Thanks for New Zealand love, but can you give us a good region list?

[Snorkel]

Thanks for the Games made in New Zealand promotion you're doing this week, that's nice.

. . .

Edit: Up front, I am aware that there are many other parts of the world for whom this feature is also broken. If those could also be fixed, that would be swell. We've only been asking for these fixes for like a decade

Carrying on:

What's less nice is that most New Zealanders can't select a relevant item from the list of "State/Province" for our Steam Profiles.

I live in the city of Christchurch (population 400,000), in the Canterbury region (population 650,000). The closest location I can find for my city is Ellesmere, a lake 40km away from the city (population 200).

I'm going to go through A-C of Steam's State/Province list, just to demonstrate how weird they are.

Akaroa - a small town of 600
Amuri - a rural district, population 2000
Ashburton - a medium-sized town, population 34,000
Bay of Islands - a small area, population 32,000
Bruce - It was a county until that system was disestablished in 1986, currently the name of an electorate, population 2000
Buller - a small district, population 9,800
Chatham Islands - this one is correct. Population 600
Cheviot - a small town, population 400
Clifton - unsure where this means. Options are a suburb of Christchurch (city), a suburb of Invercargill (city), a camping ground, a small locality in the town of takaka.
Clutha - a district, population 18,000
Cook - a mountain, also a small county disestablished in 1989, best guess at population, around 200?

Notably missing from this list: Auckland (1,700,000), Bay of Plenty (340,000) Canterbury (650,000)

New Zealand's official regions list, the designations in popular use in New Zealand:

Auckland 1,715,600
Bay of Plenty 343,400
Canterbury 649,800
Chatham Islands 600
Gisborne 51,500
Hawke's Bay 181,500
Manawatū-Whanganui 256,500
Marlborough 51,500
Nelson 54,700
Northland 197,900
Otago 246,700
Southland 102,700
Taranaki 126,400
Tasman 57,900
Waikato 506,000
Wellington 547,000
West Coast 32,700

I have bolded the ones that are available in Steam's list, Manawatu and Wanganui are there as separate entries.
73% of New Zealanders do not have a relevant option from the list of "State/Province" that we can select.

New Zealand's biggest cities are:
Auckland (1,400,000), in the Auckland region - not available for selection.
Christchurch (400,000), in the Canterbury region - not available for selection.
Wellington (200,000, Capital City), in the Wellington region - not available for selection.
Hamilton (180,000), in the Waikato region - the region is available! Who knew!
Tauranga (150,000), Bay of Plenty - not available
Lower Hutt (110,000), Wellington region - not available
Dunedin (100,000), Otago Region - not available

Of the 13 remaining cities ranging 37,000 - 80,000 population, 6 of them are in a region that is selectable.

History:
I've looked into this before. I was told (but can't currently remember) the name of the service that Steam gathered this information from. When I last looked, that service had updated New Zealand to be the list of Regions (and Chatham Islands). But Steam is still using this bizarre list that has never been correct. I have tried to figure out how they got such a weird list, and the best I've come up with is they took the list of administrative Cities, Boroughs (towns and suburbs of big cities), and Counties (rural areas, not associated with cities or towns) that were disestablished in 1989[en.wikipedia.org], and they stripped out the cities and boroughs (where most people lived), leaving only the least populated small rural Counties? But yeah, as you can see, the list that exists is a collection of tiny towns, rural areas, a few current regions containing smaller cities, a lake, a mountain, but none of the regions containing our most populated areas. This is a meaningless list that never should have been compiled.

[rawWwRrr]

Originally posted by Snorkel:

I've looked into this before. I was told (but can't currently remember) the name of the service that Steam gathered this information from.

Geocities

Originally posted by Snorkel:

What's less nice is that most New Zealanders can't select a relevant item from the list of "State/Province" for our Steam Profiles.

It's not an issue unique to you Kiwis. Many regions are outdated as borders, names, and populations have changed over time.

