@moderators @moderators
Can you create an EU category that FR/UK /ITESPT would fall under?
I’m new (obviously!) here, and it makes no sense to post a question about restaurants in Germany to Hawaii/PR and Rest of world.
(and I suppose I am still missing those days of Chowhound! - I’ll admit it)
but for UX reasons - it provides a much better experience to have EU all together rather than alphabetically
I’ve previously asked for a “Rest of Europe” category, to sit alongside the three existing Europe categories, but that didnt go anywhere.
I’d certainly go along with a “European Union” category but you’d still need to identify where European countries, not in the Union, would be posted. You’d have the 27 EU countries in one forum and the other 17 countries (depending on your definition of “Europe”) which are not EU members, in the other forum
Maybe the solution would be just to have a single all-encompassing “Europe” category. I’d be fine posting my regular UK reviews there.
I think Europe would narrow it down just ever so slightly vs. “rest of the world.”
But let’s not forget this is a US-centric discussion forum, so really everything NOT US is The Rest of The World 
So, let’s just have everything non-US in the “rest of the world”. Easy peasy.
Certainly, with regard to tinkering with where European countries should be located on the site, I’m conscious that Americans may have less of an instinctive understanding than those of us who are European, about which countries are EU members and which are not. As always, websites need to be as easy as possible for folk to find what they’re looking for. So, Norway then - EU member or not?
There’s no good solution to this problem.
Organizationally, a ‘rest of EMEA’ category makes more sense.
But then, ‘Rest of EMEA’ gets barely two posts a month, hardly very much traffic at all.
The remaining ‘rest of world’, which is Caribbean, Mexico, Central America and South America, has even less traffic. Maybe a handful topics a year.
So you end up with these organizationally correct but socially half dead categories, which solves one problem but introduces another. Have to think about this more…
Maybe a chicken egg issue. If there were a few more relevant boards to use people may be encouraged to post. I know I have at times not bothered posting something about a visit to a place where it would have been lumped into the rest of the world. I took it as a sign that no one really cared about reading about such places.
Doesn’t seem to be asking too much to create a rest of Europe. Not clear why Hawaii isn’t included with western US. My impression has been that lots of people from the west coast vacation there so it would be logical to add Hawaii to west coast US. Wouldn’t the broad categories be continents (6 relevant excluding the continent of penguins)? Asia Pacific covers 2 of them. I think a Rest of Europe and Latin America and Caribbean boards would be beneficial. That’s just 2 new ones. EMEA category only makes sense in the corporate world for management purposes and barely there. That title just tells me that the company has no material business in Africa or the Middle East.
Maybe HOs need to get out and travel more.
chuckle chuckle chuckle. . . .
this debate is so very old. back in ye’olde CH days, many people demanded a separate section for ‘our town’
they had a point! - most of the discussion revolved around ‘centers of eating’ - east coast, west coast, nobody posted about the best ravioli in Peoria . . .
were one to divide up the cuisine of ‘the old world’ - some obvious sections appear:
Mediterranean - subset Italian
north African
central Europe
eastern Europe
Nordic
Asian
Indian
then . . . comes along the veddy touchy issue of stuff like “French cuisine” - there’s a popular theory the French established whole bunches of ‘cuisine’
bottom line, some basic “categories” aka “sections” is not a bad idea - but stuff like “Northern Germany” and “Southern Germany” - {{been there, lived there, worked there, cooked there - years}} . . . is a exercise in futility.
one simply has to accept one cannot make every member happy with every post.
/screed off
I remember that well and was guilty.
I recall suggesting that the UK forum be divided into “London” and “Rest of the UK”. That way, those of us who lived in the “rest” could ignore the stream of American tourists visiting London (which would be their sole experience of visiting the UK), asking the same questions and getting the same answers from other American tourists. It didnt happen. Surprise, surprise.
Thank you for your thoughtful replies.
I still think EU /Europe would be a sensible category. But that’s just me. Is it possible w in a category to have subs such as country and leave it at that?
Sorry - to be so pedantic. Europe is helpful to me. Rest of the world and grouping Germany w/ HI is…less so. (and although might be close alphabetically speaking) but that is where the similarities end.
That makes me wonder about a different way forward. Continue to treat the two North American countries as at present - by states/provinces. But have alphabetical groups of countries for everywhere else. Say, A - K and L - Z. It would certainly be an easy set-up - everyone would know that Germany threads weres in the first group and Switzerland in the second.
