Should an Arizona local forum be created?

combusean · #1 Posted **May 17, 2009, 10:47 AM**

Would any of you mind if I merged the Scottsdale, West Valley, and East Valley development threads into one Phoenix suburbs/edge cities thread? Phoenix proper and Tempe threads would stay as is.

Edit: Secession seems a far more popular alternative, so a poll has been added. I am under the impression a supermajority (ie, not 50% + 1) will be needed.

Luke Skyscraper · #2 Posted **May 17, 2009, 2:00 PM**

Great idea Combusean. Onestop shopping for areas outside of Phoenix or Tempe.

Vicelord John · #3 Posted **May 17, 2009, 4:29 PM**

how about just making a Phoenix subforum? We are definitely active enough to necessitate one.

HooverDam · #4 Posted **May 17, 2009, 5:29 PM**

I think you could probably toss Tempe into it as well, it would be similar to the Front Range (not Denver) thread.

Sonoran_Dweller · #5 Posted **May 17, 2009, 11:00 PM**

I like the idea of a Phoenix Suburbs thread. Everything not downtown related all at one place. I agree with Hoover, put Tempe in with the rest. Yes Tempe is a unique place, but it is Phoenix suburb if you like it or not.

Don B. · #6 Posted **May 18, 2009, 3:03 AM**

I think we should do whatever Vicelord wants, because after all, only his opinion really matters.

--don

nickkoto · #7 Posted **May 18, 2009, 4:48 AM**

Personally, I like many different threads rather than trying to push everything into one giant general thread. Not all of us necessarily want to read about every development in the valley and the more threads we have, the more we can pick and choose.

Also, once a thread gets to be 500 pages long, how much of it really has any utility beyond the last page or two? For example, maybe someone wants to know about the Salt River wash in S. Phoenix or has an idea about what to do with it. A lot of that discussion is just buried on page 400-something between talk of the jellyfish sculpture and about how light rail should serve S. Phoenix. If there was a topic about it that just harmlessly fell of the front page, then later was bumped by some new interest, there would be some previous relevant discussion to go with it, readily available rather than buried in a thread with 100 other topics.

I wouldn't mind a Phoenix or Arizona subforum though. What's the point of having a Mountain West region on here in the first place? How many people who read the AZ threads regularly actually have any interest or connection with the happenings of Boise, and vice versa?

AZ KID · #8 Posted **May 18, 2009, 4:56 AM**

I agreed with you until you mentioned that people don't read things in other mountain west forums like Boise. I love to learn about other projects in our area.

combusean · #9 Posted **May 18, 2009, 5:22 AM**

Things are still searchable, so it's not like that past discussion disappears into the ether.

The East Valley thread had a six month lag between the last two posts, which I moved there and the one that came before it. Something shows up on the West Valley Thread every month or so.

I didn't consider AZ's "secession" from Mountain West but if we did a bunch of our local threads wouldn't disappear as quickly off the front page. The flipside is that if AZ had its own forum it could be split it out more--Chandler gets its own thread. I'd like to think that they would be busier if they were easier to find, but if there's nothing going on, there's nothing going on.

sashyenka · #10 Posted **May 18, 2009, 6:23 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by nickkoto

Personally, I like many different threads rather than trying to push everything into one giant general thread. Not all of us necessarily want to read about every development in the valley and the more threads we have, the more we can pick and choose.

Also, once a thread gets to be 500 pages long, how much of it really has any utility beyond the last page or two? For example, maybe someone wants to know about the Salt River wash in S. Phoenix or has an idea about what to do with it. A lot of that discussion is just buried on page 400-something between talk of the jellyfish sculpture and about how light rail should serve S. Phoenix. If there was a topic about it that just harmlessly fell of the front page, then later was bumped by some new interest, there would be some previous relevant discussion to go with it, readily available rather than buried in a thread with 100 other topics.

I wouldn't mind a Phoenix or Arizona subforum though. What's the point of having a Mountain West region on here in the first place? How many people who read the AZ threads regularly actually have any interest or connection with the happenings of Boise, and vice versa?

Actually, if we're being honest here, I can personally vouch that I wouldn't have had any interest in the other Mountain West cities' developments were it not for the subforum, as it stands I now regularly keep track of quite a few Phoenix and Salt Lake developments outside of Denver's developments.

HooverDam · #11 Posted **May 18, 2009, 6:23 AM**

^Yah I dont think now would be a time to succeed from the MW, no need to really. The economy has obviously hurt AZ worse than a lot of other places, so our projects have all slowed down and/or been put on hold. Maybe next time things are booming it should be considered though since AZ is certainly the most populous state in the MW.

