TalkBoard Topics - Suggestion: Optiontown.com forum

Optiontown.com was originally only for SAS and Air Baltic (+Kingfisher) flights but now also have services for AirAsia, Blue1, Spanair, AirIndia, Malaysian, Malev, Arik and sounting... Maybe it should be time now, or later in the future, to move the threads from the SAS forum to another forum focused on Optiontown?


/Ola

Demonstrated unmet need for such a forum, please? There are several other criteria (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/talkboard-topics/918161-what-talkboard-how-new-forums-other-suggestions-considered.html) for new forum requests that should also be addressed.

I would second that. W.r.t criteria:

- existing threads which would be best suited in your proposed forum several obvious ones such as SAS and Malev

- describing a need which is not being met for a group of Flyertalk members by the existing forums. The Optiontown threads are all over the place, and often involved trying to post miles to FF accounts to non-Optiontown airline members when flying "Optiontown metal". Hence some confusion in which forum to put the thread or post. ie. carrier/flight number/FF account posting to etc

- other relevant arguments showing why Flyertalk would be improved by the addition of this forum or change. a separate Optiontown thread would definitely reduce the clutter of different postings related to Option in different forums. Given that Option is increasing in size/members, this may be good "future-proofing". Note that Malaysian, Air India and Kingfisher are joining alliances soon, so these will become increasing popular choices from a mileage point of view (and therefore from an upgrade point of view)

In addition, while a simple keyword search would find all references to threads/posts containing Optiontown, it involves repeatedly jumping between highly disparate areas of the board to find what you want (or finally discover that what you are searching for probably doesn't exist)

I'll admit I'm not terribly familiar with Optiontown, but I'm not sure that a single website needs an entire forum devoted to it. From a quick glance, it appears to be a way to "option" oneself for a discounted, paid upgrade on certain flights on certain airlines.

I'll agree that there doesn't appear to be a forum that would be ideally suited to host all of the Optiontown discussion (short of perhaps a consolidated thread in MilesBuzz or TravelBuzz). That said, the discussion seems to be happening in the forums of Optiontown partner carriers. Is there really a need for a place to consolidate all Optiontown-related discussions when it seems that the questions might mostly be related to how Optiontown interacts with a specific carrier? Those questions seem to be being asked in each Optiontown partner carrier's forums, which would seem to be the applicable place.

Can you provide some examples of some threads (or at least ideas about some threads) that would be ideally suited for discussion in a consolidated place?

If it is determined that there is an unmet need (Optiontown discussion is being stifled because there is no valid place for it to be discussed now), I'm still a bit hesitant to give a forum to a specific website (at least under the current FlyerTalk structure). However, I would be more supportive of a forum to host discussion about several other cross-carrier projects that also have no good home right now. If a demonstrated, unmet need would be met by such a forum and there were a clear critical mass* that indicated the forum would be a success, I'd be much more likely to be intrigued by this suggestion.

*Note that a keyword search across the entire history of FlyerTalk returned a mere 150 threads that even mention Optiontown.