On this thread it seems like a consensus was reached that we should begin allowing regional questions. Here is a very brief summary of the discussion:
- There are many people visiting the site but people are losing interest because there are not enough questions to answer.
- The low hanging fruit is being picked. Soon there will not be an extremely large amount of questions to ask. This is different that SO since the biking technology is changing much more slowly and I think in general because questions are less complex.
I think that the main problem with allowing regional questions is they are usually not relevant to users from different regions. To solve this we need some form of filtering mechanism. Ideally having some built in method would be great but in the meantime I think we should just start using tags.
I think that all regional questions should be tagged with:
- tag:
regional
- tag:
<Country>
ie:Canada
- tag:
<Provence/State>
ie:Ontario
- tag:
<Closest Major City>
ie:Ottawa
Some questions may not require all tags. For example:
- "Where can I order used bike parts online in Canada?" - would only require the
regional
andCanada
tag - "What is a best two day trail to do within 6 hours Ottawa?" - would require the
regional
tag, theCanada
tag, theOntario
tag, and theQuebec
tag. (Ottawa is on the border of Quebec and Ontario so both provence tags would apply). - "Where can I find a 27 inch tube in Halifax?" would be tagged:
regional
,Halifax
,Nova Scotia
,Canada
.
The logic about what questions to show users seems pretty simple too. Seems to me:
if(regionalTag)
if(userDisplayAllRegions)
display question in list;
else
if(countryTag == usersCountryTag)
if(provenceTag == usersProvenceTag)
if(cityTag == usersCityTag)
display question in list;
But maybe we are not allowed to touch the code. Regardless I think we should start allowing regional questions and start tagging them.