Where do you live?

[DocHeb]

One of the fascinating things about this forum is hearing from people around the world. This just totally blows my mind that in a millisecond - and at no additional cost other than my ISP charges - I can find information from, or talk to people from Austrialia's Snowy Mountains to Zachary, Louisiana.

On the other hand, the free text entry for our personal data fields makes it hard to find groups of people. For example, I was looking for TBN'ers from Michigan, but a sort on the "location" in the Users Files data field yields "MI, Southeast MI, Mich, Michigan", etc., plus entries with cities/areas in Michigan from Ann Arbor to Western MI. Makes it hard to find neighbors. Any thoughts on standardizing these Data fields, with possibly a Country/State-Province/City format to allow colleagues to find each other? It might be neat to have the ability to send group emails to subsets of the total TBN network based on these fields.

 

[rancar]

This is a very good suggestion. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

 

[ewoss3]

great idea

 

[njrqs]

Yes maybe there also needs to be some more compulsary fields prior to being able to register.

Not that we want to scare anyone away but once they join I am sure they would appreciate the info being available.

Keep up the great work OH MASTER !!

 

[markcg2000]

Sometimes I'd like to know more, but we have to accept anyone's desire for privacy. I think more detailed fields are a great idea, but I'm sure people will realize the value and fill out all the fields without making them mandatory... that's why my "location" is so detailed /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif.

 

[DocHeb]

I don't want to make them mandatory, just organized a bit differently. I have a lot of sympathy for wishes of privacy. It's taken me nine months to get comfortable enough to put my email address in my profile. I actually don't worry about y'all, but I'm a bit paranoid about some of my customers. We get some of the rougher and angrier elements of society into my shop, and I don't always tell them what they want to hear. Most of my colleagues try to keep a low and anonymous profile.

 

[jhburke]

I would sure like for everybodys location be available. This is because if I am interested in something they have I would know if I be interested in it due to shipping costs.

 

[Youare]

I often wonder who of you live in the same general area I do. Whenever I see a tractor, especially a compact tractor, in someone's yard I wonder if they are one of us.

I can understand the privacy issue that some people may have. So, I guess it is up to each one of us to add the level of information we are comfortable with.

Randy

 

[GlueGuy]

You know, that's an idea. I'd like to see the "location" broken down into 3 or 4 separate fields, like, country, state/province, city, and maybe "region". If they were all optional, that would allow people to put as much or as little information as they like.

For example, my profile is relatively detailed about where I live, but it's still a pretty big area. Kind of gets that way when the houses are so far apart from each other...

 

[Thomas]

Maybe if we could stick a small TBN sticker on the mail box that might help.