About this one: https://tildes.net/~news/19bm/regional_news_thread

First of all I want to thank everyone who participated and gave it a shot despite the weird setup, and apologize for ghosting the meta-discussion about it. Y'all have many suggestions which convinced me that my original idea was flawed.

For one, I agree with Algernon_Asimov that splitting into a separate 'US-local news' and 'non-US global news' would have made more sense. If there's a next round, I think I'd focus on US states first, then non-US countries in another thread. But before that I want to get some feedback to make sure.

Do you think general news threads like that are necessary?

Algernon_Asimov said that news should just be posted directly to the frontpage to be more visible.

spit-evil-olive-tips made a point about the distinction between local news of general interests vs. local news of local interests, and the latter could benefit from having dedicated threads.

For me, I believe megathreads are fine as long as they're optional. In my experience, people do sometimes prefer to post in comments instead of as full topics. As long as people are free to choose either way (which is different than on Reddit where if there's a megathread then posts outside it got removed), overall we should end up with more activity not less.

Does the comment-to-comment format make sense?

In my head I imagine that to be a natural way to generate location-based grouping, but I could see the convoluted setup might be confusing and unenforceable. One the one hand, if each location only has 1 post then the extra step is unnecessary. On the other hand, if there are multiple locations, each with multiple posts then trying to find your regions of interest would be a pain.

Is the scope of the thread too broad?

This was a point made by skybrian here, which was in the context of the original thread being both US and non-US. But even if we divided them into separate US and non-US, are they still too broad?

Having one thread for each location is probably the most natural way, I fear that currently that would ended up being too niche. This was touched on by merry-cherry here as well. I could imagine that would work for a US state (which ever has the most people here) but since no one tried it yet, it's hard to know which states are most likely to succeed. And we probably shouldn't just make one each for all them (which would fill the entire frontpage with nothing but state names).

Should these threads be news-focused?

While that was my original goal, maybe megathreads could be more useful if they fills the needs of the people posting in it rather than just the one starting it. Usually that requires guesswork by the poster but since I'm already asking, might as well.

For the US-local thread, if the goal is to serve as testing grounds to see whether there's enough activity to make the case for local groups, maybe news is not necessarily the most popular when it comes to local content? If anyone support this direction, please share some examples of what types of content you'd like the most when visiting local groups. If you do, please also rank them in order of importance. That way the scope of the thread could be made to focus on the most needed activity as starter.

For the non-US global thread, do you still want dedicated global news? If so how should we set it apart from just regular posting? boxer_dogs_dance mentioned r/anime_titties being quite high quality for global news, any lessons we can adopt from them?

Digging around and I found this post asking about how to do cultural exchange on Tildes, maybe shifting the focus from global news to this might be more fruitful? (people are probably more willing to share nice things about their country than drama). Each subthread can be something like this Turkey Information Thread, or something else maybe.

Should they be recurring?

News probably make sense as recurring, others depend. Since this is still in trial whatever arrangement we agree on, I'll probably just make one and see from there.

Anything else you want to let me know (like maybe don't do this anymore haha), shoot away. Also it's not like I'm an official thread maker or anything, if any of y'all have your own take, go for it! The more people trying out stuff the better.

I'm curious to hear about the people or things in your city or region that add their own unique charm or character -- perhaps they're unknown or barely known to the rest of the world but are important culturally to your area.

I'll throw out a few of my picks for Dallas, Texas:

• The Ticket is a local sports radio station that's been around since 1995, which is an eternity when it comes to AM/FM radio. On the surface, this doesn't sound that interesting, but the station goes way deeper than just sports. Most of the listeners are loyal and almost cult-like in their dedication. People say that when they listen, it's as if they're just hearing some of their friends talk on the radio. I'd go as far as to say it has introduced some vernacular into the Dallas area lexicon that you don't typically find in other places (i.e. you can have a conversation with someone and they'll say a phrase in a way that instantly tips you off that they're a listener).
• Robert Wilonsky is a local writer/historian/everything Dallas guy. Not only is he passionate about Dallas, but he has a knack for writing and can turn a very boring civil matter into an exciting read.