I'm from London, and I was at the Hacker News meetup when hackful.eu was launched. It was a promising idea, but most of the interesting or useful articles on HN aren't relevant only by where you live. It's rare that an article is interesting in London, but irrelevant in California. Given the nature of the community on HN, geography is rarely an issue.
As a result, any geographical-based version of HN ends up either duplicating 90% of the articles on the main HN, which fragments the conversation, or it doesn't post the most interesting or useful articles so becomes irrelevant. Even a language-based subcommunity is largely pointless, since most of us speak English - it makes more sense to read knowledgable comments in broken English than amateur comments in perfect German.
In the end, HN is not Reddit. I don't see that it needs, wants, or would benefit from subcommunities.
As a result, any geographical-based version of HN ends up either duplicating 90% of the articles on the main HN, which fragments the conversation, or it doesn't post the most interesting or useful articles so becomes irrelevant. Even a language-based subcommunity is largely pointless, since most of us speak English - it makes more sense to read knowledgable comments in broken English than amateur comments in perfect German.
In the end, HN is not Reddit. I don't see that it needs, wants, or would benefit from subcommunities.