tom911

I do not have moderator capabilities. I saw a new post earlier today and thought it was merged into this thread. Clearly I was mistaken based on what you see and it was the poster that bumped the 2002 thread. Please accept my apology for making this error.

If you look at it from the other direction, though, it is a thread started 9 years ago, and I just don't see the value in bumping them up by even adding to it once a year when a forum is so busy. I know the UA forum used to be the busiest of FT, and that may be the case again now that the Travel Safety/Security forum has slowed down some in the last month. I just looked back and it takes 5 pages to cover the last 24 hours on that forum. For those with the default setting, they see 10 pages. That's a lot of material.

I think the merging of threads creates MORE work for the moderators and not less. If some of the newer threads that could be answered with one or two posts, or a link to an existing thread (not necessarily from a moderator, could be from another member), instead of merged with a bigger thread, there would be less work for all our moderators and they would scroll off the screen. This type of policy could apply across all of FT, though. We should not have a policy just for one or two forums.

My problem is not with the moderators but rather with the megathreads (which I consider threads covering multiple years). A lot of those predate our current forum moderators even being in place and have taken on lives of their own. I have not mentioned any moderator by name, and have not done any research as to which moderators in any particular forum are merging into the megathreads. I'm not the only one that has posted links to them.

I appreciate the hard work our volunteer moderators do on a daily basis. I just think that whoever coordinates moderation, and we've pretty much decided that is not the Talk Board, needs to address a policy that covers ALL forums and megathreads (and that would include a definition of what a megathread is, as it may not match mine). To me it is more obvious on the UA forum compared to AA, the two main forums I post on, but there could be other airline forums with the same issue. I don't frequent Delta or Continental, for instance, so it's hard for me to comment what's going on there. They may have the same issues there, but no one from those forums has been along to post links here.

One problem we have is very few members here are aware there is a Talk Board forum, so you do end up with a lot of the same posters posting here over and over and you don't get the type of input you would see on a hotel or airline forum. We've been fortunate on this thread to have five Talk Board members participate which is a good response. I wonder if all the moderators even know this forum exists.

I'd like to see more moderators post their point of view on megathreads so we do have more input here. One poster previously told me that megathreads were not being discussed on the moderator forum.

What do you see as the solution for megathreads that cover multiple years?

We've heard from a few Talk Board members here, and members, but not a lot of moderators have offered their point of view. Is there some way to make your job easier when it relates to megathreads? Aren't there over 100 moderators now? What type of policy would work best across all the FT forums to make them easier to read for the members, and easier to manage for the moderators? There must be some ground in the middle we can all meet at.

Could it be as simple as letting new threads scroll past for a few days and never be seen again? What would work best across all forums?

Again, iluv2fly, my apologies for the incorrect information in the thread you cited above. I'll try not to make an error of that sort again.