Northeast (Blue), Mid-Atlantic (Black), Southeast (Yellow), South (Red), Southwest (Green). Colors for illustrative purposes only.

Hope this helps,

~gwh

^This^ ^So much this^

[Four_N_Six]

I will also agree with this map, as long as the grey area be referred to as "The Fighting Mongooses."

[solkan]

On December 12, 2016 at 3:19 PM, godswearhats said:

Having had to go through this a few times in other communities, here's what I'd recommend for the US based on traveling times and distances, communities, and so forth.

This obviously doesn't include Alaska/Hawaii but they should probably be their own things because of remoteness. Anyone who lives near a border will likely have to check two (or more) forums, but that's a lot more manageable than going through all the different posts in the forum now, and the major gaming cities tend to be far from the borders.

From top left going clockwise, Northwest (Purple), Mountain, (Orange), Midwest (Grey), Northeast (Blue), Mid-Atlantic (Black), Southeast (Yellow), South (Red), Southwest (Green). Colors for illustrative purposes only.

Hope this helps,

~gwh

You've put North Dakota and South Dakota in a region named Mountain.

Do I need to provide links to the mountain removal project announcements?  Either way, you owe Aaron popcorn.  

Edit: To be a bit more constructive, it would be much more useful to put North Dakota and South Dakota in the same region as Minnesota.  Because half of the gaming population in North Dakota may as well be in Western Minnesota.

 

[godswearhats]

For this particular game, there were no active communities in either state so it was a moot point. What ended up happening was that the active communities told *us* where they played the most and we adjusted accordingly.

Oklahoma could also be part of the south and the names are arbitrary. 

[solkan]

1 hour ago, godswearhats said:

For this particular game, there were no active communities in either state so it was a moot point. What ended up happening was that the active communities told *us* where they played the most and we adjusted accordingly.

As someone who happens to live in of those two states, the response I would like to give you, that your response deserves, would probably get me a moderator warning.

But, congratulations, now you have someone from that area explaining to you that you made a mistake.  

[solkan]

To be more specific...

North Dakota has a population of about 600,000 people and an average population density of about 1.  The largest metropolitan area in the state (using a tie breaker of number of Wal-Mart stores and CostCo's, and number of active gaming stores) is the Fargo-Moorhead "metropolitan" area.  It's composed mainly of four towns, West Fargo and Fargo on the North Dakota side of the border, and Moorhead and Dilworth on the Minnesota side of the border. As far as the gaming community is concerned, Fargo-Moorhead is one city made out of four suburbs, and both the Warchine/Hordes and 40k groups have floated about between the various game stores that have been in the area.

Fargo-Moorhead is the reason why North Dakota needs to be in the same forum section as Minnesota.  It's where you're most likely to see a future gaming community and henchman from.  That isn't going to happen if you split that community in two pieces, and say "You should remember to check the neighboring region for events.

The people in South Dakota may feel differently about being organized in Mountain Zone or Midwest, but North Dakota needs to be grouped with Minnesota.  You cannot split the Red River Valley in half.

[Lucidicide]

I'm going to jump in here as I've finished my popcorn.

Dividing up areas can be difficult for a variety of reasons. Let's all keep in mind that we're all trying to do things that are good for the game we all play and enjoy. With that in mind, let's take a tone reset from all parties.

[godswearhats]

I'm very confused about how I offended anyone, so I'm happy to apologize but without really knowing what I did wrong it's kind of meaningless. I suspect it's all just a misunderstanding based on the ambiguity of English and the lack of any tone in text messages :-) I have nothing but respect for solkan because he answers all my rules questions really quickly!

I created the map above for Warhammer Fantasy when we were splitting the country up into regions for the Masters tournament. The communities I was referring to in my post were Fantasy communities, not Malifaux ones. We had no Tournament Organizers in either of the Dakotas in the community, nor could we find any. So for that scenario, it was a moot point. In other cases (e.g. Nevada), the communities themselves said "we should be part of this region for reason X" - Nevada really only had one big Warhammer tournament each year and that was mostly attended by Californians so it made sense to be part of the same region as them.

I think it's fine to start arbitrarily and have the very active Henchman and community members in each state help keep adjusting over time.

Edited December 14, 2016 by godswearhats
Typos

[Paddywhack]

I think having region specific notices would be very helpful. I for one don't even bother with this forum for trying to find tourneys as most of the ones posted are not in my area. If Icould narrow down to a specific region that would make it easier. Even if it were just 3-4 regions it could help the noise to signal ratio when looking for outings. 

[Inquisitor Wall]

With the increased number of event being run, I think this is an extremely important change to make.  I posted an event this week and by the next day, the event was almost onto the second page of events.  Regardless of the exact splitting up of where the boundaries are being drawn, splitting into several sections is a great idea.  It is clear from this thread, that people will vocalize the region that best fits for their gaming communities.

[Omenbringer]

While I agree that there needs to be an easier method for players to access event information I don't think the forums are a good way to achieve that. I would probably try working with google maps and a calendar application. That way players can just look on a map to determine where "close" events are (a very relative term dependent upon ones willingness to travel) and when. The only tricky part would be in having the calendar application "clean" old events from the map so they don't clutter the space. Would also probably be good to include a date searchable feature to further restrict the number of event "hits" that are viewed.

As a benefit Wyrd would also gain an easily identifiable "hot spot" map for future marketing or convention support.

[Nathan Caroland]

There are a few things we can look into that might integrate with the forum or, more likely, be an outside piece that can be utilized by the community. I'll see if we can't devote some attention to it in Jan/Feb (when we have another person on staff, and a touch more  knowledgeable about this sort of thing). 

Dustin, nudge me then as a reminder.

[godswearhats]

Well, if we're talking about the "right" way to do it, I would much prefer if there was an app to allow me to put all the event details in it. Players could get notifications of events near them, for any value of near they care about. Then on the day of the event, I could push out scheme pools to all the players for each round, they could select their crews/schemes/scores inside the app (so that they were definitely valid and within 50SS) and I (and Wyrd) would get a lot of interesting and valuable data about how the game was being played across the world.

However, the forum is what we have today, so a simple change could make a big difference :-)

[Omenbringer]

9 hours ago, Nathan Caroland said:

There are a few things we can look into that might integrate with the forum or, more likely, be an outside piece that can be utilized by the community. I'll see if we can't devote some attention to it in Jan/Feb (when we have another person on staff, and a touch more  knowledgeable about this sort of thing). 

Dustin, nudge me then as a reminder.

Will do on the reminder Nathan.

[Omenbringer]

Nathan here is that nudge you requested.

Hopefully this tool can become a reality. Know you all have an awful lot of brands in the fire currently.