Proposal to have NY section of VFTT?

sli74 said:

However, having said that . . . I don't know if there is much we can do to get that contingent back here to VFTT now that they have other established sites that focus on NY.

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Most have NOT left. Hell, even harryk {winked} at us from the Trail Conditions (sniping at me, I might add - It's okay, I still luv him). Some of us have drifted, but most are never too far afield.

No matter what Darren does, Alan has touched me with his sincerity and his longing for participation from his old friends, and for better or worse, I'm gonna make an effort to come back, be more active and annoy the heck out of everyone again in general. At the very least this 100+ post thread will call attention back to some folks that may have forgotten "from whence we came".

And to set the record straight {harry }........ There is no forum in existence that will ever replace, or otherwise be equal to the depth of knowledge that can be found here, and anyone not krazy knows that . I haven't said it awhile, but THANKS, DARREN


p.s. SLB, nice avatar

1, 2, 3, all together now:

"Dear Darren, thanks a million for this totally free (to us) backcountry hiking/camping/climbing/skiing bulletin board with an unbelievable amount of free information. However you decide to format your site, we will adapt, even if it means our having to excercise a little more to get in shape for the soon-to-be-required extra mouse click or two. Thanks again for the free site."

Guess I'd rather not see the BBS split into regional sections.

On the other hand, I think it would be a good idea for everyone to include the state (or an appropriate regional name) in the thread title where location is an issue. (Perhaps the thread initiation template could be modified to encourage this?)

Eg:
NH: Lafayette--Little Haystack Loop
NY: Marcy Hike

This would give a regional identity without fragmenting the group and work for the "somewhere else" category.

In addition, when someone mentions some less well known peak or trail name, the readers would have a better idea of where it is.

Doug

I agree with Doug.

Furthermore, I'm not sure why its a problem if people post in other places because they get what they want there. When I want something thats not on VFTT, I'm happy to go get it elsewhere.

I appreciate Tim's heartfelt comments: "Most have NOT left". In the spirit of comradeship, though, I have to respectfully disagree.
Technically, Tim is right in that we PHYSICALLY haven't lost many NY members, but they are here in name only.

There are many, many VFTTers who are members of Tim's board (ADKHighPeaks.com) and Dick's board(ADKForum.com) who've spoken to me in person or on hikes who have been complaining about not posting on VFTT any longer as their posts get lost in the New England traffic, or their posts asking about the ADKs or Catskills get threadjackeded and turned into a White Mt series of replies.

It would be unfair to list screen names of some of hiking board icons whose screenames would be very familiar to everyone on Tim's board and to many on VFTT who pay attention to the ADKs and Catskills. Since last evening I rec'd 5 phone calls and another 6 emails from names very familiar on both boards. The theme was the same. I cruise in to look at VFTT, less and less regularly, but I post over on the other boards as they don't get lost in the shuffle.
Tim, unless I've been trying to catch you and was too far behind, you've must of overheard or participated in the same conversations during some hikes we've been on. I've told you that as moderator here, its embarassing that I don't post often because of the weighty New England presence and many others like me are just not coming here any longer.
I was a prolific poster here, and admitted in earlier in the thread that other than the equipment portion of the VFTT, I seldomly post here for the same reason.

This is not about some idea I have that might or might not rectify a problem or that VFTT might or might not have. VFTT is the reference standard of hiking information boards. I think the slight inconvienience of having a non-New England Q&A is far overweighed by trying to return VFTT to its former excellence in ALL areas, not just New England.

NY: Yeah, this will work too ...

Peakbagr said:

There are many, many VFTTers who ... have been complaining about not posting on VFTT any longer as their posts ... asking about the ADKs or Catskills get threadjackeded and turned into a White Mt series of replies.

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Creating a NY section won't solve this problem. (I'm not against a NY section, just thought I should point this out.)

Doug's suggestion is a good refinement of my earlier post -- precede the title of the post with "NH:", "NY:", etc. As long as people use that exact text, then we can all do simple searches to find the postings we want.

-BriFly

Peakbagr said:

...get lost in the New England traffic, or their posts asking about the ADKs or Catskills get threadjackeded and turned into a White Mt series of replies.

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I actually felt just the opposite not long ago. I was muttering to myself that it was turning into a NY board. What do I know?!?!

Peakbagr,

As an occasional poster on this board but frequent hiker of New England and New York mountains, I'd like to suggest that you consider doing the opposite of what you propose, and that is to consolidate VFTT as a 'New England only' board.

Through supply and demand, many NY VFTT users have migrated to the two new boards for reasons you have precisely identified.

