Home Regions and Affiliating

This year for the first time South Africa has city regions in the forums, rather than a singular South African catch-all. This is mainly because South Africa has grown from 23 participants in 2003 to over 300 in 2009 (and growing!) This is very exciting news, but has caused some not-unexpected teething problems and confusion.

There was a great feeling of comraderie on the SA forums last year, so people are understandably concerned about losing that. What's more, having city regions means we can't "word war" (more on these in later posts) with other countries (New Zealand, I'm looking at you!)

But all is not lost, as we are able to affiliate to multiple regions, we can still enjoy each other's company in the Elsewhere region, and keep the local interest stuff (for instance events) in the local regions. And of course, it builds up lots of nice inter-city competition.

But why is it important to set your home region accurately?. I was going to write all these reasons up myself, but instead I'm going to repost the reasoning that Austen Texas ML "lazym" gave:

Why is it important for local participants to affiliate with your region?

Affiliating provides one of the best lines of communication between MLs and their local Wrimos. The affiliates list is the "to" list for our carefully crafted NaNoWriMo emails. However, your affiliates list may contain the names of past participants and current peeps from other regions who are just looking on. It's not an accurate count of who is actually participating in your region.

This is why you need to get your Wrimos "homed." Homing makes it much easier to identify local participants and get an idea of how many may be NaNoing in your region. Plus, only homed participant numbers are included in the totals for word count on the Word Count Scoreboard and donations in theDonation Derby.

The Scoreboard and Derby show you how your region stacks up against other regions, and you can use these to get some friendly competition going.

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Two, Four, Six, Eight – Why do we affiliate (and make [region name] our Home Region)?

Toto, we're home. Home! And this is my room, and you're all here. And I'm not gonna leave here ever, ever again, because I love you all, and - oh, Auntie Em - there's no place like home!

During November, it's fun to compare [region name's] progress against all the regions in the world, both in word count and donations. Please show your pride in our region by making sure your successes are included in our regional totals. To do this, you need to affiliate with [region name] AND set [region name]as your Home Region.

It's a relatively painless process:

1. If you're not affiliated with [region name]: Log in and click My NaNoWriMo, then click My Regions. On the All Regions tab, locate [region name], and click Join. Then click Join again.
2. If you are already affiliated: Do not pass Go. Proceed directly to the Home Region tab. On the Home Region tab, click the circle beside [full region name], and click the Set Home Region button near the bottom of the screen.

That's all there is to it!

But what happens if you aren't in or near one of the cities that is an official region this year? Then you can either set your home region as one you feel some connection with, or you can set your home region as South Africa::Elsewhere. No problems :) 

So please set your home region accurately to make your ML's lives easier and thus your NaNo experience better.

Happy Tuesday! Now go and affiliate!