As for the placement of the A/B divide, I for one would see great utility value in having my terrain divided into two zones. More would be better, of course - but even being able to say that something in my reign is located "on the Alpha side" or "on the Beta side" is quite helpful in practice.
But is that really practical? I doubt anyone in Britain uses 'western hemisphere' or 'eastern hemisphere' when talking about some location in in it's borders.
(Edit note: upon reading my post, I caught many typos. I'm writing from a mobile device, and it's very hard to scroll around and fix them. So please excuse/forgive my numerous typos/errors. Thanks!)
But British territory is largely relegated to an island in Europe; it doesn't really spread around the world anymore. Plus, the Earth is so much smaller than space that it's fairly easy to associate most places of significance with a place on the globe/map. If we're talking about star systems, I'd think it'd be much harder to place them in our minds (except, perhaps, for their relative locations to Earth).
In Earth terms, it be like if we had cities/countries not only on thre land massed but also all over the ocean, at various depths (for space, like the sea and unlike land on Earth — except for rather inconsequential elevation differences — is in three dimensions.) eg, imagine one city in the sea being roughly located at the same x-y coordinates as another but located a km or two above it. It'd start to get very complicated, and denoting territorial boundaries would be harder (and harder to visualize in one's mind). Hence it'd be helpful to use artificial boundaries in order to divide different areas into districts — just like the UFP might do.
Strangely enough, though, the Alpha-Beta-Gamma-Delta Quadrant system doesn't help this (it's just a two-dimensional, broad, arbitrary division), and I think the use of
sectors, which I understand are three-dimensional, makes much more sense.
That's why I still think the Quadrant system is really only useful when talking about *very* large distances — such as referring to the Dominion being in the Gamma Q or Borg space being in the Delta Q — it's also helpful in those cases because their territories span many sectors.
If I were in charge of the UFP I would try to create a quadrant system such that as much of its territory as possible lies in just one quadrant, for simplicity. Still, I'd think the UFP and its neighbors wouldn't bother to use the Alpha-Beta divide when discussing territory and instead use sectors. After all, the quadrant system doesn't seem to have been designed to denote, say, UFP territory on one side and Romulan on the other.
Finally, as I understand it, the quadrant system is far more arbitrary than the latitude/longitude system on Earth. Though the precise starting point of Prime Meridian is arbitrary, there actually *is* physical significance to these lines: there *is* an equator, there *are* physical differences between the Northern and Southern hemispheres, and there *are* north and south poles (of various kinds, such geographic and magnetic). I don't think there is such meaning in the quadrant system: it's not like the Gamma Q experiences seasons opposite that of the Alpha Q. There probably *are* some differences with respect to the distance from the galactic core, but I don't know what their significance would be (I'm an electrical engineer, not an astronomer/astrophysicist!
Sorry: couldn't help but use a take on the "I'm a doctor, not a ..."
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