More Message Boards!

For some time now, I've been meaning to add more regional divisions for the message boards. The folks in the southwest requested one almost immediately as soon as the message boards were added and it thrived briefly, but largely lays forgotten for the most part nowadays. But at long last, I've added a bunch of new regions.

There are a couple of reasons for this. First, to help cut down on having people cross-post to multiple states that they're traveling through or all of the neighboring states that an event is being held in. Especially with those little states in the northeast. It allows one to better target the specific audience they want to see their post without having to cross-post.

Second, for some time now, I've been wondering when creating "city-based" boards might be useful. Or at least regions that are smaller than individual states. So there's a place where one can discuss boxes or happenings in Seattle, or Los Angeles, or other large metro areas without having to annoy folks who might live in the state but nowhere near the area being discussed. (A potential issue for folks who live in large states such as California or Texas that span the better part of a thousand miles.)

I haven't created any city-based boards (not yet, at least), but I renamed the existing boards to specify what sort of area the individual boards cover: regional or states. (Or provinces, in the case of Canada.) So later, if or when city-based boards would be useful, I can call the boards "City: Seattle" (or whatever the case may be). It's rather useful to prepend the area being described with what type of area it is since the boards are sorted alphabetically. It lumps all of the regional boards together, and all of the state boards together, and (in the future) all of the city boards together so there isn't a big mash-up of regions, states, and cities randomly thrown together.

So anyhow.... to make a long story short, you'll likely want to check your board settings to make sure you've marked your region as a favorite or ignore those boards that have no interest to you. There are several new regions for the United States, mostly following the lead of the existing regional Yahoo Groups list since that's what everyone's used to already. I also added a few regions in the World Letterboxing category to cover Africa, Central America, South America, Western Europe, and Eastern Europe.

Happy trails!