Why do San Jose and San Francisco have their own sub-forums? (Los Angeles: home, restaurant)

[mileena]

Basically, the Bay Area is one huge area, consisting of the nine counties that surround the bay (San Francisco Bay and San Pablo Bay):

San Francisco
San Mateo
Santa Clara (San Jose)
Alameda (Oakland)
Contra Costa
Marin
Napa
Sonoma
Solano

Occasionally, Santa Cruz and San Benito Counties, to the south, are included in this area.

Right now, San Francisco and San Jose have their own sub-forums, which basically takes the eastern and southern part of the Bay Area, and awkwardly leaves the rest of us without a forum to post in. For example, I am in the East Bay, from Contra Costa County. People like me, and those from Oakand, have no place to post. I could post in the SF forum, which is 45 minutes from me, but cuturally, the East Bay is more like Santa Clara/San Jose/Silicon Valley, which is an hour away from me.

This is from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area

The Bay Area is anchored by three major cities. San Francisco is the cultural and financial center of the metropolitan area and Northern California and is famous for its iconic skyline, steep hills, cable cars and historic streetcars, Fisherman's Wharf, and the Golden Gate Bridge. It is the second-most densely populated major city (population greater than 200,000) in the United States. The largest city in the Bay Area in terms of both land area and population is San Jose, which is located in the South Bay and is part of the world renowned technology hub known as Silicon Valley. Oakland, the third most populous city, is a central hub for the East Bay, major industrial center and contains the Port of Oakland, the fifth busiest container port in the United States. The region's northern counties encompass California's famous Wine Country, home to hundreds of vineyards and wineries while the region's Pacific Ocean coastline hosts numerous beaches.

So I think the San Francisco and San Jose sub-forums need to be merged into a larger Bay Area forum, or there needs to be a new sub-forum for East Bay/Oakland.

[ferretkona]

I tried to get a Mother Lode sub forum to no avail. It would cover a dozen counties in CA.

[18Montclair]

Originally Posted by mileena

I am in the East Bay, from Contra Costa County. People like me, and those from Oakand, have no place to post.

Er, have you actually visited the SF Forum? There seem to be more East Bay centric threads than SF threads.

Trust me, there is no topic you can dream of that forumers there can't help you with with regards to the East Bay, including Contra Costa county.

[SOON2BNSURPRISE]

Hi mileena,

Speaking as strickly another poster just like you, here are some of the things that I have learned and I will offer my limited insight to hopefully show what we did to get a Ventura County sub forum started.

What it comes down to is numbers of threads within a forum. We were able to start a Ventura County forum because many of us asked for it and were able to show that we had the threads to support a new sub forum. Before that we were all posting in the Los Angeles sub forum. saying that I still post in the Los Angeles sub forum because many of the threads are relevent to my abilities to add to the posts.

If you are talking size of the area as you alluded to in your post then the LA area also includes Orange County and Ventura County. We could concievably have one metro sub forum covering all areas. The truth is that Orange county and now Ventura County have the numbers of threads to break away and support a sub forum. We have the people willing to put time into developing a stronger sub forum. I have to admit that I was a little scared there at first. Here we were given this opportunity to build a sub forum and it seemed at times only 4 or 5 people were posting each day. The numbers have improved and we do have some interesting converations on the Ventura county sub forum. It takes a little work to keep it interesting. Are you willing to put the time into developing a sub forum for your area? What it takes is to post threads about your area. Get conversations going about your area. Build support for your area. Get your friends involved and have them join City Data Forum and submit threads and posts about your area. Highlight communities or cities within that area that you are focusing on. Doing all that will give you a better chance at getting a sub forum in your area.

Remember this though. As you start navigating within the other California and other states forums you will find others asking why they don't have a sub forum devoted to their part of the world. Requests come in all the time for new sub forums, not just for locations but also for the General forums. Everyone that has a request has valid reasons why their idea for a new sub forum would make the City Data Forum world so much more better. Something to be aware of is that they don't have the resources to make everyones wish come true. These new forums and sub forums are developed as time, resouces and network space becomes available. City Data Forum wants to make sure that the sub forums that are developed will be a success.

