I was giving some thought to the obvious regional groups that are starting to form on the site. We have the fast growing Dutch community. A large Portuguese speaking group. Our Filipino gang of modelers and the burgeoning UK modelers group. Not to mention events like Rob's trip to his motorpool and other regional events.

With all this in mind I was trying to envision a way to allow our members an easier way to see who is part of their "neighborhood" and what topics are specific to them. First I am seeing a system that would allow members to "define" their neighborhood. A Belgian member for example could say his area was Belgium, Holland, and Luxemburg. Or if he was french speaking he could add France (and drop Holland!..lol). This process of defining countries and even provinces/states/counties could be done pretty easily.

As part of this new system I would introduce a database driven calendar where each event would be identified by country and province/state/county.

There would also be a special forum for the Neighborhood. As each topic is created the location information will be saved in the database and users will see only topics particular to their neighborhood. Nifty eh?

This won't be a feature I would be able to build next week. But with more thought (and an obvious interest) I think it can be done fairly easily. Of course I want to complete some of the unfinished items (Campaigns, Focus/ALS sites, etc). first.

Cheers,
Jim

Oooohhh please do so , by all means #:-) #:-) #:-)

Great thinking Jim !! Great feature you've got planned. Though let's be careful that we don't loose our international contacts .... The great international contacts between members of all nationalities made this site the best there is .... don't wanna loose that.

I agree. That's why the forum feature won't extend to the entire forum. Just the area that will act as "The Pub" where users from various regional areas can meet up. Also it won't really change the way things are presented on the home pages right now. A user would need to go to the "Neighborhood" page to see dynamic content based on their region (of course they could set their homepage as this page I guess).

Cheers,
Jim

Hi Jim

As you can probably guess, I'm all for a bit of "cultural interchange" between the Regions and the Main Site.

I feel very lucky in riding a wave of enthusiasm as regards Armorama UK. I'm doing everything I can (bar running up and down the street waving a banner :-) ) to encourage input at a local level - because without this A-UK will wither on the vine.

I'm also very conscious that A-UK isn't "in competition" with Armorama. I don't want anyone to feel so "at home" at A-UK, that there's no need to check out the Big-A. (sorry if there's too much Regional jargon creeping in... but you'll get a feel for A-UK :-) ).

I have to say, the requests I get hit with most aren't to do with the calendar.

Having spent a few good hours sorting out a FREE A-UK calendar, I've realised that the people who moaned loudest actually don't seem to frequent the site! (I expect this isn't news to you Jim, but I'm still a "Newbie" at Asst. Managing a site..)

I'm sorry if this now goes a bit "off-topic" but, if a A-UK has highlighted one thing to me, it's that members are put off by the existing system for entering reviews and previews. There's a bunch of people out there ready to submit stuff, but either confusion or past experience means they'd rather send me the review than use the Main Site system...

Quote: "... they ignored them when i sent them into the main site at least here my work is being read rather than ignored!"

I'm putting links to the A-UK reviews in the appropriate Main Site folders, but I know this isn't the real answer...

Don't bame the messenger

Rowan

I loved it form the first sight Jim, but as mentionned above, I think our focus must be to our international community, it´s great to have pals all over the world (thanks to ArmoramA).
But the idea is very welcomed.
Cheers

I had already read the comments on the A-UK site about the review submission page. I am sorry that some users find it overly complicated. I have said on numerous occasions that people can just email the text and images to [email protected]. Many of our reviews have been entered by admin staff.

As to anyone being ignored, I don't know if this is really true. Forgotten about maybe. I routinely read PMs and Emails with the intention of replying later. Since I get about 500 emails a week I would hope everyone realizes that sometimes their messages fall through the cracks. Just email or PM me a reminder and let me know you are still waiting on something (avatars, passwords, callsign changes, login problems, site errors, campaign additions, vendor additions, suggestions, etc). I get a lot of requests.

As for the reviews submissions themselves I would expect that all our editors are showing due consideration for all those submitted to the site. Occasionally we get submissions which don't meet our guidelines for addition to the site. 3 sentences and a 10 rating will not be accepted as a review. That is common sense stuff. I am not saying that any reviews recently have even been in this league but...well I am just saying.

Cheers,
Jim

Hi again

Having submitted a few reviews myself, I feel obliged to add that the Big-A editors have always done me proud!

Part of the responsibility I accepted in "managing" A-UK for Jim, is being a mouthpiece for UK members. Like any magazine editor, I have to say "blah blah... views expresesed may not reflect the views of the publisher... blah blah"... but this is what I deal with - not always on the open forum...

I've got no personal complaints!... and I hope my comments don't put anyone off submitting Reviews to Armorama.

All the best... and PLEASE submit those reviews...

Rowan

Sounds good Jim! That would be an easier way to track our EBs, meets and exchanges. I wouldn't worry about losing international interaction at all. We have (so far I hope ) kept only local topics in our Phorum. General modeling questions and insights still get posted on the regular forums.

If you need a testbed just let us know