These boards are now gaining usage momentum and, unfortunately, your proposal to establish some sort of VFTT NY sub-board would only serve to offset that momentum, thus making it MORE of a hassle for a given NY party seeking to acquire info from, or pass on info to, his or her community. Who wants to access three different boards when two or possibly one would cut it?

By establishing VFTT as THE source of New England mountain expertise and info, and letting ADK High Peaks and ADK Forum duke it out for the #1 NY mountains board spot, you would be doing the entire North East hiking community a great service.

And when you consider the huge populations you serve, I think most folks would conclude there's plenty of room for two or three geographic-centric mountain boards on the Web.

Cheers.

12 posts and you know it won't work.

What won't work is trying to get people to list a header. We can't even get many members to read the FAQs before the start posting.

What I KNOW is that everyone who's posted to this thread is concerned. What my close involvement with this issue over the last 3 years tells me is that the vast majority of members who are from, or spend time hiking and posting about New England, are sincere and well meaning. I also believe that it will hard to convince them that a problem exits as its not something on their radars.

VFTT has a serious problem. It may not be any kind of concern to you if you don't pay attention to NY. It may structurally bother you to think the format might change a little from what your used to. But if you're concerned that someday you want to come over and hike in the ADKs or Catskills, there probably won't be the NY equivalent of a Doug Paul, Metsky, Rooney paying attention on this side of the dotted map line.

Wow, 8 pages of posts before I get to give my 2 cents...

Lets go back in time...back before the days of global warming (or cooling depending on your version of doom) the site was focused on New England. Afterall, I am from New England. The site grew and took on New York and other areas, gear reviews, and a host of other services. The site grew out of control. 65,000 different readers a month. Can't handle that in my spare time, so I cut the site back down to just the Northeast - New England and New York. Sorry, PA and NJ are Mid-Atlantic in my mind.

At that time, most content was New England. Years went by. People were happy. New Yorkers came and liked what they saw. They stayed. Their numbers grew. So did their post counts. "The New Yorkers have taken over the board" was a phrase often muttered in dark boreal corners of New England.

New Yorkers bought so many computers that they determined they needed their own websites. New boards were created and NY content moved elsewhere. The dark boreal corners of New England grew lighter.

During all this time, the issue of splitting up "Q&A - a Northeast discussion forum" into two seperate forums, one for New England and one for New York, arose no less than 3 times. Each time it was decided that the word "community" means a lot on VFTT and each time the community remained whole.

The discussion has come up again. This time from the dark boreal corners of New York.

My gut reaction is one and the same with Sherpa K (I always thought he was handing out the Doctor, come to find out it was really jesus juice and now I am on the cool aid with him). The kicker all along with Q&A is that it is community based, we all get to know each other regardless of where in the Northeast we are from. Post from other areas get our curiosity going and before we know it we are in the car heading to unknown lands. Sometimes with unknown people. I like that.

Breaking Q&A into two forums divided by location divides the community. However, according to Peakbagr, this is a community already divided.

What to do, what to do?

Q&A - New England
Q&A - New York

(PA and NJ go in General Backcountry just like the rest of the country. If I let them in then I have to let Ohio in and then I can't stop until I hit the Mighty Miss, right?)

Why stop there? Some people already want the Trip Report forum split. Next is the Trip & Events forum - that will have to get split too. Someone else wants a Book Review forum (how many books do you read?) - I guess that will have to get split too; Book Reviews - NY, Book Reviews - NE.

Sigh. Talk about a divided community. Those are some big train tracks.

Peakbagr has the pulse and he really means well though...

What to do, what to do?

I will not divide Trip Reports. I will not divide Trips & Events. I will not divide, Darren I am.

There will be no book forum, Darren I am.

I do not want to divide Q&A, Darren I am, but I will if it is really necessary. Division in the community is a bad thing, but the "New Post" button is a powerful unifying force.

If anyone has any serious issues with splitting Q&A into NE and NY forums, speak now. Sherpa K, I agree with you, but try the 'New Post' button and let me know what you think.

- darren

(I am)

dug said:

I actually felt just the opposite not long ago. I was muttering to myself that it was turning into a NY board. What do I know?!?!

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dug's comment fairly accurately reflects my recollection of previous discussions about creating separate New England and New York forums here at VFTT. I always was under the impression that the impetus for that ideas was coming from New Englanders who started feeling overwhelmed, rather than the other way around. But I also recollect that some Yorkers were ready to go along with the Separatist movement.

It wasn't so awful long ago, too, that New York was the site of a VFTT Gathering or two, if I'm not mistaken. So where did all the Yorkers go?

