Regional Forums??

[elfdoctors]

I’m new to these forums. I live in northwestern Wisconsin on the western border. In my limited experience, it seems that these forums are dominated by people in the Madison/Milwaukee area.

Would it be possible (or a good idea) to get some regional forums? This would provide local members the opportunity to discuss caches, events, etc that would be of interest primarily only to anyone who lives/vacations in these areas?

[Timberline Echoes]

There are very few cachers in Northern WI, and even fewer that belong to this group so I don’t know if there would be much activity if that happened.

We have done all the northern caches and could help you if you have any questions. We are in Eagle River.
Timberline Echoes

[elfdoctors]

Even Eagle River is ~216 miles away from Grantsburg (at the other end of State Highway 70)! You are welcome to come find my caches!

There are at least 3 local cachers who have been posting on the Northstar Cachers website along with cachers from Minnesota who have lake cabins in the area. I stumbled onto that website before finding this one. I assume that there are more people in the area. This website would appear to be the logical one to bring people together. Obviously such regional forums would not be only for new members.

Just something to consider…..

[cheezehead]

@elfdoctors wrote:

I’m new to these forums. I live in northwestern Wisconsin on the western border. In my limited experience, it seems that these forums are dominated by people in the Madison/Milwaukee area.

Would it be possible (or a good idea) to get some regional forums? This would provide local members the opportunity to discuss caches, events, etc that would be of interest primarily only to anyone who lives/vacations in these areas?

I would think that this would be a good idea. There are more and more Geocachers up north that you relize. Some do not know of this site is here and those that do, do not visit because it tends to to deal with the southern part of the state. Do you know just how many Mud Ducks we get up here on the weekends? Many! They give the weather reports for this area on the Twin Cities news because so many from the cites do have cabins in the area. It would be an area for “US in the Sticks” to talk about caches in our area.

[GrouseTales]

What would be the boundaries of such “regions”? Thinking out loud, you could quarter the state up. The North/South line could be hwy 51/39. The E/W line could be Hwy 10. That would give us a N/E, S/E, N/W, and S/W region.

Only problem, what if you live near the boundary. Do you post in several regions, or choose ownership to a certain region?

[elfdoctors]

IMO, dividing the state up into quarters as Grousetales suggested would make the most sense. If someone lives near a border, they could check out either section.

I also imagine having a regional moderator for each section who could also then make subforums (perhaps to divide each quarter of the state into regions or around particular cities?). That person should have the flexibility to create or archive subforums which each particular group feels are indicated.

I would probably only frequent the northwestern WI subforum unless I am going on a trip to a different part of the state. For casual visitors, it would be nice to have a thread which included some of the best sites for each region.

Hi cheezehead! Nice to hear from someone else up in the northwest! I’ve been working on caches closer to home (extending into Minnesota) and have only made it out to Spooner so far. I know Hayward has some beautiful areas which would be nice to find.

[Buy_The_Tie]

I did a quick tallky of the first 15 topics in both the “Announcements” and “General” categories and I evaluated them in one of three ways…
A topic either falls into the “Statewide Interest”, “Southern” or “Northern”. Here’s what I got…

Statewide Interest: 22 of 30 topics.
Southern: 6 of 30 topics.
Northern: 2 of 30 topics.

I’m interested in all of the topics, South, North or whatever. I would enjoy reading about what is going on in all parts of the state. If we do start up regional forums, I intend to read them all anyway, and I won’t have a problem posting in them if I have something of value to add, no matter what part of the state they are for.

Long story short: I don’t really see a need, but I don’t see any real downside to having the regional forums.

[cheezehead]

@GrouseTales wrote:

What would be the boundaries of such “regions”? Thinking out loud, you could quarter the state up. The North/South line could be hwy 51/39. The E/W line could be Hwy 10. That would give us a N/E, S/E, N/W, and S/W region.

Only problem, what if you live near the boundary. Do you post in several regions, or choose ownership to a certain region?

I think you could post in any are region where ayou cache. I would divied it the way Grouse Tails said but I think ,in my opnion, would us Hwys 94 to Eau Claire and Hwy 29 from Eau Claire to Green Bay as the divider between Noth and South.As the for the East West I would use Hwy 39-51 from Beloit to Wausau and Hwy 13 from Abbotsford to Ashland or continue on with hwy 51 to Hurley.

You could also do a Middle region with Hwy94-29 as the north,Hwy51 as the east, Hwy 90 as the South and the Miss. River as the West boundies.

I dunno, I guess you could do it how ever you wanted. The DNR sets it up for diffrent areas. so it would be up to….whoever it’s up too.

[I M WU]

Being new, I’m already finding too many forums to read. Maybe there is a science to reading them? I would be close to the 4 corner mark and would have to read all 4 forums. I think less is more.

[Folk Trakers]

Cheezehead makes an interesting point:

“There are more and more Geocachers up north that you relize. Some do not know of this site is here and those that do, do not visit because it tends to to deal with the southern part of the state. ”

---

well, if there are many northern cachers, but they are frustrated because of ‘southern’ topics, why aren’t they posting more? Do you think they’d really post more if they had their own special forum? Then, if they have their own special forum, should us southerners not read it and participate. I think less is more in the number of specialty forums, therefore we all can read, learn, and grow in this sport from everyone, without having to ‘find’ interesting topics.