[tstieber]

I think Oakland is more culturally similar to SF than to Contra Costa, while CC is more similar to SJ. There aren't enough people to justify a CC forum, so it's just easier to have a general Bay Area one (called "SF") and one for the South Bay.

[mileena]

Wow, I guess I am learning quite a bit. I guess it all depends on threads, as SOON2BNSURPRISE pointed out, and not geographic area, population, etc. OK. I have actually gone to the SF forum quite a bit, and most posts do seem to be about East Bay, which is funny, since it's called the San Francisco forum.

I agree, Oakland is actually more similar to SF, but without the traffic problems and hills.

BTW, Ventura county is absolutely beautiful, especially by Oxnard and Thousand Oaks. Went to a Chinese restaurant there called Blue Star Buffet when I was visiting. Not too shabby.

[NewToCA]

Well, since I'm just a volunteer and not an employee of City-Data I'll chime in too about the sub-forum issue.

I have a minority opinion here, meaning practically nobody agrees with me.

I don't like sub-forums at all, I think they fracture conversation and encourage setting up cliques. Rather, I prefer a state forum with a "sticky" for discussions about specific large/popular areas. However, that isn't how the site is set up, so...

[MtnSurfer]

Originally Posted by NewToCA

Well, since I'm just a volunteer and not an employee of City-Data I'll chime in too about the sub-forum issue.

I have a minority opinion here, meaning practically nobody agrees with me.

I don't like sub-forums at all, I think they fracture conversation and encourage setting up cliques. Rather, I prefer a state forum with a "sticky" for discussions about specific large/popular areas. However, that isn't how the site is set up, so...

While I see the point you are making I don't find it relavant to the forum model at all. I belong to many forums covering a wide range of topics such as photography, autos, software engineering (which is my field), computers, mobile devices and many other areas of interest. In none of these forums does it or would it make sense simply to lump all things together in one big mush pot bucket. Forum members **never** complain about too many sub groupings. Without them its like walking into a messy house, department store, garage, etc... vs. an organized one. It's so much easier to find things when they are organized into logical groupings and sub areas within those groupings. Imagine walking into a hardware store looking for specific things like gloves and nails. But it turns out they are scattered throughout the store. Are they still there? Sure. But are they easy to find? No way! Its a mess.

This is especially the case with a location based forum in a state as large, highly populated and diverse as California. Do you want to know something about Monterey or Frenso when you are a newbee? Well good luck because right now the threads are buried many pages deep under political or other general complaint threads which have nothing to do with the area data one is interested in. Its a jumbled, disorganized mess IMO. And I try to help as many ppl as I can with Central Coast questions. But as I've tried in past to explain to Mods a logical grouping for places like the Central Coast or the Central Valley would prove very beneficial for people looking for things specific to these areas. Having them thrown in with everything else is like looking for a pair of socks in a big messy pile of clothes. You might get lucky, but probably not. And yes, of course ppl can use search. But thats still no excuse to not organize the data more logically based on primary areas/regions of interest.

If you or the other mods don't have time to work on these things why not bring in more mods who can help? I'd volunteer to help organize some of this California city/area data. Heck, I don't even need or care about the title. Its not like you or anyone gets paid to do the work or anything. I understand that.

Derek

[krudmonk]

Originally Posted by tstieber

I think Oakland is more culturally similar to SF than to Contra Costa, while CC is more similar to SJ.

What kind of dumb crap is this?

[18Montclair]

Originally Posted by tstieber

I think Oakland is more culturally similar to SF than to Contra Costa, while CC is more similar to SJ. There aren't enough people to justify a CC forum, so it's just easier to have a general Bay Area one (called "SF") and one for the South Bay.

Contra Costa is far more connected to San Francisco-Oakland. Its not even close. That's why Contra Costa county is part of the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont metro area and not San Jose. Also, I would like to remind you that Contra Costa County also includes El Cerrito, San Pablo, Richmond, Pinole and Hercules which are all on west of the hill and definitely closer to Oakland and San Francisco than San Jose.