Also I find it eternally odd that theres no Nevada/Vegas posters around these parts.

nickkoto · #12 Posted **May 18, 2009, 7:53 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by combusean

Things are still searchable, so it's not like that past discussion disappears into the ether.

The past discussion might still be there, but whatever one might be looking for is buried amongst so much other stuff that it's effectively gone.

First off, when you do a search with "Show Threads" (which is the default option), the MW results generally turn up only the handful of threads with 2000+ posts each. Nobody is going to sift through that. Once you figure out that you can search with "Show Posts" (and some never will), maybe you look at that post on page 467, click back, look at the search result from page 450, click back, look at the post on page 431, and so on. You might be able to find what you need that way, but it's going to be mixed in with a whole bunch of other crap that you don't want to find.

I find it strange that everything's steered towards one thread that digresses from Westward Ho to the jellyfish sculpture to light rail to Vicelord's latest tattoo, yet the idea for organizing the discussion here is just to throw more from an even wider geographical area into that single thread. It's counterintuitive to me. I'd personally prefer to see a move in the opposite direction. In my ideal world, the Phoenix Development News thread would be locked and people could just start new threads with specific topics as they came up.

combusean · #13 Posted **May 18, 2009, 9:26 AM**

^ Interesting take on things, as far as the counterintuitiveness of it all. The main phoenix thread collects a huge amount of the crosstalk that could end up in a "coffee talk" thread. Some of that stuff dovetails into other things (eg, talking about the jellyfish when the jellyfish was going up in PDN, yet we did have an ASU thread that's since disappeared) and might be hard to filter out.

FWIW, I don't even bother with the forum's search ... if I need to look back and usually do a google search prefaced with "site:forum.skyscraperpage.com" to restrict the results to this site only.

I'm starting to like the idea of secession more than merging threads ...

M II A II R II K · #14 Posted **May 18, 2009, 12:23 PM**

That's one of the reasons I made thread icons.

M II A II R II K · #15 Posted **May 18, 2009, 2:09 PM**

I would have to agree that it would be a bad idea to merge megathreads into even larger ones, and would further alienate those who don't participate often in them and newcomers.

If there are cases of good threads being hard to find then all I have to do is add links to them in that closed thread and if there's any trouble finding them then just go into that thread and link up to it.

With a seperation there could be a Phoenix local, a new Desert West forum, or send Arizona into the Mexican forums!

P.S. I'm pretty sure that plinko would be vehemently opposed to any segregation citing the California and Northwest tragedies, where I recently had to implement my damage control for the west.

wong21fr · #16 Posted **May 18, 2009, 2:38 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by M II A II R II K

That's one of the reasons I made thread icons.

Any chance that we could have a different color arrow icon for each major city thread, or maybe by state?

Light blue for AZ, orange for CO, green for UT, and yellow for ID? Something like that would be nice and it would be a real quick way of scanning the sub-forum for relevant threads.

M II A II R II K · #17 Posted **May 18, 2009, 3:03 PM**

Yea but I would then have to include angry and sad faces!

EDIT: I can only use the icons available, but maybe there's a way to add more somehow.

PHX31 · #18 Posted **May 18, 2009, 4:00 PM**

I don't like the idea of secession. Even though people from the other major cities' threads generally don't like outsiders and call troll if you bring up stuff in their threads, I still like to read about happenings in the other cities every once in a while. I think a Phoenix coffee talk thread is appropriate, and maybe merging the other threads of metro phoenix into one is a good idea, but other than that, this subforum runs seemingly perfect. We are all a part of the MW. There are good relationships between the different forumers from different cities (sometimes a love/hate relationship) so there is no reason for Phoenix to have its own subforum.

ps. I just don't get how this whole forum gig is difficult and needs tons of tweaks (at this point the forum is pretty much 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'). I can distinguish threads of different cities (by reading) in one nanosecond. And if I happen to click somewhere I didn't mean to, it takes another nanosecond to click back, or maybe I'll even just read the thread.

Vicelord John · #19 Posted **May 18, 2009, 4:02 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Don B.

I think we should do whatever Vicelord wants, because after all, only his opinion really matters.

--don

How was this comment even necessary?

combusean · #20 Posted **May 18, 2009, 6:08 PM**

^ It wasn't.

How can a bunch of other cities separate out (Austin, San Antonio, Sacramento) split off into their own threads? There's obviously precedent for this.

I don't quite like stopping at anything with "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"...well, stuff is sorta broken because I get tired of searching for older threads that are constantly disappearing off the front page.

I like MW's regionalism but not at the expense of this place--if you want to read about Boise or Denver we should be able to click in the Boise or Denver local forums from the links at the top. I think the reliance on multi-state regionalism on this board stifles the growth of a good local community. There are few interstate discussions and those that do occur could easily take place in the US Forum or Skybar.