Replicating general forums within the regional communities draws traffic away from the general forums and further segregates the site into a collection of sub-sites rather than a single site with a number of sections for regional interest. Good for Socal perhaps but bad for s2ki in general. Not everything that makes perfect and obvious sense when viewed in singularity also makes sense when you broaden your view to include the entire s2ki universe. Physics and logic break down when you try to take the micro and look at it in a macro context.

There is a penalty of compromise when you try to make something that is universally useful. The real solution IMO is to make the For Sale/Classified section more useful rather than breaking it apart into a bunch of small units. Someone selling a CF hood in Socal for example would need to post to a number of forums. If someone in the Bay area was looking for a hood they would never find it in Socal, they wouldn't even look.

The general forums (General Interest, Special Interest, Marketplace, etc.) are designed to be generally useful to about everyone regardless of where they are. there are thousands of people who have never been to the socal forum and probably hundreds that don't even know it exists.

Unfortunately the forums software has many restriction on what you can do and I don't have the time to write a "killer" forums package that does everything anyone could want in a sensible and easy to manage way.

Conceptually a topic should exist on it's own. What forum it's in should be a matter of categorization. A forum should be a collection of topics, like a filter, and not a container like they are now. you should be able to create your own "forum" based on a collection of topics of interest and even other "forums". You could have a "For Sale" forum which is actually a collection of other "For Sale" forums. then you get all of them or optionally just a filtered view of all the For Sale topics.

Forum software such as this would allow the administrator to create a stock set of "forums" and then allow users to create "virtual" forums consisting of the contents of a number of other forums all grouped and aggregated together. A Forum should be a filter in other words. Trouble is such software doesn't exist or it's unavailable to us short of writing it myself. I don't want to be in the forum software business.

 

If, for example, someone in the SoCal forums is selling something like a bumper or a hood, it is likely that they would rather sell it locally than globally, thus the reason for posting it locally. Your example fails to take into consideration the obvious reason why people wish to sell locally. It doesn't hurt the community at all, nor does it create any new type of segregation. In fact, one could argue that community subforums create this very same segregation.

In the "S2ki universe," nobody is going to be hurt by the creation of the subforum as owners that wish to sell items globally will do so on the global FS forum. It is fine if thousands of people have never been to the SoCal forum, because those thousands of people likely do not care that a CF hood is available for pickup in some small area of socal. This has nothing to do with you modifying the forum software, nor does it have to do with the tragic downfall of the S2ki universe. It is simply a way to further organize the socal forum such that local FS posts are still possible without cluttering up the discussion enviroment. A general FS post is an unreasonable solution. I commend dreamcation for taking on such a huge task, but I think the S2ki universe will survive with the creation of a subforum.

 

Cthree, you made good points that I hadn't thought of.

Would it be possible to have a subcategory under SoCal (not For Sale) for local sales? There is a good reason for all the local for-sale threads (trust, escrow, local pickup, etc). Having the mods move the posts outside of a local container doesn't seem like the answer though. Why not just put a link back to the SoCal forum in the wider For Sale forum? The site also needs to serve the users and memebrs that support it. I think a local subcategory (which doesn't really need the custom expiration code, et al) would benefit both the site and the SoCal community. I would even guess that you could sell some more targeted advertising from local shops specifically in there as you have a captive audience that is looking for things that are "for sale".

 

This is what everyone was originally asking as well as what the site moderators are quickly dismissing.

 

maybe the reason MGT does not want to create a sub forum within So Cal is because of the new rules that state non-paying members can not post in the for sale section.

I assume if you had a sub section like New England

 

No that isnt the reason Bass. The reason has already been described.

 

Some people should just stay on their own continent... or Small Island nation... there's a reason for that...*G*

 

Just sold my hardtop locally in the FS forum and it sold in about 10 seconds flat. I personally don't think having an FS sub-forum is the right answer. It is very hard to undo what is done. If I create an FS sub-forum in SoCal it sets a precident I'm not sure I want.

The right answer IMHO is adding some info about locality to the FS forum so you can filter based on local, all cali, all west, all US or whole world. I don't think splitting FS up into local sub-forums and disbursing them all over the site is the right way to go. A socal sub-forum might look good in the near term but it doesn't look so good when you step back or look further forward.

That is why I don't want to make the forum right now and I need to consider the big picture. Breaking things off and spreading them around doesn't look good to me from that angle. I don't like the idea of a For Sale (except X, Y and Z) forum.

 

That's a great ideal