Let me take a stab at this:
1. There are too many forums on Flyertalk.
There are over 100 programs worldwide
2. There are too many pages where these forums are listed.
Last count there are only 4 pages: Miles, Travel, Dining, Airports. Let's remember, there are some 900,000 posts.
3. FlyerTalk is not an umbrella site for all things travel, although this is something that Randy might wish it was. It is a focused site for a community of frequent flyers and all things important to them. Umbrella sites never work, they fragment into separate sites, each with more specific focus.
Actually I think you might be mistaking my wishes. I started a board to talk about my favorite topic, miles and points. It was the members who wanted OMNI, the members who wanted a general Travel talk area, members who wanted dining, etc. Members who wanted to express an opinion about more than miles and points. Just look around at the threads posted today. And they also want a job posting board, etc. As any area grows, there is a natural tendency to surround it with like content. An unbrella? Go ask successful companies like Fodors.com, Yahoo! Travel and AOL Travel why they have the number of similar forums that we do. Also, ask Zagat's why they are moving from the restaurant review space to movies.
4. Put all the major forums on one page. MileBuzz, TravelBuzz, General Traveltalk, OMNI, etc. I'll call this the FlyerTalk Main Page.
Not you or anyone else hopes for the next extention of FlyerTalk the way we do. It involves creating 'My FlyerTalk' where you will choose which forums you want on your own personal page. This feature is not yet available on the systems we use and those it is available on is very cost prohibitive (estimates range that such a solution for our traffic would run about $300,000 - not bad but remember, you pay nothing financially for the privilege of enjoying FlyerTalk. However, as soon as this is possible for us, i will invest in it.
5. Take away all the tiny, infrequently used forums from the Main Page. Put them on another page.
Tiny infrequently used? I remember when we started, MileageRun was a tiny infrequently used forum, same with SPAM, and a host of others. What you might view as tiny happens to be important to a smaller group of people, but important nonetheless. What we have found is that if you wait until they are big enough, then you have members gripping that you are changing things. If you wait until they are big enough you lose thier focus since you cannot always move select threads to a new destination. The world is much bigger than American, United and Marriott and I'm actually glad we know the difference.
[b]6. Do not arbitrarily move perfectly good and interesting threads to some "misposted threads" forum. That is insulting to people who have taken a lot of time and trouble to post in the first place.[/b[
Insulting to people who have taken the time and trouble to post in the first place? Consider if you will the insult to those who volunteer their unpaid time to trying to keep each forum focused on exactly what the sign says it is. I will argue until i'm blue in the face if you think i insulted a member because i decided that the thread about fat, obese passengers didn't belong on the MilesBuzz! forum. I find it absolute amazing that members think we're always wrong in these actions. In the early days, a small group of people founded FlyerTalk. As far as moving things, we sometimes feel like parents picking up after their teenage kids who could care less that someone else is doing the laundry for them. Remember, if you posted something in the correct forum to begin with, you'd never have to wonder where it was. Strange....but true.
Hope this helps address a few of your wonders.