Just like the upcoming political elections….if you don’t like how something is running, get involved and do something about it. You don’t see any northern posts, but there are northern cachers, then they should post more.

[cheezehead]

@I M W/U wrote:

Being new, I’m already finding too many forums to read. Maybe there is a science to reading them? I would be close to the 4 corner mark and would have to read all 4 forums. I think less is more.

OK, how anout north and south then? Us hwy 94/29 as a divider.
Look at it from a Northern point of view. Caches in the Madison, Milwaukee,Green Bay area of are no intrest to me. Not unless in going to be making a special trip in that direction would I be looking for those caches. One reason being distance. It has been brought more then once(as in where to hold the next WGA event-being more or less know more than 2 hrs from those areas.)

For me, I have only travled about an hour away to cache,2 hors would be my max. From Hayward, that would cover the about the area from Eau Claire-Superior- Ashland-Hurley-Park Falls-Woodruff- St. Croix Fall areas. I would think it’s the same case if you live in the southern part of the state also. Caches in Port Wing would be of no intrest to someone that lives in New Berlin,unless they were palnning a trip to that area.

Now if there was info about caches those areas I would spend most of my time reading those posts. I won’t try to find search for the info if it’s all lumped together.

Take COM’s. I have never voted on one because I have never heard of them or an oppertunity to have found them. I was pleasently surprised to see one of mine nominated for COM,but know that there is only a handful of people who have found it, and those who have do not come to this site or any other forum.

No matter how you look at it, this site is geared toward the souther part of the state. And it is. I think if there was a spot for Northern Cachers, and be it word of mouth or whatever, you might get people from the north to participate in this organization.

I have been on the Ground Speak forums once. Look how the lump the states together that make up the Midwest Now I just found out about the Northern Lights board and I know there is some friction between members there and the MnGCA, (Sort of the same thing here, how some feel towards the Ground Speak Forums) but it more or less set of for cachers in the Northern Parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Northwestern Wisconsin is becoming more and more a part of Minnesota.
Out local TV is Duluth stations, and a few of cities. One of the cable company’s does carry the Eau Claire station. The Milwaukee Jurnal/Sentnial will no longer be dilevering the paper up here after the end of the month. The ST. Paul Press Publihes a Wisconsion edition paper as does the Duluth New Tribune. WE ARE PART OF WISCONSIN DANGIT ALL!! 😡 Please try to do what can be done so ALL of Geo-CachingWisconsinites may call this home.

(Putting the soap box away again. Sorry.)

[Team Deejay]

I did an analysis of the membership list and divided the membership using the same quarters that the DNR uses to decide whether a property is NE, NW, SE, or SW. The N/S division is roughly just south of Appleton, while the EW division is just east of Madison/Wausau. The numbers are as follows:

NW = 116
NE = 137
SW = 121
SE = 509
Parts Unknown = 2 (One guy listed New Dehli, another listed “Vermont City” which, surprisingly, doesn’t appear to be an actual place on Earth)

Now, there are duplicates and other problems with the list, but I think the ratios will hold true once the list is cleaned up. Its easy to see how someone from the northern part of the state would feel that most of the forum posters are from the southern part of the state, because most of the members are from the southern part of the state. I’m thinking that maybe we just need ONE more forum category, namely Northern Wisconsin (maybe defined as the region north of Green Bay?) for those special issues involving the northern half of the state. I don’t think any of us in the southern half are shy about posting our regional issues to the general forum.

[cheezehead]

Like, as in North of Hwy 29? I think that would work.

[elfdoctors]

It’s gratifying to see that other members approve of this idea. I am also pleased that others are submitting recommendations. I am obviously a new member and don’t have strong feelings as to how a particular forum would operate. I posted this in the new member forums but actually intended the regional forums to be for everyone.

However, I obviously relate with Cheezehead in feeling that we are only marginal Wisconsin residents. It is very difficult to get statewide information up here. All of my media sources (except the internet) has a Minnesota base. As an example, I have a very good understanding of the issues for the Minnesota’s governor’s race yet I have a minimal understanding of the Wisconsin governor’s race. Therefore, I am unlikely to be doing much statewide posting as the relevance for the great majority of issues is often just not there.

I am sorry that Folk Trakers feels that this recognition of my limited knowledge as a reason for not posting is a failing of mine. 🙄 If northwestern WI members don’t post in regional forums, there is no reason that such forums have to be maintained forever. We would be happy to have the involvement of people from other parts of the state but we recognize that some of our issues are going to be different from people in the southeast portion of the state. Regional forums may actually enhance cooperation between people from different parts of the state as I envision individual threads discussing the best caches surrounding particular destinations within each region.

[Jeremy]

I think having a separate Northern Wisconsin forum on the WGA site would be a good start. We can see how many postings and how much use such a regional forum gets, and could divide the state up into more regions in the future based on the results of this “experiment”.

Note that I would create a Northern Wisconsin forum category which could have multiple subforums, as elfdoctors suggested. For now, I would propose creating only a General forum in this category for all discussion related to caching up north. If necessary, we could create forums in this category specifically for cities in Northern Wisconsin or temporary ones for planning events in Northern Wisconsin.

I’m floating this idea past the Board and if they approve I will add the category next week. It might also be nice to have a “hide” feature to allow people to opt out of viewing this category if they so desire.

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