More regional hookup sub sections

[ComputerScientist]

Would it be possible for more regional hookup sections to be added? For example, the UK is much larger than London and could use areas such as the South West, Midlands etc or even go more specific to city levels like Bristol, Plymouth etc.

Thank you 🙂 I hopw this is in the correct place

[MartyHVL]

Totally agree - would love a Scottish section at least, if not the cities.  Could help grow the local interest in this community  🙂

[BootmanLA]

I suspect when the site was created, and thus had relatively few members, the feeling was that covering larger geographic areas in one folder meant more posts grouped together, and less likely that there would be, say, 10 subfolders in Europe/UK/England for all major metro areas and 6 or 7 were perpetually empty because (a) there were a few or no members there and (b) none of them posted because nobody else posted first, so nobody realized there were others in their area.

As the site's grown, perhaps it's time to add more city-specific (or at least smaller regional) folders - perhaps some pretty active members in some areas could be tasked with coming up with a proposal for their area? ie "Here's a list of major metro areas in England which may merit their own folder" - with the understanding of course that the final decision belongs with the site.

[Guest Chavlad]

Neg lad up for it. Chems n breeding. 

[CCbttm]

Would certainly be nice for some regions. I know my city in particular is placed roughly the same distance in between three of my states regional hookups so always a hard decision to decide on which to use if I were to use the forums here, all three require a bit of travel too.

[drscorpio]

Moderator's Note: The regional forums have been readjusted several times. These decisions get made based on how much traffic each area gets. I agree that the rest of the UK is much larger than London, but the London forum gets about the same amount of postings as the UK forum does. If you break up forums too much, you end up with lots of forums that are so dead that everyone stops checking them. 

[rawTOP]

In addition to what drscorpio mentions, the key to getting the regional forums to work effectively is to mention your area in the title. FAR too many posts are have titles like "Looking to get fucked" and you have to click into the thread to see where the guy is.

Basically adding your location to your title achieves the same effect as having more sub-sections. But getting people to figure that out is easier said than done.

[AlwaysOpen]

I can understand the need in most cases for a slightly wider radius for a regional listing- but , and I bet evilqueerpig can attest also- here in South Florida, there are any number of reasons why a Miami, and a Ft Lauderdale, and a West Palm Beach/ Lake Worth designation would be helpful.  First off,  each is a large urban metro area, and a pretty good number of gay  men in each .  Also, and this is something that someone in Iowa might not be able to grasp- but a lot of these locals will not drive out of Broward ( Ft Lauderdale)  into Dade/Miami. Or go north into Palm Beach  county.  It is just another page in  the book of " A Florida man..."  Some might be the larger percentage of men in Miami/ Dade County are Hispanic and, in a lot of cases, speak only Spanish, while Broward tends to be the landing zone for people coming (escaping??) the North East and upper MidWest US and a primary language of English.  So while Miami is 24 miles from Ft Lauderdale, in way too many ways, it is a world away for many. And, an even bigger issue-- the land where people can build /live only extends 7 miles at the most inland from the Atlantic. So all the folk moving down to South Florida are cramming in to more and more towering condo buildings- on land that might have had a 2 story Mom and Pop type motel . Our highways suck! To get from Ft Lauderdale to the nude beach near Miami Beach is a 23 mile drive. IF you are especially lucky, you might do it in 35 minutes, but reality is more like 45 to 60. And if you leave the beach in the afternoon, rush hour will make it up to a 90 minute drive.  The point I am trying to make- a lot of men will not do that type of traffic and driving for a hook up. ESP if it is a 1st time meeting up. So yeah, a 23 mile drive to fuck in Iowa or Nebraska is normal and a 15 minute drive. Down here, people just say forget about it and will go to one of the local bars instead. So breaking the 16 pages that are listed currently in  Miami/Ft Lauderdale out by metro areas in this case would make sense. 

