Suggestion for Forum
 

People come on the forum and make various requests. That's fine and certainly a major forum function.

It is annoying when you have no idea where they are located. Note how often people who are trying to help have to ask, "where are you located"? On the Touring thread, for example, I'm not going to recommend a short but rewarding trail in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland or New Jersey (my familiar areas) if I know that the person requesting advice is way west of the Mississippi.

My suggestion...Require that everyone at least identify the state or country they reside/ride in as a part of their profile. Specific towns and cities would be nice, but not necessary and could be optional. For US members, a dropdown box should be required so people don't make up "witty" answers "like state of oblivion" or "state of confusion", etc.

State residence is too vague to be an invasion of privacy or identifying data so only a few would or should complain.

Thank you.

Everybody's definition of privacy is different. Some folks just want to be anonymous. Requiring all users to provide location will either inhibit registration or result in a lot of 'incorrect' selections. Most posts that I read rarely have questions that are location specific. When they are, the OP will generally give enough info. Life has a lot of annoyances but most of us just deal with them.

I agree that if someone asks for help they should say what country they are in. Some framebuilder on facebook asked for torch selections. I figured out they were from the U.K. from their poor grasp of English (j/k). But the answers to that question are totally different in the U.S. and the U.K.

If you lived in Andorra you might feel differently

Under regional discussions I request that the current Texas be renamed Northern Texas since the posts are all DFW and area related. Add a Southern Texas Forum and this my promote posts for SA, Houston and Austin areas. This also makes sense since the same breakdown exists for CA, ie N.CA & S.CA. TX is bigger than CA and deserves the same.
Will this request be completed?

Just rechecked and my statement above "posts are all DFW and area related" is not true, they are all mixed for TX so breakup would be more difficult. I would understand not taking any action.
Joe

That ought to be up to the person being asked to divulge private matters, IMO.

Forcible dictation by a forum is, well, just that. And it's not something many people appreciate. IF a given reply's applicability requires knowledge of the region where a person is speaking of, then the question can be asked of the person ... leaving it up to that person to divulge or not.

If location information is required, then will it need to be validated? Or might we just pay $8.00 and get a blue check mark?

Or you could get a rainbow jersey instead of a yellow jersey

Maybe someone wants advice/information on where they will be going, not where they are.

Also, someone might have valid reasons for being exceptionally protective of their identity and location information that we wouldn't anticipate,especially when the forum is international.