What's going on with the 'new' ten year-old Local Talk pages?

[Silenenutans]

Hello HQ,

My Local Talk topic has been running since summer 2007. Yet when I visited this week, I found a 'Beta' sign inviting me to comment on the 'new' Mumsnet Local. I think was invented for this!

I know you've just abolished your really useful Local Sites, with helpful activity listings, local competitions and so on. Mine was particularly excellent for school holiday activities and for that and more, I shall really miss it.

What is left, is the same old local Talk topics that preceded those lovely sites.

So my question is twofold:

1. Why are you presenting ten year-old topics as 'new'?

2. If something new is to appear locally, what is it? What are your plans?

It's hard to know what sort of comments to offer, without any idea of what you might have in mind.

Hi Silenenutans,

There's a thread here which explains this in more detail - please do take a look! We'll posting updates there, too.

Ah, I did glance through Site Stuff for an explanation before I posted. Must have missed that!

Perhaps it would be helpful to link the Beta survey to that explanation, so people have some idea what they're supposed to be commenting on? I know I didn't - other than a ten year-old topic, with the same recent posts as before you closed the rest of the local site.

So the question is something like 'how was your experience of finding this local page?' (Presumably you can correlate answers with method used).

My answer to that is; 'difficult, much more difficult than it used to be. I used to be able to click on 'Local' in the menu (or that green pin, no longer there) and be taken straight to my chosen site. Now I'm taken to an intermediate page, from where I have to search for it.

I've tried the 'search by location' feature, which I imagine might be useful for some people but, for me, I have to go a long way to reach another local site - and I don't want to, because it's too far away to be relevant. I want a direct link to my local site, just as I used to have.'

Thanks.

I do have a question though.

Is the idea that Local Talk will become entirely fluid, so not linked to a 'home site' at all?

So, the search by location function would offer a 'best approximation' but you'd really prefer people to use geotargeting?

If so, how would that work with thread titles? Or the location of the poster? So, if I posted, from home, asking about a particular locality, would my post be identified as being located in that locality (how?), or at my home? What if I posted while on holiday, about my home?

I can see value to pulling together threads that refer to places within a radius around my locality.

That would be quite a different system though, to pulling together threads posted on two or more county or city boards - where something from the far side of the neighbouring county is of no interest to me at all, so my 'all or nothing' choice would be to exclude threads from that county altogether.