Well, it seems what happened was that a couple of New York boards got started about the time there was an influx of refugees from the AMC forum and some technical difficulties cropped up here. New England posts proliferated on VFTT, while NY posts here declined and the other boards grew.

Personally, I was saddened by that because I always thought the New England - New York mix made for a rich brew, and I was fairly comfy with the balance. I still think that way, and look forward to seeing posts that cover hiking all across the Northeastern USA -- New England and New York here on VFTT. But at risk of repeating myself, I think that's up to individuals as they make their decisions as to where they prefer to post this or that. I don't want to sound like a broken record, but continue to think that splitting VFTT between New England and Non-New England is a poor, and probably ineffective solution.

G.

(Primarily a New York focused hiker who also is quite interested in other parts of the NE USA region.)

darren I am said:

try the 'New Post' button and let me know what you think.

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It took me about 10 seconds to create a little folder on my navigator tool bar (Firefox) and put a bookmark to the new post button for 3 different forums. One click opens the folder and displays the 3 bookmarks, a second click on Open in Tabs opens 3 browser windows that I can easily navigate between with mouse clicks.

For me its all one big fluid community already!

(I have another of these on my home computer with 6 such tabs. Each one opens an on-line gear store to the page of an article whose price I'm watching and waiting to drop.)

Go ahead

I do get a sense that NYers may have drifted away. I put a great deal of weight in what Peakbagr says, because of all the reasons he has put forward.
Personally, I just hit the "New Posts" button and I rarely go to individual fora directly. But when I hit the new posts button - you already have the ability of seeing what forum the post is in. It will help in that respect.

Q&A - New England
Q&A - New York​

makes a lot of sense to me. Just do it and get it over with and in a month everyone will love it and will have forgotten, I'll bet!

depending on frequency of visitation

I use the New Post button and it works great so I don't usually care which section of the forum I am reviewing, but when it has been a while since my last visit there are a surprising number of New Posts and I don't bother to scroll past Page Uno.

So it would be really easy for me to just glance at the NY section when I came to visit and see what I need to see all in one place. As it is there is too much other stuff that I just don't have time to sift through.

By the way, vftt is a great forum and my hope is that it just keeps getting better!

"New Post" button

"New Posts" button works fine for me, but then again I like to read about a lot of things so I typically go through most of the forums. I typically go to each forum and scan through what interests me, or what I think I can add some value to.

Maybe I am dense, but my only concern is where to post my questions that I stated back in post #35 (page 3). If someone could answer some of these questions (instead of skirting them), I could be more supportive of this split. As that is my sole complaint about this Q&A split. I feel that the Tacoinics is a land of limbo and Ct is very much an area of interest to NYers. Also, I really think we should not relegate Kitatinny (NJ) questions to Backcountry. But I agree we should be receptive to new ideas and trying anything isn't going to hurt. The "New Post" button will sove many of the issues, so go for it (but please answer the questions raised in post #35).

Cross-Pollenization

At the heart of my feelings on this is the untapped value of having each camp visit the other. The Whites, the Adirondacks and the other ranges each have a very different flavor, and this native New Englander has really enjoyed getting to know the 'Dacks.

Keep the Neils and Pete Hickeys coming to New Hampshire and keep getting me out to the High Peaks. Can't wait to experience the 'Gunks first-hand.

THAT is the issue. Now have at it for another twelve pages.

--M.

dug & Grumpy - you are correct. See my history lesson above.

askus3:

1) I will get to your new member request as soon as I can. I do not do them 1 or 2 at a time. I do new memebr requests in bunches when I get the time. I have been going to doctor after doctor and spending most of my time lately in CT machines.

2) NJ - it goes in Gen Backcountry just like it always should have.

3) CT, MA, etc goes in Q&A. Where they go after the proposed split - I do not know, it is not my idea nor my desire to split the forum. I do agree that since some posts will be in a certain forum then they will be ignored by people who should read them.

I will try to clarify my previous post. It is not my desire to split the forum. However, I will do it if a lot of people really think it is required. So far a bunch of people have said that they will agree to go along with it if it is required, but I have not seen or heard from a lot of people that feel it is required. Peakbagr has the pulse of the NYers, so his word has weight but I encourage further discussion.

- darren

I found it interesting that HH1 from Ontario, recommends the complete split and elimination of the NY board and make this an exclusive New England website. That proposal has to be the most unpopular suggestion to be presented. I just wonder if anybody from NY or NE wants to stay anonymous and agrees with this suggestion. I found post #108 to be the most peculiar of all the posts in this thread! I can't imagine anybody supporting this opinion. But I give HH1 the award for guts to even to suggest such a proposal.

I don't think this thread should go any further without someone pointing out that the Red Sox suck. That is all.