Can WebmasterWorld go Local?

Localising profiles

[Whitey]

Is there any interest amongst members for more easily being able to identify members locally?

e.g. show all members in New Zealand

I think this would help a lot of offline interaction between members outside of the US. Any thoughts?

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

This would be a great idea. Perhaps we could even start to organise local Pubcons on a weekly basis. :)

The problem would be that when registering for WW the "location" is not a required field and many people do not declare their location. This would have to be made into a compulsory drop down.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Is no one else interested in this concept?

[engine]

It's unlikely we'll change the signup to be compulsory as many members like to keep their privacy.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

That's fine, but revealing which country you are from is can hardly be considered to be spilling the beans, can it? :)

[Whitey]

Sure, and it's optional for those that want to do it.

Engine - think you're saying you have no objection if it's optional -but my point is that it's hard to find "all the folks" in a given region. So some sort of filter search would be helpful.

This would be a great step, IMO.

[edited by: Whitey at 5:24 am (utc) on Nov. 28, 2006]

[bill]

The people who want to be found this way can be found with a simple advanced search of the WebmasterWorld.com domain, the keywords of your area, and some terms only found on the user profile page. We're all search engine savvy here. I doubt this would be much of a challenge for any of you.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

I don't think so? These pages are not indexed.

[bill]

I went and found the profile of every member with Japan set as their location...took about a minute.

[eelixduppy]

I agree with Bill; it's very easy to find other members based on their profile's location field.

What seems to be most effective is a site search [webmasterworld.com] through Google with the following:

profile+location+your_location_here

[Whitey]

Don't know how i didn't think of that, it works pretty well.

But do you think the profiling could be encouraged to be tightened up at all?

I think it would add more value, and i don't think members appreciate just how much the extra detail could be used to help each other. [ I know about privacy issues - but many would probably add more quality detail if they saw a good purpose to it]. Most of us skip through the minimum of form fills when signing up.

e.g.

- seperate country and city [ there's some big distances out there ]
- skills and expertise

A useful note here might encourage folks to complete this.

If i didn't switch on to this, many others probably haven't also, so it would be good to get the message out there and how it could work better. IMO

[Hawkgirl]

I think one problem with any kind of change in asking for information is that a lot of people don't want to give that information ... and even when you make extra information voluntary upon registering, just having it there will cause your conversion rate to tank.

I rather like the fact that if people want to put that information out there, they can. And if people want to remain shrouded in mystery, they can do that, too.

The other think I like about WebmasterWorld is that it doesn't matter where you're from - everyone is welcome in every forum. If you have an interest in a subject area, you can find like-minded people. That's really one of the great purposes of this community - to bring people together from all over the world to talk about webmastering.

[Brett_Tabke]

> Is there any interest amongst members for more easily
> being able to identify members locally?

Very little. Most are concerned about privacy and consumer protection. Any time we have allowed people to post clubs or local gettogethers, they have ben targets and spammed. Two seperate incidents of "get togethers" that turned into sales nights (ala Amway/Herbal life/condo you-need-seo pitches) have left alot of bad feelings with some members about it.

So, other than the profile option that is 100% opt in, I don't see us changing that in any way.

[AjiNIMC]

I always wanted to try this in India, may be a pubcon for India. India is growing and needs a push, WebmasterWorld should be able to give the right push.

Please give it a thought and as an Indian I will really appreciate it.

Thanks,
AjiNIMC