ChaosMarth has absolutely no presence in PA and barely goes to NJ, so I don't think he should be a panelist. It should be people that frequently interact with the other two states. I constantly play in all three states and play with players from all three states. Anti doesn't go to PA, but he does go to NJ a lot and has played with PA enough. Keitaro and I frequently play with both states. Being in NJ puts us in the middle, which is convenient for us.
I'd be up for abolishing state rankings in favor of this one since having clashing lists would be ridiculous. For instance, I'm 7th right now on NJ's list and below people I'd be above on a tristate list if we made it right now, most notably Doom and Nairo. It would look silly to have the lists disagree with each other.
If we expand the number of panelists to three per state, I'd like to take ksizzle or Atomsk from NJ, preferably Atomsk since he travels a lot more. Doom is a current NJ state panelist, but his skill opinions are too strange for my tastes and downright wrong in many cases, and when you're working on a larger list with several states, you can't be like that. Bias is tolerable if others can balance you out and you actually have good data, but having totally off skill opinions can make someone worth little in discussions since skill opinions matter a lot in these types of lists.
NY should be Anti, Vinnie, and Shadow. Vinnie and Shadow actually play with NJ often and PA sometimes, while ChaosMarth does not. Chibo should probably decide on PA's third panelist. After we're full on panelists, we can discuss rules and guidelines.
I was once a regional panelist for the Melee rankings in 2006-2007. Cactuar, JFox, and I represented the tristate area. We made the tristate rankings and contributed on the big Atlantic North one. Cactuar controlled too much and forced his opinions into it a lot, which made Velocity get ranked above me despite having far less accomplishments and losing head-to-head to me every time, and it was all because Cactuar thought I sucked. I'd like to see such mistakes never get repeated, which is why people with accurate and realistic skill opinions are needed.
I do not think upstate NY or western PA should be included since our area almost never plays with them. It should be NYC, Long Island, southern NY in general, the entirety of NJ, eastern PA, and the Philadelphia area. We're almost like MD/VA when it comes to how often we play with each other.
