Geography update

[hdtran]

I'm not sure whether this belongs in Site Support or Site News, but anyway:

I like the new geography organization. Finally, Caribbean/Central and Central/South America no longer overlap! (It was really annoying to have both the Caribbean & the South American forum, for instance, both lay claim to Honduras & Bonaire in their descriptions )

But if you closely read the descriptions, both Caribbean Islands & South American forums still lay claim to the Bahamas & Caribbean Islands.

So, can the site admins make the forum descriptions remove the overlap? Would the site admins like for me to volunteer to create a description for the Caribbean vs Central/South American fora (forums?) based on historical usage?

 

[Ted S]

Go for it. I'm all for someone who actually know what their talking about write it.

 

[archman]

I see it. Good catch. I think what you're seeing is leftover from an older forum layout.

 

[hdtran]

Well, historically at SB, Belize & Bonaire post in Caribbean (including Bahamas etc., which is, strictly speaking, Atlantic ) while Roatan/Honduras posts in Central/South, which is really in the Caribbean sea.

So, one possibility would be to have a "Caribbean Sea & Bahamas" forum, which would include Bahamas, Cuba, Puerto Rico, all the Caribbean Islands, Belize, & the East coasts of Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Columbia, & Venezuela. Then, the Central/South America would be the Pacific coasts of the Americas South of Mexico (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, Columbia) & the rest of South America (Guyanas, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, etc.)

Logically speaking, if you do this, you should then do subforums (subfora?) in Caribbean for Belize, Bay Islands, Bonaire, & Everything Else Caribbean/Bahamas (much like Mexico is Cozumel & Everything Else; or US is FL, South-other-than-FL, NE, RM, CA, etc.)

The other alternative is to maintain the historical divisions (Bonaire/Belize in Caribbean & Roatan/Honduras Islands in Central/South Am.)

I'd be happy to create short descriptions for either the geographically compact (non-gerrymandered) or the historical, but I'd like a sense from the admins as to their preferences.

The least amount of work would be to maintain historical continuity, even though that does create interesting gerrymandering In that case, all that I would need to do would be to create two snappy paragraphs & the site admins to insert those descriptions.

 

[Ted S]

Given your history lesson it would make more sense to have a Caribbean Sea & Bahamas forum, and in time subforums for anything with major interest. Thank you for pointing this out -- I will get the new forum up shortly.

 

[hdtran]

Would you like for me to create descriptions (non-gerrymandered) before you create the forums (fora?)

I can also upload a (I think public domain) PDF or JPG (PDF is better in this case) that you can use as a sticky. If my photo gallery allows PDF's, or if I can attach it in a post, I'll do that. See http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/reference_maps/pdf/central_america.pdf for the map. According to Wikipedia, this is a public domain image.

 

[archman]

It's impossible to fully delineate the caribbean forum from the central and south american one. People will always cross-post between both forums in regions where the sea and continents border. Travel agents, brochures, and websites muddle this into a foregone conclusion. There's also the factoring of biogeography to consider, which doesn't follow basin/continent markers very well but is often more important to how scuba divers view their destinations. That's why the Bahamas Platform always gets lumped with the Caribbean Basin, as does northern Brazil and even Bermuda.

This sounds good.

So, one possibility would be to have a "Caribbean Sea & Bahamas" forum, which would include Bahamas, Cuba, Puerto Rico, all the Caribbean Islands, Belize, & the East coasts of Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Columbia, & Venezuela. Then, the Central/South America would be the Pacific coasts of the Americas South of Mexico (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, Columbia) & the rest of South America (Guyanas, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, etc.)

Cozumel gets its own subforum due to its singularly high user traffic. If another Caribbean or south american locale became similarly popular, it would likely get its own subforum also.

 

[DandyDon]

I've always thought of Belize as Central America. Hes' right, tho - there will be a lot of cross posting. As long as they don't put their Ambergris Cay report in the Canadian forum. :silly:

 

[hdtran]

It's impossible to fully delineate the caribbean forum from the central and south american one. People will always cross-post between both forums in regions where the sea and continents border. Travel agents, brochures, and websites muddle this into a foregone conclusion. There's also the factoring of biogeography to consider, which doesn't follow basin/continent markers very well but is often more important to how scuba divers view their destinations. That's why the Bahamas Platform always gets lumped with the Caribbean Basin, as does northern Brazil and even Bermuda.

Slightly off-topic, but gerrymandering always offended my sensibilities, and I could never understand why the courts would allow it...

Cross-posting doesn't really bother me. It's the overlapping descriptions which I find amusing. I posted a mild whine about it several months back (I think in this forum), and was told "it will be fixed soon"

I know you all are volunteers, and working really hard to make this a great board, and it is a great board. I'm just trying to make it slightly better

 

[archman]

I've always thought of Belize as Central America. :

I work with a lot of people that visit Belize frequently, but for different reasons. My diver pals mainly view it as "Caribbean", while the non-diver (jungle) people think of it from the continental perspective.

Biogeography rears its sneaky head once more.:14: