Suggestion: Location-specific subgroups

Si_UKNZ

When you enter your profile in the forum, you add a country and city to your details. It occurred to me that this could be used to automatically add you to subgroups based on your location, and you could have access to a region specific sub-board for that area. For example Aus/NZ/Asia could be an 'Asia Pacific' group.

What problem does this solve? Well it would be a nice way of creating subcommunities, because (speaking from the point of view of someone in NZ) if you're not in US/ Europe, 95% of the noise in the forum is not relevant on this side of the world. Yes, I know that a lot of it is not relevant on any side of any world, but I mean REALLY not relevant.

Anyway, its always better to socialise on a local level.

Thoughts?  

Pitfall69

I thought you had enough Lego? 95% of the "noise" is Lego ;)

Si_UKNZ

95% of the noise is people buying Lego from shops in EU/US, going to events in EU/US, brand store stuff, etc etc. 

CCC

Isn't this just about availability of sets, deals, and promos? Much of that is covered in the different shopping areas. It would be better if some of the threads saying "available at TRU" and so on were put in the shopping areas rather than the collecting areas. Other than that, would you not want to see any information about certain promos just because they are not yet officially available to you? I find it handy to know about such stuff, since you can trade with others to get things that otherwise you'd never get.

Si_UKNZ

Thats because you live in the uk where 90% of promos relate to you in some way, instead of a country where its more like 5%, if that.

And its about a lot more than promos, its about, well, everything.

CCC

I'm not totally sure it would work. Say there is a topic like SDCC - should this go into an area where only Americans can see it? Or Californians? So information would get hidden from others, even if they wanted it?

Or if a set is being discussed in a general thread and someone says it is now available in the UK, then that post alone should not be shown to anyone outside the UK? Or should it go into a UK only area, away from the more general thread?

Or a promo set is only available in the US, so it is a US only thread. But then it becomes available in Europe. Does Europe then get its own thread about the same thing, or the US one is opened up to Europe to, or something else?

I guess there is nothing stopping you starting a "Lego in New Zealand" thread if you really wanted an area to talk about local things.

Bumblepants

What about weirdos who read what goes on in other places quite a bit though? I say this for a friend.

Si_UKNZ

Im suggesting a seperate region specific board just like the us or uk shopping boards and working in the same way, just that its subscribed by default for some people and unsubscribed by default for others.

CCC

I'd imagine it would be an administration nightmare with the numbers of countries represented and almost seems to go away from the idea of open sharing between members.

I'd just start a new thread about whichever location you want, and let everyone read it if they want but ask in the first post that posts relate only to NZ based shows, deals or promos and that any more general discussion about sets or collecting or building go in the general sections as normal.

Huw

Not only an administrative nightmare but also not technically possible on the hosted platform we are using.

masterX244

maybe splitting the shopping elsewhere a bit more would help, too since currently it catches all of america except the USA & canada, europe without the UK and all other continents in one category

splitting by continent would allow to filter out wrong continent things much easier than that mix thats there currently

Butcha

Not that I'd want to bring you off brickset forums, but we do have a dedicated NZ AFOL topic over at eurobricks which might help towards what you're looking for.
http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=26231&st=4375