I realize that this is not the most important of the many recent TER policy changes, but I wanted to know what others thought of it. I always found the diversity of locations of a touring provider’s meetings to be useful information, especially as a topic of conversation when we met. It is also a minor factor in deciding which providers I want to see.

I have noticed over the last several months that when I review a touring provider that I saw in my home city, TER will list her home city as the place of our meeting. On a couple of occasions when I met a provider in another city that was not her home city or mine, they listed her home city as the place of our meeting in my review. They also went back and added the home cities of providers in all of my past reviews of meetings that occurred in my home city.  

I am not sure what the rationale is for this change, but it is confusing and misleading. For touring providers, it implies that all of their appointments occurred in their home cities and that they are not available elsewhere. For reviewers, it implies that we met in cities that we have never visited.  

Finally, the policy is applied inconsistently. In the Top 100 Provider rankings for cities, TER treats all provider’s meetings as if they occurred in her home city for purposes of the rankings. Conversely, when calculating the Top 100 Reviewers for each city, TER only counts meetings that occurred in the reviewer’s home city with a local provider in the rankings.