Gamers Seeking Gamers Trials (Community Supporters Only)

[Kichwas]

The most useful thing I could think of adding to the search tool for this would be the ability to search by the first three numbers of a zip code, and to sort the results by zip code.

That would be particularly useful for people living in large cities: San Francisco area, LA area, New York area, Seattle, Boston, Chicago... etc...
- which is probably most of us.

 

[Morrus]

The most useful thing I could think of adding to the search tool for this would be the ability to search by the first three numbers of a zip code, and to sort the results by zip code.

That would be particularly useful for people living in large cities: San Francisco area, LA area, New York area, Seattle, Boston, Chicago... etc...
- which is probably most of us.

Do you not get results from entering "New York", "Seattle", "Boston", "Chicago" in the location field?

As a test, I just entered "New York" and got 158 results, which seems reasonable given that the majority of people haven't updated their profiles with the relevant data.

If 158 people in a single city, narrowed down to those who (a) are members of EN World and (b) have made the effort to provide their location data aren't enough, then you're in a far more enviable gaming position than I!

 

[Kichwas]

Yes, but...

What if I live in Oakland, you live in Berkeley, and another player lives in Emmeryville, and a GM in Richmond wants to start a game. Which city does he pick?

All of those are within 1-5 miles of each other - and all share the same game shop. They're close enough that decades ago... after school my friends and I would walk through any given three of them in the same day (well, not Richmond, but maybe El Cerritto or Albany).

That's the problem with large metropolises, they're really composed of lots of little cities.

I myself live in Daly City, I'm about 500 feet from San Francisco, and a mile from Pacifica, 3 miles from South San Francisco, and 20 minutes from San Mateo. I used to be in a game in San Mateo in fact, and while I drove 20 minutes south, another player drove 20 minutes north up from Sunnyvale, and another drove 30 minutes from San Jose.

We're all little cities - but we all share the same first 3 numbers of our zips codes. By contrast in San Francisco itself, I've had one zip code on my side of the stree, say... 94111, and across the street was 94101, while down the block might be 94110.
(Hypothetical examples).

The same pattern holds in LA, NY, and the other metro regions. My brother lives in greater seattle, and the exact town he lives in wraps in a C shape around and inside of another three towns.

City names for searching become useless for us.


But it gets worse...

If I region search, do I search for SF, San Francisco, Bay Area, BA, SF BA, San Francisco Bay Area, or SF Bay Area... or?
- And how many people in the results chose to put their region rather than their city?




In US metro-regions, the only thing everyone there has in common that they have no confusion over what to call, is the first three numbers of their zip code.

Its the only constant, and a very quick way to judge that yes, this person is within distance of me.

 

[Morrus]

Surely that can create exactly the same problem? So you live in Oakland, and I live in Berkeley; or maybe you live in zip code 123 and I live 30 feet away but just over the boundary for zip code 124? They're just types of naming conventions, and they're all areas next to each other, surely?

I'm assuming here that zip codes work the same way as postcodes do here. I'm in SO18 6RX and the next road over might be over the border for SO19.

 

[Kichwas]

Zip codes here radiate out.

Everyone in a metro region will share the first 2 or 3 numbers, and two adjacent codes will just have the last number different. So it is a handy way for gauging 'viable distance'.

Example:
LONG URL of google image search

If I see a 940xx or a 941xx, I know that person is close to me. But a 942xx is too far. Once you know your own zip code, a scan of the first three pulls up anything very close. Changing digit 3 by one number up or down can give you the next regions over, and one hit there tells you what is close or far.

For me 941 is just across my city line, as I'm on the north edge of 940 (on a rare day without fog, I can see those pesky 941ers with their 941er ways lurking about over there ), but 942 is about 100 miles away at the state capital. So I'm in the exception - where there are two 3rd digits that work for me. For most people in large metro-regions, the first 3 digits are a map of everything nearby.

It just gives you the most viable list to start working with, particularly in places that have a lot of small cities or small towns close together - such as San Francisco's bay area, New England, and Seattle. I would think for New York too, but maybe they're more used to calling themselves New Yorkers even when one lives in the Bronx, another in Harlem, Long Island, or Manhattan. When I call some of my friends over there, they correct me with 'no I'm not in New York, I'm in A, B, or C, and others correct me and say 'yeah, this is technically A, but it's really New York...
- Which honestly happens here in California too... and is another reason why using the numbers helps to remove the layer of human-induced confusion.


Anyway - this isn't a 'make or break' thingy.
Just thought it would be a handy suggestion. On these people search engines I almost always search all of California and then scan through by hand - people fail to put the useful data in all too often.