(And a lot of those 16 pages for the Miami area really could stand to have the topic deleted- as a major gay tourist destination, the number of guys who post in  that forum something along the line of  " cum slut visiting May 3- 15 and want to be pimped out" is kind of silly, when you see it was posted in 2017 and has not had any replies and is not even topical anymore..)

[Guest]

Well said.  

[drscorpio]

4 hours ago, AlwaysOpen said:

I can understand the need in most cases for a slightly wider radius for a regional listing- but , and I bet evilqueerpig can attest also- here in South Florida, there are any number of reasons why a Miami, and a Ft Lauderdale, and a West Palm Beach/ Lake Worth designation would be helpful.  First off,  each is a large urban metro area, and a pretty good number of gay  men in each .  Also, and this is something that someone in Iowa might not be able to grasp- but a lot of these locals will not drive out of Broward ( Ft Lauderdale)  into Dade/Miami. Or go north into Palm Beach  county.  It is just another page in  the book of " A Florida man..."  Some might be the larger percentage of men in Miami/ Dade County are Hispanic and, in a lot of cases, speak only Spanish, while Broward tends to be the landing zone for people coming (escaping??) the North East and upper MidWest US and a primary language of English.  So while Miami is 24 miles from Ft Lauderdale, in way too many ways, it is a world away for many. And, an even bigger issue-- the land where people can build /live only extends 7 miles at the most inland from the Atlantic. So all the folk moving down to South Florida are cramming in to more and more towering condo buildings- on land that might have had a 2 story Mom and Pop type motel . Our highways suck! To get from Ft Lauderdale to the nude beach near Miami Beach is a 23 mile drive. IF you are especially lucky, you might do it in 35 minutes, but reality is more like 45 to 60. And if you leave the beach in the afternoon, rush hour will make it up to a 90 minute drive.  The point I am trying to make- a lot of men will not do that type of traffic and driving for a hook up. ESP if it is a 1st time meeting up. So yeah, a 23 mile drive to fuck in Iowa or Nebraska is normal and a 15 minute drive. Down here, people just say forget about it and will go to one of the local bars instead. So breaking the 16 pages that are listed currently in  Miami/Ft Lauderdale out by metro areas in this case would make sense. 

(And a lot of those 16 pages for the Miami area really could stand to have the topic deleted- as a major gay tourist destination, the number of guys who post in  that forum something along the line of  " cum slut visiting May 3- 15 and want to be pimped out" is kind of silly, when you see it was posted in 2017 and has not had any replies and is not even topical anymore..)

With all due respect, the 17 pages of Miami posts have been made over 11 years. There have been exactly 11 posts in that forum since the beginning of the year. I fail to see how breaking that up into 3-4 subforums that would then have each received 2-3 posts would have miraculously increased the traffic. 

[AlwaysOpen]

Due respect accepted ! Perhaps the forums need a purge, if there are 16 pages going back 11 years, many if not the majority having no real value any longer.  Who wants to check  a listing that was for 2017 for a guy doing a one night sex party at a hotel that may not even exist any longer. Could be that is why the forums have not had much attention from the members. 

[rawTOP]

Ugh! I really have to get busy programming. The solution to all of this is that when you do any post it should ask you if it's region-specific and let you specify a precise area. I've  been using Geonames for years now (for other purposes) - it gives hierarchical relationships between geographic regions. So for example I could say my post was about "Mount Morris Park" (the neighborhood I live in), and that would automatically associate it with Central Harlem, Harlem, Upper Manhattan, Manhattan, New York City, New York State and the United States.

My idea is that it will run though a quick series of questions that, when answered, means that no one will post in the wrong area accidentally (so fewer infractions will need to be given), and things can be categorized in different ways so they appear in multiple, relevant places.

But of course that's not possible with the software that currently runs the site. When I finally migrate stuff you'll lose some features and gain others, but hopefully it will be better overall. But what I described is probably still years away, unfortunately. There's a lot of other stuff that needs to come first.