Seeking suggestions - conducting polls to solicit interest in certain companies?

[dmurray6]

Hey Folks,

I'm relatively new to the forum and as a monetary contributor. I absolutely love what I see so far, and wish I would have gotten involved in such a forum long before now. Like many or all of us here, allegiances to a certain side or military unit is based on some form of relationship we have with history. Whether its something we enjoy reading about or an ancestral tie, I'm sure everyone has a close and personal factor driving the future decision to join a certain group. I've noticed there are plenty of groups already forming, maybe pre-existing players from other games, friends that have met on some other form of communication medium (teamspeak, etc). And maybe what I'm about to suggest has already been tried, tested, and old news. This may even be best suited for the "Suggestions and Idea's" Forum, but I decided to post it here because I feel it is organizational related. So.......here goes....

In the desire of thinking beyond my own wants and needs, I was wondering if anyone has initiated a poll that would look to establish an initial baseline of where the user communities interests lie in terms of each army's units, especially those of interest to WoR? I see and commend Jamez on his great work in establishing the existing companies sticky post (http://www.warofrightsforum.com/showthread.php?1543-Company-List) in the Companies forum. And there is the looking for a regiment/members (http://www.warofrightsforum.com/showthread.php?1478-Looking-for-a-regiment-members) forum for advertising one's unit and/or one's self.

Right now we are restricted by performing forum search queries for the unit we might solely be interested in. For me, I did a quick search for the 25th and 31st VA Infantry in the Companies forum. What I'm wondering is would the community benefit from collecting a simple poll statistic for "fly by" visitors of the site? Like "Hey, if you were to play War of Rights, what state would you be most likely to support"? Maybe collect an email address so current or future leaders of said Regiment/Company could shoot the person an email saying "Hey, just wanted to let you know that WoR's has a Regiment forming from your area of interest".

For me, it would be great if I knew someone was already forming a company in one of the two Regiments I'm interested in. But if I could see that neither Regiment had any interest or had 10 people interested, I'd have a better shot and would consider forming that unit.

I suppose my main interest is in not wanting to (or have others) create a company that ends up with little to no interest by community members.

Thoughts? Is this a completely terrible idea? If it's not, do we have the capability to create such a poll? Is there anything I could do to help establish said poll if its determined to be a worth while venture?

Thanks

[A. P. Hill]

Check my Order of Battle stickies. I am tracking player units, based on the actual units for both sides. You can find them in the USA & CSA forums.

[dmurray6]

Check my Order of Battle stickies. I am tracking player units, based on the actual units for both sides. You can find them in the USA & CSA forums.

Hey A.P., thanks for the response. Your spreadsheet is a nice piece of work and certainly important for a matrix of who's considered what in terms of historically accurate units. However, I still feel like there's an avenue of opportunity to collect a tiny bit (think minimalist here) of information from the most casual of potential gamers. Your matrix certainly notes what units have been established, I'm assuming via the threads that have been created, and the submissions of players requesting the establishment of a company. That's still a bit outside the realm of what I'm looking to accomplish.

For example, if 100 people hit the website and see no reference to a unit in which they are interested, we have no idea what units those 100 people were interested in or whether they'd come back if a unit was established that did interest them. Like I referenced initially, even if its just down to the state-level. In my case, there is absolutely no one touching the 31st or 25th VA Inf at this point. But if I knew that 100 other people were interested than I might be obliged to push forth with more effort to establish a company in one of those Regiments.

That would exponentially increase my interest in emulating a unit that one of my ancestors took part in, and exponentially increase my interest in WoR. Granted, I'm going to love this game one way or the other. But I think this is my analytical IT, work-related side coming out. If I had my choice, I'd start trying to collect geolocation via HTML5 coding, or browser information (IP address if its not from a paranoid individual going through proxies), just to make an educated guess on the behalf of each user. That's not necessary if we just ask each person to provide a small bit via a poll, hence my suggestion. I can get as creepy as need be in terms of collecting information on behalf of people, but I figured asking would be the best upfront way of doing it. :)

Imagine a database of 1,000's of users that have left just a tidbit of information about themselves, lets say, email, state, and county in which they are interested in portraying a WoR soldier.

For example, I would be willing to leave the following (even though I'm from Maryland):
email: bla@bla.bla
state: Virginia
county: Highland

It's less involved than creating a forum account yet still allows us to collect useful and actionable information to supplement the WoR user base.

When the time comes, if someone is forming a company within any of the Regiments that were made up of Highland County residents, then an email could be sent to me saying "Hey, so-and-so is creating (2nd) Company F of the 25th VA Regiment, also known as the Highland Rangers, if you'd like to be recruited, visit us here: <insert WoR Company URL here>".

If additional work needs to be done to matrix which counties made up which units, that's research I'm willing to do to help link today's players with yesteryear's ancestors.

That's more along the lines of what I was thinking.

Good, bad, indifferent? :)