UK: https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/3421061982944312451/
Ukraine: https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/1651043320652324075/
Finland: https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/6dt3vj/steam_missing_a_city_in_profile_options/
Norway: https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/496881136928058858/

It's not something that is detrimental to the operations of Steam and it's just a vanity for the profile. With that in mind, the priority to update the list is most likely pretty low. I would rather they fixed the sort so that it was all alphabetical. At least that way it would be easier to realize your city/state/region isn't represented.

[Snorkel]

Originally posted by rawWwRrr:

It's not an issue unique to you Kiwis. Many regions are outdated as borders, names, and populations have changed over time.

Yeah, ideally Steam would update all the regional lists on a regular basis.

New Zealand's is unique in that the list on Steam was never correct. Somebody saw a list of Cities, Boroughs and Counties from the late 80s, assumed incorrectly that Counties contained Cities and Boroughs (they did not, Counties were the other areas, as well as Cities etc). So we have this list of only tiny rural areas from 40 years ago.

Over 70% of New Zealanders can't find an option in the list to represent them. The 2 million people (of 5 million) who live in the three biggest cities cannot find an option to represent them.

[Nx Machina]

As rawWwRrr pointed out it is not just New Zealand which is affected.

If it means that much to you write your location under summary on your profile.

[Snorkel]

Originally posted by Nx Machina:

As rawWwRrr pointed out it is not just New Zealand which is affected.

If it means that much to you write your location under summary on your profile.

I never said it was.

This is a feature that Valve have. They have a suggestion box. My suggestion is they make this feature not broken. And I am providing information about how it is broken in my region. Seems like an appropriate thing to post in this forum.

[Snorkel]

Originally posted by rawWwRrr:

Originally posted by Snorkel:

I've looked into this before. I was told (but can't currently remember) the name of the service that Steam gathered this information from.

Geocities

Yahoo's amateur web host service from the 90s?

[Nx Machina]

Originally posted by Snorkel:

I never said it was.

This is a feature that Valve have. They have a suggestion box. My suggestion is they make this feature not broken. And I am providing information about how it is broken in my region. Seems like an appropriate thing to post in this forum.

You created a thread so you it must mean something to you.

Secondly how long have people asked for an update?

And finally the point is simple. Write it on your profile rather than rely on Valve Time.

[Snorkel]

Originally posted by Nx Machina:

Originally posted by Snorkel:

I never said it was.

This is a feature that Valve have. They have a suggestion box. My suggestion is they make this feature not broken. And I am providing information about how it is broken in my region. Seems like an appropriate thing to post in this forum.

You created a thread so you it must mean something to you.

I never said it didn't. My pointing out a problem does not imply that other countries don't have problems, and it doesn't imply that the problem isn't meaningful to me.

Originally posted by Nx Machina:

Secondly how long have people asked for an update?

At least a decade that I know of. Does that mean we should stop asking?

Originally posted by Nx Machina:

And finally the point is simple. Write it on your profile rather than rely on Valve Time.

This is the Suggestions thread, where people are supposed to suggest improvements to Steam. It's not Shoot Down People's Suggestions For No Good Reason subforum. What is your purpose here? To try and teach me a lesson for making a suggestion that you don't value? Does that mean it's not worth suggesting? What's the point of your argument? Thanks for keeping the thread bumped though.

[Nx Machina]

Originally posted by Snorkel:

This is the Suggestions thread, where people are supposed to suggest improvements to Steam. It's not Shoot Down People's Suggestions For No Good Reason subforum. What is your purpose here? To try and teach me a lesson for making a suggestion that you don't value? Does that mean it's not worth suggesting? What's the point of your argument? Thanks for keeping the thread bumped though.

It a "discussion" forum for suggestions hence why i and rawWwRrr contributed to the thread and gave you answers you did not want to hear.

The reality is you acknowledged it is at least decade so how is it exactly shooting down a suggestion which has not been on Valve's priority list for that decade.

Suggestions are after all please consider this and this has been suggested numerous times over that decade.